2. EXAMPLES
Now, we're all too familiar with Jugaad, an Indian coinage for
any clever improvisation. This home grown concept is now
being adopted by companies and governments the world over
while making new products, offering services and trying out
various business models.
Indian jugaad
Corporate jugaad
Phoren jugaad
4. MAKING BUMPS WORK FOR YOU
• Product/Services: A retrofitte
d cycle that goes faster on
cratered roads.
• Innovator: Kanak Das of
Morigaon caught the attention
of an IIM professor, who
helped patent the device. MIT
trying to apply Das' innovation
to automobiles
• Innovation: Generating energy
from shock absorbers. Das
fitted a front shock absorber
that compresses and releases
energy whenever his cycle hit
a bump
5. MAKING HEALTHCARE SIMPLE
• Product/Services: Mobile tele-
medicine clinic to offer follow-up
care for diabetes patients in rural
Tamil Nadu.
• Innovator: Chennai-based
diabetologist Dr V Mohan provides
care for rural patients by deploying
mobile clinics equipped with
telemedicine technologies that
permit instant transmission of
results of diagnostic tests via
satellite link to doctors in Chennai
• Innovation: The patient doesn't
have to go to the doctor. He
engaged local youth to run the
mobile clinics.
6. KEEPING BABIES SAFE
• Product/Services: Low-cost
incubator Premature babies are
kept in these cribs to regulate
body temperature. A traditional
incubator costs up to Rs 1 lakh
• Innovator: Dr
SathyaJeganathan, a
paediatrician in Chengalpattu,
Tamil Nadu, came up with the
idea of a cheaper, easy to-
maintain warmer after the state
government failed to supply
incubators on time
• Innovation: Her first prototype
was a radiant infant warmer
with a wooden frame and a
100-watt bulb as a heating
source. She now has a
provisional patent for a
modified device. Final product
could cost up to Rs 15,000.
8. CHEAPER SCANNING
• Product/Services: Supply chain to deliver
domestically produced radioisotope,
fludeoxyglucose (FDG)
• Innovator: GE Healthcare. Indian hospitals
import radioisotopes for diagnostic
imaging such as PET/CT scans. This is
expensive and inefficient as the
radioisotopes decay fast
• Innovation: GE partnered with private
diagnostic centres to produce the
radioisotopes locally, and with airlines to
deliver them in time to hospitals in small
towns. Together with a frugal "pay-per-
use" pricing model, radioisotopes have
become much more affordable.
9. CLEAN WATER
• Product/Services: Tata Swach,
potentially the world's cheapest
water filter Tata group.
• Innovator: Swach produces enough
potable water to last 200 days for
an average family of five
• Innovation: Use of paddy husk ash
and silver particles to kill 80% of
bacteria that cause waterborne
diseases
10. POWER(LESS) COOLING
• Product/Services: Mitticool, a low-
cost fridge that works without
electricity.
• Innovator: MansukhPrajapati, a
former tea-shop owner-turned-
entrepreneur, who was inspired by a
newspaper headline that described a
matka, or an earthen pot, as a fridge
• Innovation: Used the concept of the
cooling effect of evaporation to make
an earthen refrigerator. Created a
new industrial process for working
with clay
11. LIGHTING THE WAY
• Product/Services: Providing solar lights
to the poor.
• Innovator: Harish Hande, founder of
Solar Electric Light Company, has
installed his energy solution in more
than 125,000 households
• Innovation: Worked out a business
model that enabled poorest of poor
buy lights by roping in grassroots
entrepreneurs. These entrepreneurs
own the solar panels and batteries.
They rent out lights to individual
customers and collect small payments
on a daily basis. SELCO guarantees
quick repairs, even in remote areas,
thus providing a high level of service at
a low cost
13. BORROW AND REUSE
• Product/Services: Cheaper X-
ray machine.
• Innovator: Zhongxing Medical,
a Chinese device maker,
captured 50% of the country's
X-ray market, forcing GE to cut
prices and Philips to exit the
line altogether
• Innovation: Re-engineered an
underused Beijing Aerospace
technology to build a machine
that cost $20,000 compared to
$150,000 for the GE and
Philips models.
14. DOING MORE WITH LESS
• Product/Services: Frugal-
farming model.
• Innovator: Gustavo Grobopatel,
a fourth gen Argentinean, who
scaled up his farming
operations without having any
resources. His firm became the
2nd largest grain producer in
Latin America
• Innovation: Took land on lease;
subcontracted farm work to
manpower providers; and
avoided capital constraints by
taking equipment on rent.
