Mansukhbhai Prajapati, a potter living in rural Gujarat, is completely untaught in English. But the lack of formal education has not hindered this grassroots entrepreneur from building a thriving business using just clay. Prajapati, who belongs to Nichimandal, a village in Rajkot, Gujarat, is the founder of Mitticool Clay Creation, a company that makes refrigerators, water filters, cookers, hot plates and other such items of daily use from clay. It all began when Prajapati first built a clay refrigerator that naturally cools the food inside, and does not depend on conventional sources of energy. This cooling process can keep water, fruits and vegetables fresh for a week, while milk can be preserved for three days. The product now is priced at just 2,000 — almost one-tenth of the basic refrigerator models from LG, or Whirlpool.

 

"This fridge also preserves the original taste of vegetables and fruits,” says Prajapati. Mitticool’s products have captured the imagination of the rural areas. Today it has revenues of around 30 lakh and has sold over one lakh products in just six years since it started off. Prajapati is among the new breed of several hundred grassroots innovators in India who are using imagination and innovation to solve basic issues of deprivation at the bottom of the pyramid. Such innovations are finding a market not just in India but also in other emerging markets and even developed nations. For instance, while Prajapati sells to Indian retailers such as Big Bazaar, he says that the same products have also reached customers in London, America, Singapore and Africa, thanks to the National Innovation Foundation (NIF). “We are reversing the model of globalization. It is now emerging from India,” says professor Anil Gupta, faculty member at the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad, and executive vice chairman of NIF. “This model is not about business to consumers, but grassroot to global markets.”

 

The NIF, which supports grassroots inventors like Prajapati, has received queries from more than 50 countries to buy these locally-made products or build businesses on the back of Indian innovations.The foundation, which has around 120,000 innovations and traditional knowledge practices under its umbrella, has sold many of these innovative products in markets across six continents. One obvious reason is that consumers like products that make life better for them, and are simple to use. 

 

“Such products sell better, and are based on novel ideas as their makers know the pulse of the people,” says AshniBiyani, director, Future Ideas, Future Group, which owns stores such as Big Bazaar and Central. Ashni, the daughter of Future Group CEO Kishore Biyani, is leading Khoj Lab, which aims to commercialize grassroot ideas. It facilitates the sale of these products at its outlets in collaboration with National Innovation Foundation (NIF). They have shortlisted 20 new grassroot products that Future Group would market. “There will be a range of products in categories such as home appliances, kitchen appliances, food, health care and luggage,” said Ashini. International interest is not just from individual customers, but also from governments. For example, a Malaysian government delegation is interested in extending collaboration with NIF, so that the same ideas can be implemented in their country. This would involve sharing innovations. “We have seen these local innovations in India and are really very impressed,” said Dr Maximus Ongkili. Minister of science, technology and innovation, Malaysia. “There is clearly a lot of innovative wealth at the grassroots level in India,” said Ongkili.

 

“India’s rural market spread along 600,000 villages, covering 110 million rural households and over 700 million people. This offers huge market for low-priced utility products,” says Paul Basil, founder and CEO, Villgro Innovations Foundation, an NGO that focuses on rural markets. These innovations are becoming a force to reckon with at a time when large corporations are spending billions of dollars to kick-start new innovations.