Text: Firdouz Hameed Photos: Various Sources
THE KEY TO INDIA’S DEVELOPMENT IS IN REVERSE INNOVATION. AND NO ONE CAN DO IT LIKE WE DO.
Reverse innovation is the process of reversing the innovation. Innovation usually starts with a rich country and goes to a less prosperous one. Reverse innovation is exactly the opposite of this. It understands the problem of the poor as local companies understand the local consumer and have resources for the innovation. Reverse innovation, just for that reason is the single biggest opportunity for companies in India. It’s a process by which MNCs manufacture costeffective products through local R&D, designed for the local markets and which are eventually launched globally.
Our Prime Minister, NarendraModi opines that the growth path for India is innovation and that if a company is to innovate for the Indian consumer, they have to make it in India. This will create jobs and more importantly, create competitiveness globally for Indian companies. Modi is in the opinion that the way to attack poverty in India is through building businesses, by growing the economy. Therefore, reverse innovation fits squarely.
The three biggest sectors in which reverse innovation can be applied are energy — India can become global leaders in renewable energy; healthcare — we need high-quality equipment at affordable price; and education — India one day, can teach the world how to give high-quality education to the masses.
Indian companies have tremendous human talent. Our people are highly skilled people who speak the global language, English, very well. Mobile connectivity in this nation is substantial, which means urbanisation of mind. Innovation is absolutely the answer for India as we have all the ingredients to execute it.
There is no doubt education is the backbone of innovation. India already places a high premium on education. What we need now is to think of a fundamentally new business models other than the western ones that we can’t execute without high revenue. The power of digital technology should be used to educate the masses without the constraint of making an institution.
Impact of reverse innovation in India
India has already started making an impact with reverse innovation. When Samsung’s ActivWash, a product made in India, brought the top-loading machines back in vogue in South Korea, it was a mighty success. It was named Project “Dhobighat”. Today an ActivWash sells every 2 minutes in South Korea. Samsung showcased the product at CES Las Vegas – the world’s top consumer electronics show – earlier this year. It was well received by the critics.
LG too has developed a few products in India, which it now plans to sell in South-East Asia and Middle-East and Africa region. Innovations such as mosquito Away Technology ACs, smart refrigerator 2.0 and a top-load washing machine are all in its list of exports by the year-end.
BSH Household Appliances (BSH), which sells domestic appliances under the Bosch and Siemens brand, too has worked on Indiaspecific innovations. An Indian washing machine to give shortestwash cycles was introduced in other ASEAN countries subsequently.
The food industry is also getting some Indian makeover. Burger King, which has opened around 17 restaurants so far in India, has developed products that are unique to the Indian market. They have been all a hit in other parts of the world.
Even the automobile industry is making its mark with the French car maker Renault introducing a new car in the Indian market, which was built from scratch by its Indian R&D as part of another frugal engineering strategy backed by Carlos Ghosn, Chairman and CEO of the Renault-Nissan Alliance. This car, named the Kwid, would be launched in other markets globally over time. On the other hand, Mondelez India (erstwhile Cadbury), which pioneered the development of visi-coolers has recently deployed a new technology in low-cost refrigeration systems to Malaysia. Visicoolers help the storage of products like chocolate. Several countries are now conducting trials for this technology.
Coca-Cola India, too, developed a visicooler, which was later introduced in other parts of the world. Similarly, Hindustan Unilever’s Pureit water purifier is an Indian innovation that was launched to solve the problem of safe drinking water. It was later made available in several markets in Asia, Africa and South America.
One major difference between innovation and reverse innovation is that the countries that are doing innovations have the money to do it as these countries have customers with purchasing power to buy expensive products whereas, countries which does reverse innovation struggle to find the fund for. “Reverse innovation, or any innovation adopted first in the developing world, is consistent with Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s philosophy of ‘Make in India’”, says Vijay Govindarajan, a professor at Dartmouth. He is the one who popularized the term with his book, ‘Reverse Innovation’. So how is our country presently doing in the three major sectors– healthcare, energy and education?
Healthcare
India has more than 1.2 billion people who need healthcare but don’t have the sufficient money required for the right treatment. There are not many hospitals here that have the proper facility to take care of such a huge number. India needs that breakthrough innovation in healthcare that can provide quality treatment at affordable prices. India currently lags behind Sri Lanka, Bangladesh and Nepal in indicators like infant mortality rate, child immunisation rate and even total life expectancy. Healthcare desperately needs some makeover.
Energy
India is estimated to be the third-largest energy consumer in the world. It will remain one of the world’s largest energy consumers and energy importers because of the huge population, which currently exceeds 1.2 billion people. The solution for this for now seems to be solar power. Several private companies including the Welspun Group, Adani Enterprises and the Essel Group have begun building large new solar plants. We need more and more innovations in the energy sector. India was sixth in the world in renewable energy in 2012. A breakthrough is not too far away, one feels.
Education
Providing an education that is relevant to their interests and daily life is one way of keeping low-income students interested in education. Another method to teach children in rural India would be equipping the teachers with good pedagogical knowledge and teaching resources. There are many programmes like the Design for Change (DFC), Building as Learning Aid (BaLA), Educational Innovation Bank etc. that are striving to bring innovation in educating the children of India. They all try to do this with better use of existing resources, cheap additional ones, or the adoption of existing good ideas. This may not be enough but, it is an innovation nevertheless. We need more and more breakthroughs for the education sector in
this country.
As India celebrates yet another Independence Day, one feels the country is making progress in all field. But are those measures enough? Reverse innovation can do a lot for the country’s
development as it gives the opportunity young Indians are looking for. If India has to become a developed country, innovation has to be made in every sector 4.