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Essmart

Essmart

Competition Year: 2012


Summary
We give Indian rural retail shops access to technologies that improve their customers’ lives.

Categories
Energy and Environment Water and Sanitation Finance and Entrepreneurship Agriculture and Processing Other




 

Videos:

Essmart 90-Second Pitch

Quick Links



Our Pitch

PROBLEM

Many organizations design solar lanterns, water filters, and other life-improving essential technologies for homes in developing countries. However, these products rarely benefit end users at scale because the rural last mile lacks effective distribution, marketing, and service.

Meanwhile, 90% of the $260B annual retail spending in India takes place in 14M small, low-margin, family-run retail shops. Retail shops don’t sell essential technologies because they don’t know about them, where to find them, or how to service them.

Essmart offers a solution. Essmart delivers the goods.

SOLUTION

Essmart is an essential technology distributor with an embedded retail presence. We address three problems that local retail shops face:

  1. Knowledge Gap: We amplify demand for “essential technologies” via a paper and mobile catalogue and appealing marketing campaigns.
  2. Distribution Gap: We supply essential technologies to Essmart sections in retail stores.
  3. After-Sales Service Gap: We provide training, warranties, and maintenance service on essential technologies to ensure long-term benefits.

TRACTION

After founding in October 2011, Essmart surveyed over 200 retailers in southern India during January 2012. In our pilot, two retail shops sold 17 Essmart products in one week in Pollachi, Tamil Nadu. In Summer 2012, Essmart will begin year one of operations, with the goal of establishing distribution channels to 65 rural shops by year end.


Impact

Get 2,000+ technologies into rural areas in the first year; 4.5 million by five years.

Challenge

2012 Dow Sustainability Innovation Student Challenge Award

Who We Are

Diana Jue (co-founder) is a second year Master’s student studying international development in MIT’s Department of Urban Studies and Planning. She is studying technology dissemination for her thesis and has traveled extensively in southern India. Having obtained bachelor’s degrees in economics and urban studies and planning from MIT in 2009, Diana will be working on overall idea and business model development in addition to supply chain logistics and operations management.

Jackie Stenson (co-founder) studied engineering at Harvard, graduating in 2008, and completed her Master’s degree in Engineering for Sustainable Development from the University of Cambridge, graduating in 2012. Jackie has extensive experience both designing essential technologies and studying dissemination models for low-income communities in Africa, having traveled and worked there for over two years in 11 countries. Jackie will be working on overall idea and business model development in addition to technology sourcing.

Prashanth Venkataramana has a background in mechanical engineering and studied Engineering for Sustainable Development at the University of Cambridge. He is from Pollachi, Tamil Nadu, India, lives in Chennai, and works in sales and marketing in the glass industry. Prashanth has numerous contacts in Chennai and in Bangalore and speaks Tamil, Hindi, Telugu, and English. Prashanth works on technology evaluation, securing local connections, creating customer value propositions, and relaying local conditions to the rest of the team.

Taylor Matthews is a first-year MBA student at the MIT Sloan School of Management. He focuses his studies on the intersection of technology and finance with a particular interest in how both can be applied in the developing world. With a background in investment banking, management consulting, and venture finance, Taylor will focus on the financial aspects of the business and provide input into the overall idea and business model development.

Robert Weiss is a Masters candidate at Harvard Kennedy School. His academic background is in clean tech policy and economics. He focused on deployment of renewable energy in China, where he lived for one year and is fluent in Mandarin. Rob has also worked in Cameroon and Timor-Leste, the latter spent assessing the impact of a solar lantern distribution project in off-grid rural villages. Rob focuses on supplier relations and business strategy.

Jaya Movva studies International Business at the Tufts University Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy. She has worked as a design engineer at Motorola in the past and then worked for a major financial services firm in Dubai. She has done development work in Tanzania and Haiti and plans to work in initiatives that promote private sector development in emerging markets. She will help out with business plan development and market analysis.

Ben Younkman studies International Business at the Tufts University Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, focusing on community development and social enterprises in emerging markets. He is experienced with community development, documentary work, and logistics from nearly seven years working in Latin America, the Caribbean and China. Ben focuses on Essmart’s distribution logistics and produces media content and marketing materials.

Jen Zhu is a joint degree candidate in Government and Sociology at Harvard University. She has prior experience with two other social enterprises, and worked with Dalberg Global Development Advisors to analyze 80+ social enterprises’ challenges and success factors. She also researches the dissemination of public health interventions through social networks in developing countries. Jen works on market analysis, social media, and U.S. marketing.

Aubrey Colter is a third year undergraduate in MIT’s Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science. When she took the Media Lab's Building Mobile Applications class, she began prototyping mobile technologies for Essmart's future use. Aubrey will be developing back-end applications for Essmart's field agents so that they can more conveniently collect survey information about the product after it is purchased and put to use.

Our Community Partner

Partner Name

Sri Siddhanta Foundation

Location

Chennai, Tamil Nadu, India

Description

SSF is a Chennai-based nonprofit organization that focuses on village development. Its recent initiative, Gramothan, includes chapters in Bangalore, Delhi, Calcutta, and Mumbai. Gramothan Resource Centers are located throughout India, in the states of Tamil Nadu, Jharkhand, Maharashtra, Orissa, West Bengal, and Uttar Pradesh. Contacts within SSF are presently very interested in bringing essential technologies to villages, which is why SSF serves as a potential collaborator. Essmart would work with SSF to run product demonstrations and to train youngsters that would work in the service and demonstration centers.


Location:

  • Service Location
    Pollachi, India
Please enable JavaScript in order to see this map.

External Blog Feed

  • May 20 2013
  • Presenting at the 2013 Dell Social Innovation Challenge finals

    Diana and I recently got back from Austin, Texas, where we attended our second Dell Social Innovation Challenge finalist weekend. Although this time, we were sitting on the other side of the fence. DSIC has a tradition of bringing back the previous year’s winner as a judge, [...] More »


  • May 08 2013
  • Help us open our second hub!

    We’re excited to launch our first crowd funding campaign on Indiegogo!  We’ve been excited about how our model has been working in Pollachi, Tamil Nadu, and we’re ready to take on the challenge of scaling to a new, nearby region. Our crowd funding campaign allows us to engage [...] More »


  • April 16 2013
  • Adoption of accounting software

    We’ve recently been setting up a new accounting software – Xero. As we’ve gone through this process, we’ve received a fair amount of push back in India. People are used to using a software called Tally, and we’ve had to justify why we want to use a [...] More »


  • March 28 2013
  • First sales executive retreat

    Yesterday, we took everyone based in our Pollachi office out to lunch at nice place outside of Pollachi. This was our first retreat for our sales executives. It was mostly a chance to get everyone together, to treat our employees to a nice meal, and to say [...] More »


  • February 23 2013
  • Not that different than the car market

    While reading a Jalopnik article reflecting on the Indian car market, it struck me that the Indian car market is really not that different from the market for essential technologies. The author, Jason Torchinsky, a car blogger and first-time visitor to India, hit on a number of [...] More »


  • January 12 2013
  • Learning from those who know the problem best

    You can’t completely understand the problem until you learn about it from the people who know it best. This has been a personal philosophy that has grown stronger over the past couple of years. It’s been reinforced even more this winter. I’m Jen, and I’ve been working [...] More »


  • December 29 2012
  • A reflection on 2012

    As we approach the end of 2012, we’ve taken some time to reflect on this past year. It has truly been a whirlwind. At this time last year, Diana was preparing to travel to India for our first pilot. We had a grand vision, a ridiculous amount [...] More »


  • October 27 2012
  • A barber shop in Pusaripatti services customers at night 

    Warning (2): strip_tags() expects parameter 1 to be string, array given [CORE/cake/libs/sanitize.php, line 91]
    More »


  • October 16 2012
  • State of Essmart – October 2012

    From our monthly(ish) newsletter, which you can subscribe to here: Greetings from India! Essmart has been on the ground in Pollachi, Tamil Nadu, India for about two months now. Much has happened since our last email update. Selvan, our Director of Field Operations, has hired two sales [...] More »


  • October 13 2012
  • Revisiting Essmart’s Vision at the Dasra Social Impact Program

    A few months back, Selvan met a Dasra representative at a conference held at the Tata Institute of Social Sciences in Mumbai. She told him about the Dasra Social Impact Program, an executive education program that trains decision makers of leading nonprofits and social enterprises across India. [...] More »


View Essmart's Blog View Essmart's Blog

Comments and Support

  • Good luck, Stenson!

    Posted by M. Badgley on Wed, May 2nd 2012, 12:31 Report Abuse


  • Keep it up jackie,and all the best

    Posted by L. Gitinywa on Tue, Apr 24th 2012, 04:57 Report Abuse


  • This sounds a great and very promising idea. I am sure you will do great with this idea if you can stick to it for a while. Best of luck and keep in touch!

    Posted by Y. Chen on Fri, Apr 20th 2012, 15:11 Report Abuse


  • Good luck guys!

    Posted by H. Sahal on Tue, Apr 17th 2012, 01:15 Report Abuse


  • Good luck Diana!!!

    Posted by D. Handal on Sun, Apr 15th 2012, 23:28 Report Abuse


  • All the best, Team ESSMART!

    Posted by K. Manohar on Sun, Apr 15th 2012, 12:56 Report Abuse


  • Good luck, Diana and the Essmart Team!!!

    Posted by A. Jue on Sat, Apr 14th 2012, 01:10 Report Abuse


  • Good luck guys! Michael Keogh

    Posted by M. Keogh on Fri, Apr 13th 2012, 00:22 Report Abuse


  • Good job mzungu Jackie, and to the rest of the team as well. Good luck with the project.

    Posted by Nemo on Tue, Apr 10th 2012, 15:59 Report Abuse


  • Just skimming your promo materials, it looks like you may have an interesting approach for reducing the risk to shopowners distributing such items and increasing the liquidity of the distribution and support markets. Could you elaborate on the economics behind this endeavor?

    Posted by Ken Arnold on Tue, Apr 10th 2012, 00:19 Report Abuse


  • Just skimming your promo materials, it looks like you may have an interesting approach for reducing the risk to shopowners distributing such items and increasing the liquidity of the distribution and support markets. Could you elaborate on the economics behind this endeavor?

    Posted by Ken Arnold on Tue, Apr 10th 2012, 00:18 Report Abuse


  • Just skimming your promo materials, it looks like you may have an interesting approach for reducing the risk to shopowners distributing such items and increasing the liquidity of the distribution and support markets. Could you elaborate on the economics behind this endeavor?

    Posted by Ken Arnold on Tue, Apr 10th 2012, 00:18 Report Abuse


  • Hi Team Essmart, Welcome to the IDEAS Competition and MIT Global Challenge! And all the best. Looking forward to you're work. Let me know if you have any questions. Here to help.--Sneha Chitte(Community Manager, MIT Global Challenge)

    Posted by S. Chitte on Sat, Dec 24th 2011, 16:13 Report Abuse


  • This sounds sweet and I'd love to get involved; I'm over at Harvard Kennedy School. Over winter break, I'm planning to go to work with an organization, Kopernik (http://kopernik.info), that also focuses on appropriate technology dissemination. They might have some relevant insights. Please reach me at robert.m.weiss09@gmail.com if you think it'd be useful to touch base. I'd love to learn how I could support your team. Thanks!

    Posted by R. Weiss on Tue, Dec 13th 2011, 23:14 Report Abuse


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