Flashingback to the Subcontinent

I first realized that my hotel room in Chennai had 19 light switches when I found myself hunting around the hotel room for 5 minutes trying to find and extinguish the source of every light in the room so that I could go to bed. I finally gave up and just slept with one on – never did find the source. I just landed in Dhaka, Bangladesh and my new room has 25. I kind of feel like I must be missing something…but not the irony that the “land of many light switches” comes with rolling black outs.

I am coming to Dhaka after 3 weeks spent in Delhi, Mumbai, and Chennai. The experience was much better than my first trip to India, where I made the mistake of coming in May (110 degree heat) and didn’t hire a driver because I was poor (Indian taxi drivers are a real joy to negotiate with). This time, as I had to fit in 10 business meetings with a 2 hour traffic jam in between each one (Mumbai), I was given a driver. From the car, I realized it is also much easier to ignore some of the smells and touches that I got a bit too much of last time I was here.

Although, someone did grab my butt at the Taj Mahal. And about 40-50 young boys approached me and asked for a joint photo. When I refused, most of them “secretly” took photos of me with their cell phones anyway. Some brazenly stood next to me smiling while their friends shot pictures. I try not to imagine how popular I would have been if I had actually bothered to shower that day.

When I’m not making friends at the Taj Mahal, I am working for a large international non-governmental organization (NGO) and helping them to better link up with the private sector to improve development outcomes – through more innovation, sustainability, access to products, etc. Indian businesses seem to be really ahead of the curve when it comes to creating what we term “pro-poor” products – or products that will improve the lives of the poor. They’ve even figured out how to do this by making a profit. I suppose a consumer base of hundreds of millions of people can be a motivating factor.

Where a large NGO comes in is by their deep roots in some of these communities - they can better identify needs and make those clear to businesses, identify potential entrepreneurs, spread health messages that sell products, develop entrepreneurial distribution channels, etc. I’ve been happily surprised by the opportunities that I have seen developing. The main roadblocks appear to be the growing pains of a new idea: NGOs don’t trust business and vice versa, both parties aren’t quite sitting at the table to co-develop ideas and products, they haven’t fully figured out how to leverage each other in all of the ways possible…But you can certainly see the tide rising.

My work so far has focused around brokering some of those deals. If you happen to be in an area where our NGO is present on Oct. 15th (Hindustan Lever’s Global Handwashing Day) and find yourself reading a story about a little boy who got diarrhea because he didn’t wash his hands, or playing a game where you have to recite “I promise to wash my hands after I go to the loo!” – you’ll know who is responsible. More excitingly, if you end up in one of these villages in the next year our hope is that you will find “Business Correspondents” who, with the help of some mobile software from the State Bank of India, will be able to provide you with banking services, without a bank. My other claim to fame this week is that I actually got a group of humans excited about the word "Operating Model," which is what we will be updating as we prep them to work more effectively with corporate partners.

Now I am in Bangladesh for 2 weeks to do something similar although it is starting with a one week long field visit to try and understand needs at the village-level. I’ve heard those needs do not include PowerPoint or clip art so I look forward to seeing what value a consultant can actually bring.