Frugal tech: The start-ups working on cheap innovation

For Mansukh Prajapati, puerility successful the occidental Indian metropolis of Morbi began earlier sunrise, with a six-mile locomotion to cod clay for their household business.

"My begetter was a potter," helium recalls.

Often helium would aftermath up to the rhythmic dependable of his begetter astatine enactment astatine his potter's wheel.

"My parent and I would get up astatine 4 successful the greeting and locomotion for miles each time to get clay."

Used for storing water, clay pots were a communal point successful Indian households successful the 1970s.

But the income from making pots was meagre and the assemblage besides came with societal stigma.

"Nobody wanted to their girl joined successful a potter's family," Mr Prajapati says. "They feared she volition beryllium burdened with endless labour."

Aged 31, a earthy catastrophe marked the turning constituent for Mr Prajapati.

The devastating earthquake that deed Gujarat successful 2001 destroyed his household location and near a heap of smashed clay pots successful the courtyard.

"A section newsman wrote that 'the mediocre people's fridge is broken'," Mr Prajapati says.

"Clay pots support h2o chill successful the summer, truthful they are conscionable similar a fridge. The thought got stuck successful my head. So, I decided to marque a fridge retired of clay that doesn't request electricity."

With nary ceremonial training, Mr Prajapati started experimenting with designs and materials.

"I archetypal tried to marque it similar the modern fridge and adjacent added a h2o tank, but thing worked', helium says.

"At 1 constituent I had $22,000 (£17,000) successful loans and had to merchantability my location and tiny workshop. But I knew I had to support going."

It took 4 years of tinkering to travel up with a plan that worked - a tiny clay furniture with a h2o speech connected the apical and retention shelves below.

As h2o trickles done the cabinet's porous clay walls, it people cools the interior.

Mr Prajapati says it tin support effect and vegetables caller for astatine slightest 5 days - nary energy needed.

He named it MittiCool oregon the clay that stays cool.

At $95 its affordable and present sold done 300 stores successful India and exported to countries including the UK, Kenya, and UAE.

"Fridges are a imagination for galore mediocre families," Mr Prajapati says. "And specified dreams should beryllium wrong reach."

Mr Prajapati's innovation is portion of a increasing question of grassroots entrepreneurship successful India, driven by necessity.

Prof Anil Gupta who runs the Honeybee Network, a level for supporting specified ventures, telephone these "frugal innovations".

"It is simply a mindset," says Prof Gupta.

"Frugal innovation is astir making solutions affordable, accessible, and available. Many of these innovators don't person ceremonial acquisition but are solving existent satellite problems."

It's hard to enactment a fig connected specified businesses, arsenic determination has ne'er been an in-depth study.

Prof Gupta says specified start-ups are important due to the fact that they supply jobs successful agrarian areas and commencement a rhythm of economical change.

For example, Mr Prajapati present employs 150 radical successful his store and has branched retired into cookware, clay h2o filters and is experimenting with homes made of clay.

Another start-up that's hoping for akin success, is tally by Bijayshanti Tongbram successful the northeastern authorities of Manipur.

She lives successful Thanga colony which is location to 1 of India's largest freshwater lakes, Loktak.

Here lotus flowers bloom successful abundance.

"People successful my colony usage the petals of lotus flowers for spiritual offerings. But their stems often spell to discarded and that's what I wanted to alteration and thought of doing thing sustainable," she says.

A botanist by profession, Ms Tongbram developed a mode to extract silk-like fibres from the lotus stems and present leads a squad of 30 women successful her colony who rotation the threads into a yarn and weaves them into unsocial scarves and garments.

"It takes 2 months, and 9,000 lotus stems to marque 1 scarf," she says.

Ms Tongbram pays the women $80 a month.

"This isn't conscionable astir fashion. I americium giving women successful my colony a accidental to bash thing different than sportfishing and gain money," she says.

Like galore tiny concern owners, she wants to scale-up and find caller markets, possibly overseas.

"Funding is the biggest challenge," she says.

Prof Gupta from the Honeybee web agrees.

"There are authorities schemes and tiny grants, but agrarian entrepreneurs often don't cognize however to entree them.

"Even task capitalists who are looking astatine IT innovations seldom put successful these kinds of start-ups due to the fact that of precocious transaction costs," helium says.

Nevertheless, innovators proceed to outpouring up.

In Karanataka's Vijaynagar, Girish Badragond is moving connected a instrumentality to assistance unsighted and partially-sighted farmers.

His device, described arsenic a astute farming stick, uses ungraded sensors and upwind information to usher its users astir the harvest conditions and harvests done audio messages and vibrations.

"There are truthful galore unsighted radical successful India who privation to workplace but they can't spot others to usher them. This volition assistance them go autarkic and empower them," says Mr Badragond.

He has sourced mechanical parts from antithetic shops and is hoping to summation enactment for commercialising his task soon. For now, helium is doing rounds of authorities exhibitions.

"It's a prototype but I americium hopeful that radical volition enactment maine to alteration lives of others," helium says.