Opportunities for the next wave of Indian Entrepreneurs to help the country combat climate change

Well, I wrote this piece of essay four months back for some very impressive sounding foundation(IFC). They promised to declare the results in January. I had thought that this piece of writing will surely find a way to my blog whether I get awarded or not.
Somehow, the results got delayed and they asked for further two months - giving 31st March,2011 as the new deadline for the results. Patiently and hopefully, I waited only to find that on the given date they extend the result deadline to 30th April !?!?
So, I think its not possible for me to keep my humble effort of writing something to myself any more.
And here its below. Hope you enjoy it!

India's economic scenario has changed a lot since Independence. From the days just after Independence when there were only a few companies and the buzz of Socialism all around to the late-80s when the situation had improved only a bit - with a monopoly market dominated by family businesses to the present date, when the consumer has no allegiance to the brand names and demands maximum value for his money and the market looks with great optimism towards entrepreneurs and welcomes them eagerly. It has all changed drastically.

Moving from a slow paced, laggard economy to a robust economy, removing trade barriers and opening the market for outside firms, the market scene has brought about a huge change in the investors mindset. They now view entrepreneur projects as the next Cool thing. The Indian financial stage has developed immense respect for the breed of 'entrepreneurs' after it witnessed stupendous successes of many of them who made a name for themselves without having any family support. People like Sunil Mittal, Dhirubhai Ambani,Narayan Murthi are to name a few, the leaders of this change. The bureaucrats in the higher rungs of the ladder who used to mock at the entrepreneurial skills and create hurdles via the infamous 'inspector and license raj' are themselves now spear-heading the mission in encouraging such entrepreneurs to take up ambitious projects with government backing. Entrepreneurs have revolutionized the business platform with their innovative services and excellent understanding of the consumer's mindset. Who could have thought of the path-breaking concept of free e-mail access (Hotmail) or for that matter climbed up the ladder as fast as Dhirubhai and Narayan Murthy did? The fresh outlook the entrepreneurs brought with themselves freed the market from the clutches of family run businesses and allowed for better deliverance of services.

Now as the entire world including India faces a serious challenge in the form of climate change, therein lies in a great unexplored opportunity to tap.

So far, there haven't been many serious efforts from the business houses to build a niche product that caters specially to climate change and win over the hearts of environmentalists. Although there have been many international summits contemplating Earth's future and the possible actions to avert such a catastrophe, there hasn't been any initiative from the industry (do not count the efforts on cutting down carbon-imprints) that could take on this challenge head-on. As far as India is concerned, the public perception is passive. Through some NGOs and media campaigns, the masses in all big and small towns have the idea of such a lurking danger to the world's existence. But they haven't been provided with specific inputs regarding what actions or activities they can do to contribute their bit towards environment protection. This looks like one great untapped market with immense potential which so far no firm has focused on.

I believe it won't be very long before any smart firm will roll out a product to tap this field. 'The first mover' effect will be on full display here. The scope here is immense and it will take a different, out-of-the-box approach to break into this market. And this in all probability is within the reach of an Indian entrepreneur.

There are a lot of opportunities present in this segment which a smart entrepreneur with keen business acumen can capitalize upon. For example, the prime opportunity lies in the Automobile Segment. Today the key issue of pollution - ozone layer depletion is being attributed to vehicular pollution or vehicles polluting due to energy consuming fuels like Petrol, Diesel. A big solution to this problem can be unveiling of a non-traditional source of energy that can be easily used in vehicles. While there has been a lot of high and ambitious talk on water or hydrogen being used as a fuel, but as of today little progress has been made in this regard. But, nonetheless, that is the direction in which a proper efficient solution will be attained. Some big car companies have brought electric cars into the market but it hasn't taken the market by the storm but surely got fairly good reviews. Also, in the pipeline are cars that would run on Solar Energy. The ideal scenario will be a proper balance between a customer's expectations and energy saving ability. Another development that is taking place is the ongoing research on feasibility of Ethanol being used as a fuel. India has been one of the largest producers of Sugar in the world and so it can easily produce large quantities of Ethanol from sugar-cane. A successful adaptation of ethanol as a vehicular fuel will definitely revolutionize the market and attract a large demand because of comparatively less pricing if ethanol than other traditional fuels. Also, it will reduce fuel consumption and reduce the carbon imprint, pollution and help in combating climate change while bringing hosts of other benefits. This is one area where an entrepreneur can surely climb up the ladder of success pretty fast.

Indian population still primarily lives in villages using traditional and unhygienic methods for cooking. Gas-consumption for cooking is limited to urban, semi-urban areas. A meticulously planned strategy to effectively commercialize a different, energy saving method for cooking will surely catch lots of attention and will be a big hit among the majorly housewives  dominated market. The Indian Govt. had carried out campaigns in the past advocating use of bio-gas, cooking gas from cow dung but it was limited to rural areas and that too only in certain parts of the country. It also started giving concessions to people opting for installing solar cookers but their performance of was not as per expectations. Lessons can be learned from these failed campaigns to design a product that will be able to capitalize on the present factors.

Similarly such innovative products can be rolled out for electronic appliances with their least/minimum consumption of electricity or use of some other power being their USP. Such a brilliant idea will surely be an instant hit in the electricity-scarce country.

With the commendable economic growth our country is having, the open markets, the past entrepreneurial success stories and optimist sentiment present in the economy gives us every indication that the time is ripe for a next wave of entrepreneurial innovation that will target the climate change after sweeping the software, telecom, super-store and garment industry. They now have the proper backing of the government and no autocratic rules in place to stem their rise and they can probably outwit everybody else by bringing out an excellent product to which every environmentalist will swear his loyalty to.

Does the recently solved imbroglio relating to myriad corruption scandals serve any constructive purpose?

The last parliamentary session held from 9th Nov to 13th Dec, 2010 ended with zero business – no meaningful business being done. The opposition stalled the proceedings of both the Houses reiterating its demand for high level probe on multi-crore scams that were disclosed in the run up to the session. While the govt. tried its best to find a middle way that could be a face-saver, the rigid opposition didn’t let it happen. And as the session ended without any work done, it was all over the media highlighting the irresponsibleness of our polity. This unprecedented event in the parliamentary history, a full session resulting in no work, has triggered a very relevant question about “who is a dutiful opposition”, “what all can a dutiful opposition do”.

As we ponder over it, it will be helpful to keep in mind the mentality the ruling side and the opposition parties have. No ruling party will ever be willing to be held at ransom by the opposition. The sense of ego is very strong in all political parties especially when the stage is hallows of the Lok Sabha and the Rajya Sabha. And this ego comes in way of any attempt to exploit or manipulate the weak footing of the either side. This is what happened precisely this time. After the high level scams in CWG and Telecom had been revealed, everyone was quite dejected and disappointed by the functioning of the govt. The public sentiment was against the govt. and any move to make the govt. accountable would have gained massive public support. In a bid to capitalise on this, the over-zealous opposition decided to place its demand for a JPC probe into the scams, whose instances are rare and few in the history. Obviously the govt. wasn’t going to easily budge on this as it feared this might be portrayed as a victory for the opposition. And this turned the session, which was supposed to handle serious business, into a stalemate.

It is interesting but difficult to pinpoint the right and wrong in this episode. The basic idea or what superficially looked like behind the opposition demand was to find the real king-pins of the scams. When this demand came out it was being anticipated and, rightly so, that the govt. will not agree and it didn’t. Seeing the session go waste didn’t make the either side to try and salvage it. Waste of the working hours and the public money was the result of the session and not by any standards it can be termed as constructive.

Righting a wrong by committing other wrongs can’t be justified at all and this is what has happened. Playing negative politics and paralysing the Parliament in the name of public outrage isn’t constructive and is a preliminary symptom of the deadly disease of anarchy. Our nation which symbolises a functioning and healthy democracy world over, has undoubtedly been let down by this disrespect shown to the highest institution. No doubt this has set a dangerous precedent for future budding politicians - that they can hold to ransom the Parliament of the biggest democracy in the world, for any demand whatsoever. Issues on which no consensus have been between the ruling and the ruled have been many and will be many in the years to come, but it shouldn’t pave the way for anarchy to prevail. Demand for a JPC probe wasn’t that big that the govt. couldn’t accommodate. And paralysing the parliament was never considered as a ‘Chankaya-sque’ tactic. Both the govt. and the opposition were party to the belittling of our constitutional ideals.

India is still a young democracy and such mistakes can’t be afforded to repeat themselves. It would be better if people and the media convey this message to the Delhi durbar that such incidents are simply unacceptable. Undesirable disruptions and repeated adjournments have become the norm over the past few years and it is time to encourage and enforce better standards of public behaviour from The Elected.