Today, Business Standard published my article on “Potential of Design Thinking” highlighting Design Thinking approach to stretch the vision of startups beyond the current reality to a desired state of 10X growth.
Traditionally, startups in India were limited to local geography-driven, short-term vision of ‘produce local’ and ‘sell local’. Recent trends in globalisation and liberalisation have provided greater opportunities to explore markets beyond the country and this warrants a wider thinking — a complete shift in the way we approach problem solving.
The success of this journey for startups will hover around the focus on “who is my customer”, “what does my customer wants” and not “what can I offer”.
Today, we met Noble Laureate Mohd Yunus, the father of Micro Finance and Self Help groups. He started this initiative in 1976 just after Bangladesh’s independence in 1971. Started Grameen Bank formally in 1983 and the rest is history.
He believes in creating social business vs charity. He says charity has one life cycle while social business has unlimited. Now this concept is very active in Germany, France, Africa and Japan. Many German corporations have joint ventures with Grameen Bank for social businesses.
He has published a new book – “A World of Three Zeros: Zero Poverty, Zero Unemployment, Zero Carbon.” We were lucky to get this copy after spending over an hour with him.
Article: Published on November 26, 2019 Applying Design Thinking for rural healthcare
I am a practitioner of Design Thinking and have been conducting open workshops for over a decade. We apply Design Thinking for designing the world’s best banking software at Intellect Design Arena.
In one of the design workshops, someone asked a question, “How can we apply Design Thinking practices in solving complex rural development problems?” In another workshop, I received a similar question, “How do you solve the tertiary healthcare problem of rural India?”
Yes, it’s all about the ‘right questions’ which are more important in Design Thinking parlance. We need to understand the persona of the customer first. Understanding his emotional map is equally important. We need to understand the Desirability, Feasibility and Viability triangle for designing the right experience for the customer.
We observed that most of the specialist hospitals are in urban cities and not closer to rural customers. The hospital’s rural service teams bring patients to these hospitals for appropriate treatment. It’s an efficient model because of 2 reasons: A. Viability of hospital infrastructure against high capital expenses in rural settings. B. Lack of availability of specialist doctors in rural spaces.
But from a customer’s perspective, the urban setting is intimidating and built on the crutches of ‘someone else’s help’. It takes a lot of effort and time to enter the city hospital, just navigating the roads of the urban city on its own is a ‘project’ for the family of the patient besides the other expenses they have to incur.
With this insight we decided to setup a not for profit, charitable ADK Jain Eye Hospital at Khekra, a village in the Baghpat district near the community. Designed with a capacity to serve more than two hundred thousand patients and twenty thousand surgeries a year, this facility spans across 50,000 sqft. Dr Manju Jain Verma, MD, PhD and Ophthalmic Surgeon from Sydney, Australia personally designed all the services at world class level. Dr Ruma Gupta, MD and Ophthalmic Surgeon has dedicated her services to run this hospital.
It was a humbling experience for me at the opening ceremony of the ADK Jain Eye Hospital yesterday by Shri. Atul Garg, Hon’ble Minister for Health Services for the State of UP and Shri. Satyapal Singh, Member of Parliament, Baghpat district in the presence of hundreds of participants from the local community. In just 8 weeks of the alpha launch of the operation theatre, the hospital has performed Cataract surgeries for over 600 patients and OPD for 10,000 needy.
I must appreciate through this message the power of the team who believed in this lateral vision and helped in completing the hospital from land acquisition to building completion to interior design to equipping with a world class operation theatre in just 21 months. Pramod Balakrishnan designed the 5 floor which has the ‘Non-hospital’ building concept interconnected with light, visual and green spaces. The community’s amphitheatre in front of the hospital invites patients and they participate in treatment with well-trained local community staff and expert doctors.
I must acknowledge a few who have participated in this mission of creating a world class hospital near a rural community – Dr Manju J Verma, Dr Ruma Gupta, Prabhjyot Singh Sambhy, Pramod Balakrishnan, Dr Amod Kumar, Manju Jain, Dr Sudarshan Gupta, Dr Vivek Gupta, Dr Aravind, Arun Arora, Yogesh Andlay, Adish Jain, Vinod Jain, Dr Uma Gupta, Rajesh Jain, Maruthi Machani, Umesh Gupta from Ish Putra, Navin Gupta, Dr P K Gupta, Dr Shalini Agarwal, Dr Vikas Anand, Dr Deepak Dhama, Sangita and many, many more.
Life is the means by which a man develops himself and expresses himself through his creative faculty.
Life in other words is like a great canvas on which man, the artist with his peculiar brand of paint of many values, and the firm strokes of free will, brings into existence his indelible work of art, which either helps enhance human progress or retards it.
If he uses a large mixture of self-centred values, which are like water colours, they fade away with age. On other hand, if he uses mainly altruistic values or objective values, which are like earth paints used at Ajanta that have retained their freshness through the centuries. That’s the process of creating economy of permanence. – J C Kumarappa
Today is a significant day as we celebrate the National Panchayati Raj Day to commemorate the historic Constitution Act (73rd Amendment) passed in 1992 which came into existence a year later on April 24, 1993. The launch of the e-GramSwaraj portal and app today makes this a doubly important day. The portal shows us the vastness of India’s local governance framework.
We have over 2.66 lakh Gram Panchayats across the length and breadth of our country. This is where ‘the rubber hits the road’ and this is where, as Gandhiji said, India lives. On the occasion of the 150th birth anniversary of Mahatma Gandhi, we at #MissionSamriddhi launched the India Panchayat Forum (IPF) at Gandhi Ashram, Sewagram in Wardha. I felt that the 73rd Amendment that provided a Constitutional status to the Panchayati Raj Institution is yet to realise its full potential.
On this significant day, let us work with them and help them achieve effective local governance, and become examples to the world.
ruralindia #IndiaPanchayatForum
Article: Published on April 24, 2020 National Panchayati Raj Day
Today is a significant day as we celebrate the National Panchayati Raj Day to commemorate the historic Constitution Act (73rd Amendment) passed in 1992 which came into existence a year later on April 24, 1993. The launch of the e-GramSwaraj portal and app today makes this a doubly important day. The portal shows us the vastness of India’s local governance framework.
We have over 2.66 lakh Gram Panchayats across the length and breadth of our country. This is where ‘the rubber hits the road’ and this is where, as Gandhiji said, India lives. On the occasion of the 150th birth anniversary of Mahatma Gandhi, we at #MissionSamriddhi launched the India Panchayat Forum (IPF) at Gandhi Ashram, Sewagram in Wardha. I felt that the 73rd Amendment that provided a Constitutional status to the Panchayati Raj Institution is yet to realise its full potential. The need for the India Panchayat Forum stems from this gap and is envisioned to promote the Gandhian vision of Panchayat Raj. This upholds the constitutional values, social justice and the highest standards of governance with a special focus on Antyodaya.
In our federal structure, our Gram Panchayats are the unsung heroes. Devolution of power to local government continues to be a contentious issue, but the launch of this portal ensures transparency, and thereby a level playing field. Each Panchayat has different challenges, and most do come up with innovative solutions.
J&K Design Thinking workshop: Today, I got the opportunity to meet 20 Sarpanches from Rajouri and Poonch District of J&K. Mission Samriddhi and Gramonnati along with the Indian Army organised a Samriddhi Yatra to expand the world’s view of the newly elected Sarpanches. They have visited Hiware Bazar, Ralegan Siddhi and Pune before this 2-day Unmukt workshop.
There are many development accelerators participating to help ‘Connect the Dots’ to build a development highway with intrinsic strength of self-belief and effective planning.
I personally learnt a lot about the villages in J&K and about ‘Kashmiriat’.
During one of my Design Thinking sessions, someone asked me a question.
What is the algorithm for making an ordinary person perform extraordinary?
I was not ready for this difficult question. I have been struggling with this in our HR department and have been designing various frameworks like competency frameworks etc. Right now, we have heuristics patterns.
Then he asked me the next question, “How did you accomplish extraordinary results during 1993 to 2000 when Polaris grew at a CAGR of 115% consistently?”
Now, this question forced me to think and get into a reflective mood.
I acknowledged to him humbly that I don’t know the answer and that I will reflect and maybe come back to him with some patterns and anti-patterns later.
Now, I am posing a question to this august and experienced group to help me. I need help.
To me, being part of this group in itself qualifies for being in the extraordinary performance bracket.
I am looking forward to your responses in this group or my personal mail describing your personal moments of change from ordinary fresher to extraordinary performer. What changed in your thinking which accelerated your journey? It can be at any stage, when you were in your 20s or 30s or 40s or 50s.
You may narrate the incidence or the person who trusted you or the environment.
We are happy to announce our successful FY19 results, the results vindicate 4 points in our journey to be a global FinTech player
a) Belief in ourselves to deliver cutting-edge products
b) The power of brand driving business outcomes
c) Culture of Design Thinking driving operational excellence
d) Partnership with customers driving the outcome from contextual and digital
There are 3 triangles in which a product company works – Strategy, Business and Finance.
The Strategy triangle is all about the organisation’s design, technology, and the market that is chosen. So, making the right choices of 4 LOB structures, contextual & digital and advance market share is the 1st strategic triangle that is working for us
The Business triangle, where we are getting 65% of our revenue from advance market. There is a better pricing power, our products are chosen by top 3 players in each market which is supported by our license revenue growing from an average of $250K to close to $1Mn license value.
3 drivers of the Finance triangle: 36% growth in revenue, 144% growth in EBITDA, 180% growth in PAT, which is the outcome of strategy & business.
I must congratulate and thank the high intellect and committed leadership team and talent who made us achieve what we promised the investors.
Hello, my name is Arun Jain. I am a design thinker living in Chennai, India. This is my blog, where I post my thoughts, technology trends and tips about the fintech world and many more.
