Nuggets!

Debt, like dependency and depression is very provocative. Getting into debt might happen very naturally – just that instinct of trying something out, wanting to prove a point to someone or the urge to experience an avoidable luxury… anything that is not essentially important beyond the point of stretch. (more…)

Dreamer doers in the crowd find compelling reasons to exist, find problems and solve them – leaving behind a significant measurable impact on a really big scale!

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Innovation is the favorite topic of discussion in any part of the world! There will never be shortage of ideas in this free world. At the same time, there will never be shortage of smart ventures to excite customers with surprising “needs” and “ways to fill them”.  (more…)

It is surprising to see how many people associate frugality with poverty, cheap, affordability (or lack of it!).

Instead, it is refreshing to see frugality as associated with – novelty, value for money, fit for purpose. True power of avoiding waste! That’s what Frugal supposed to mean!

Be it  Frugal Healing,  Frugal Engineering or  Frugal Product/Service Strategy, the focus is on cutting everything unwanted/ not essential and offering no compromise on use/ application.

Luxury on the other hand is an indulgence rather than a necessity! It is associated with the quality believed to be possessed by something that is excessively expensive!

Given the most unpredictable nature of our current global economy, ever-changing consumer behavior and necessities around cost reduction, quality improvement and reduction in time-to-market, it is useful to adopt Frugal Luxury as the product/ service strategy.

Frugal Luxury as a theme can influence creation of products & services that will be novel, fit for purpose with a value for money approach but provide the best user experience and loyalty. This will also make the company offering this product / service innovate a lot more rapidly, be efficient and care for the eco-system!

This can also help shift the operational focus of companies from cost, quality and time pressures to growth, profitability and business sustainability priorities.

Be it  TATA NANO, HLL’s Frugal Innovation, HUL’s  Pureit, or  A Little World  the theme is simple – Frugal Luxury! The objective is preserving luxury of user experience at no extra cost than required! This benefited the customer and more than that the company itself! A true Win-Win!

Indulging in Frugality helps in immediate, short, medium and long run!

Focusing on Frugal Luxury while proposing, pursuing and promoting sustainable product/service strategy will soon be a necessity irrespective of the target – be it the always   emerging markets or currently struggling developed nations!

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Social Innovation is not just another buzz word for action oriented dreamer doers! Just came across  Movirtu � a true example of a social enterprise which has entire elements of social innovation in action!

This company is bringing �personal cloud phone service� for rural users without a handset! Movirtu’s MXShare service enables people who cannot afford a phone or SIM card to own a virtual �Cloud Phone� account with their own telephone number.

No special handsets, SIM cards or additional client software are required. All information is transmitted between the handset and the MXShare server using secure channels, thereby eliminating the potential privacy issues associated with borrowing a handset. The system also manages the subscriber’s offline activity, tracking missed calls and sending notification alerts to friends or nearby village phone operators. Those with phones to lend, meanwhile, get rewarded with one-off fixed amounts or a percentage of the cost of the call or transaction as an incentive to share their handset. An example of �Frugal Luxury�!

Sustainable Innovation is successful- only when the focus is on all four circles �

• Process Innovation = Efficiency � More for Less!
• Product Innovation = Effectiveness � A winning Portfolio for the segment targeted � More for All!
• Technology Innovation = Extension � More for All!
• Business Model Innovation = Expansion � All for All!

This company has worked on all these elements remarkably well to ensure that the value is created and utilized at the user level! Just check the manifesto:

Purpose:

Innovative mobile technology and business models to wireless telecommunication service providers servicing rural poor communities in Sub-Sahara Africa and South Asia to help them realize shared access to basic mobile phone services at a much lower cost than has been achieved before.

Movirtu is committed to delivering technology and innovation that can enable basic phone services for these people at the ‘Base of the Pyramid’. We do this by delivering solutions to mobile operators that allow them to launch new products and business models specifically for this segment at a lower cost base to the mobile operator than could be reached before.

To the end user, by working with the network providers, we are creating the conditions that allow them the opportunity to use a mobile phone. We are making access affordable. We are connecting the unconnected. We are enabling people to have a phone number and participate in the economic system. We are helping people access jobs, raise incomes, access displaced family members and, increasingly, we are acting as an enabler to send and receive remittances over the mobile phone network.

The developed world model of phone ownership and usage is not applicable in this market. Low income subscribers use phones in far different ways than you could imagine. This market cannot be satisfied by diluted down, low cost versions of traditional technology, it must be addressed by the most advanced technologies creatively combined with the existing infrastructure. This is where we come in, Movirtu provides the technology, the business model innovation and market knowledge to make this happen.

Solutions:

MXShare is a platform which when installed in the core of a mobile network enables people who cannot afford to buy a handset to have a fully functioning Cloud Phone which they access using other people’s shared phones.

MXPay enables mobile operators to deploy existing mobile payment systems to those people living on less than $2 a day without the need for the user to own a phone or SIM card, thus drastically reducing the cost of entry for these services.

MXInfo is a mobile network infrastructure platform which enables Non Governmental Organizations (NGOs) and welfare organizations to provide personalized information services through the mobile operator to people living on less than $2 a day without the need for them to own their own mobile phone or SIM card. These services include healthcare, agriculture and educational information.

A very good working example of a social enterprise built around sustainable innovation � a must follow model for all enterprises!

BoP Mobile Life in Kenya from Movirtu on Vimeo.

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Found two good tools during the week:

Balabolka is a free application that supercharges text-to-speech in Windows. You can alter voices, pitch, cadence, and speed, import popular text formats and export the generated audio to popular audio formats.

Balabolka offers fine tuning of text-to-speech voices, you can alter how fast the voice reads, what pitch it reads in, and can even use custom dictionaries to improve pronunciation. You can import text in popular formats like TXT, PDF, EPUB, and more or simply cut and paste the text into the application. If you’d like to save the audio for later listening or load it on a portable device Balabolka supports export into audio formats like WAV, MP3, WMA, and more. Balabolka supports skins that allow you to customize your window appearance.

Balabolka is Windows only, freeware, and available as a portable application:  Balabolka

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GooReader is a desktop application that allows you to search, download and read books and magazines available on Google Books.

GooReader provides a sweet interface for reading publicly available books and magazines on Google Books. Instead of awkward page scrolling in your browser you can get pleasure of reading on your desktop in the same way as you read hardcover books or paperback magazines. With natural mouse moves you can turn over pages, zoom in and out, jump to the needed TOC item.

In GooReader the search results are represented as 3D book models on a bookshelf. You can setup the number of search results and the scale of the bookshelf. The program can search online books by title, author or keyword that can be used in its description or content. If you want to read or save specific book, you can simply enter its Book_ID and open it in Gooreader.

GooReader allows to automatically save publicly available books and magazines to PDF files in the paid version.

Both offer very good user experience and qualify for �must have� elements in the toolkit!

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Frugal Organizations are characterized by value focused approach to everything. Invariably, most of the startups bootstrapping themselves adopt a frugal approach. However, the approach is relevant for any organization.

One of the important aspect of this approach is to find, keep and use all tools & services that help in this pursuit. It is that much better if this is contributed by a lot of smart people around the world! and actively feedback on the usefulness/effectiveness!

twtpick.in is a great platform for creating lists of useful items socially! Here is one such list at the site focused on tools & services for a lean startup.

Tools and services for a lean startup

List by @shyamster. Go to twtPickin to participate.

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Worth a try!

In a recent quest for Frugal Business Models, we were evaluating a possibility of running a business completely online. First search was on various resources required to run a business online. Criteria was Free Resources – ideally with no download requirement – better still no registration!

We found quite a few good ones away from the standard search around Google world. Might be useful for those interested in similar quests… Try it out and enjoy!