Genre Of Impact Grassroots Entrepreneurship & Place Branding
Places often are under-estimated. Like many of India’s villages, there lies huge untapped opportunity to create powerful social enterprises and marketable labels which have the power to tap markets and customers. This community-driven enterprise approach can generate both economic returns and civic pride.
PROBLEM
Since the 1820s, generations of farmers have battled challenges like climate change, mercurial agro-policies and often uncertain prices and hence returns on investment. The produce is primarily sold to the APMC and middlemen. Hence, Dongaon, like many such places in India, doesn’t unlock the full potential of making their local produce reach accessible markets directly in interesting formats. Further, Dongaon, like many, is not a marketable label as a destination or place of produce. There is also untapped potential amongst the women communities, who could be extremely entrepreneurial if the right opportunity is presented.
INSIGHT
A chance opportunity to taste the ghee (Sajuk Tup) made from cow milk (brought to our office by a fourth generation family member from Dongaon and who is a design-researcher herself), made us curious about the possibilities of direct-to-commerce opportunities for the village’s produce. To our mind, this could be the opportunity for building and marketing a local brand/enterprise. If done right we could help grow accessible markets for Dongaon’s local produce with effective strategy, marketing, packaging and branding. Could this also be an interesting way to initiate place-branding for Dongaon and hence as a prototype be an example of many such villages and districts in India, that often seek an identity that can be uniquely their own? This can not only unlock social enterprise/capital but also would help places like Dongaon with place-making and place-branding. All of the above can be done with the right entrepreneurial design and development team. This is venture design territory.
ACTION
The team at NYUCT Design Labs worked on the inception of the business model and brand with ghee (Sajuk Tup) being the first product. But before moving with the branding, design and packaging, one had to look at the tenability of production for demand when it would come in and also if the local community would be enthused by this idea. The first step was to seed this thought and opportunity amongst the women / home-chefs in Dongaon (led by the designer’s mom and family) and present them the possibility of having their own brand and label of home-made ghee and other products. This was a chance for the women to turn entrepreneurial. This was the beginning of a possible social enterprise or even a cooperative. The idea was to first test the market, the value chain and initiate demand.
The brand design and story of Dongaon Local was conceptualised where the collective faculties of our design lab and studio including design, creatives, printing, packaging and content development were leveraged and presented along with a hyper-local narrative.
Branding and elements were deliberately kept as hyper-local as possible.
Given the early testing phase and uncertain production, it was decided that the Dongaon Local ghee (Sajuk Tup) would be available on order and demand. This also ensures that it places the least operational burden on the producers and doesn’t make them carry inventory.
We decided to use the conscious-living discovery platform “Xplorium” to present this hyper-local brand to conscious customers who are looking for home-made, farm-fresh ghee, sourced from local communities who made it with age-old family recipes. Currently, Dongaon Local ghee is at a testing phase while it wows customers and foodies who are more than happy to lay their hands on a farm fresh label that is not readily available. Please head to xplorium (www.planetxplorium.com) to book your bottle of home-made Tup (cow milk ghee).
RESULTS
Every venture starts with a small step and a few experiments. But it only really starts when the ideas start hitting the ground and move into a prototype stage. Having a user-stakeholder as part of the product development team goes a long way. Ventures, including social enterprises, are often not only a function of agile strategy and design, but also putting the user communities, social science and consumer behaviour at the centre of the model. The right understanding of local culture and motivation can offer great insights into what can make or break a local business.
Given the early phase of Dongaon Local, there are many more learnings that we are still making and will make. This would be extremely useful in iterating and refining this fledgling initiative.
Swamy as he is fondly called, understands grassroots enterprise through two lenses – first as an advanced diploma recipient in molecular diagnostics further to an Msc. in biotechnology and second as the founder of a social enterprise called Kaskom, a farm to fabric collective that is revitalising India’s native cotton value chain. His passion for social enterprise and agro-ecology that weaves in local communities & practices runs deep. As does his understanding of the circular economy. He is also the Vice President at the Organic Farming Association of India (OFAI). He is involved in developing the Standard Operating Procedures (SOP) for all activities from seed to fabric, for the Indian short stapled indigenous cotton, along with Gandhigram Khadi Dindigul & Gram Seva Mandal, Wardha. Swamy has conducted numerous workshops around the revival of organic practices and indigenous cotton, held several lectures apart from being a core participant in impactful programs. These include “Reviving community based indigenous seed systems” funded by SWISS-AID India, exploring linkages between weather parameters, paddy cultivation and adaptation activities in collaboration with Earthnet Foundation, Thailand, state coordination of “Save our rice campaign” in Karnataka and the “Community biodiversity management and conservation programme” funded by GGF.
Creative. Honest. Relevant. Be it a campaign, product design or a whitepaper, Aakanksha’s mantra has never failed her. An alumna from the Nanyang Academy of Fine Arts – Singapore, specialised in design, media and animation, Aakanksha is first and foremost a storyteller, with a decade of experience developing brands across industries through consumer insights, advertising, marketing, branding, and content strategy. Conscientious and driven, Aakanksha prefers to use her creativity and understanding of human behaviour to craft impactful deliverables that do good. This has proven particularly beneficial for impact projects like Domex’s #ToiletForBabli and India’s Darwaza Band (Swachh Bharat campaign). She has worked with Lowe Lintas and The Glitch, with a portfolio comprising Flipkart, Tanishq, Carlsberg, Mumbai City FC, World Bank, Magnum Ice-cream, Arrow, and more. She has also worked on the Taj, Betterplace Safety Solutions, Nestaway, Botbot.al, and 2359Media.
Having spent over 25 years curating and designing high-end experiences and advising sustainable ventures, Philippa is passionate about discovering stories, culture and people and uses her empathy and passion to manifest unboxed ideas. Shuttling between Yorkshire and India, she helps clients reimagine the possible. A destination development specialist and, having worked on both sides of the industry, a consultant both to leading tour operators as well as DMCs, she is also the author of Escape to India, a columnist and advisor to charities and NGOs. Her adventures are literally a novel – skiing, trekking, white-water rafting, riding priceless Marwari horses, fine-dining with Maharajas, driving vintage cars, sleeping under the stars, discovering new-to-her wildlife species & being off the beaten track. Think Lara Croft, out of the box.
We call him our IP man. Having worked on building brand platforms for iconic brands like Harley Davidson, Ray Ban, Jack Daniel’s, Hard Rock Cafe, Raymond & Taj, Arpito’s body of work has been versatile and at scale. With a long foundational strategy stint, early in his career, with the Times Group in the President’s office, Arpito went on to become the Group Director at Rolling Stone and Man’s World India, launching and giving the cult brand legs in the brand activations and IP space. A Times School of Marketing alumnus, he is a hodophile, music connoisseur and possesses an uncanny knack for creative brand solutions. He revels in his understanding of community platforms, across scale, having engineered and conceived several initiatives for leading global brands. He is also the chief consultant to the Ministry of Music & Arts, Govt. of Nagaland, a consultant with Drishti and has led several initiatives with government bodies and social organisations.
Narrative could well be Anil’s middle name, which expresses itself to telling effect across his diverse roles as an entrepreneur, impact specialist, director-filmmaker, IP producer, business manager, festival director and Corp. communication. His earlier stint as the Editorial Director at Going to School Fund, a creative not-for-profit education trust, saw him ideate and design impact programs, content around sustainability, seeding entrepreneurial skills amongst young students in government schools. His work is powered by his extremely diverse life experiences. As a journalist storyteller with Times of India, HT, DNA and Mid-day, learning filmmaking at UCLA, as an assistant director on the National Award-winning film Fashion, writing a coffee table book with India’s first Oscar-winner, the late Bhanu Athaiya, titled The Art of Costume Design, published by Harper Collins with a foreword by Lord Richard Attenborough, being the India director of the Manhattan Short Film Festival, the world’s first global short film festival, co-creating the VOTE FOR INDIA platform and more. A polymath experience and perspectives are what he brings to venture design.
