The Forbes India magazine published on 30th March 2012 has an article titled ” Where’s the Party Tonight? ” by Abhishek Raghunath where he talks about the Party Hard Drivers [ PHD ] an agency in Mumbai who employs expert drivers to help those people who are too drunk after a party to reach home . The Times Life page of today’s Times of India profiles Shankar Narayan who has supplied the pug dogs for the popular Vodafone advertisement s , 500 rats for the Hindi film Josh in year 2000 , cockroaches for the HIT advertisement etc .
Two very innovative business models indeed . The Mumbai Dabbavalas have become famous internationally for their six sigma standards of performance in running an innovative business , meeting a social need in an urban setting in India. There are many such success stories in India , some of which like the two examples given above may not have caught the public attention.
Innovation by its very nature should meet a gap in the human need either at individual level or at society level and should be marketable and scalable . A low cost airline introduced by Captain Gopinath a few years back – Air Deccan is one such example . The Jan Shatabdi Express train of the Indian railways is another case in point . The advent of Web 2.0 and Social networking coupled with mobile applications permit such innovative and low cost business models to evolve and succeed .
When I was an engineering student , I had an interesting experience at a local post office during 1960 . One old man requested me to fill in the details in a Money Order form which he wanted to use for sending money to his son . When I helped him out , he offered to pay me one rupee for the service rendered which i politely declined . Then he told me that this is the going rate for such a professional service at that post office . A very old innovative business model meeting a social need !