Assignment on social entrepreneur:

Kaushlendra kumar-A modern

vegetable seller

Submitted to – Prof. Rajeev Roy

Submitted by- Shitanshu

Mosharaf

Arvindra
INTRODUCTION

It is really hard to write about a social entrepreneur. But why? A simple answer is you have
to put your feet in his shoe to know him. When I was given a chance to write about any social
entrepreneur then it was hard to think of any name as very few people opt for this after
graduating from B- Schools. Then I contacted a friend of mine who is also studying in one of
the B-School, then she reminded me the incidence “when I was in my second year of
graduation (2006) and was going to Patna by train, she was also with me, our reservation was
in sleeper class and two other guys were also sitting along with us. She knew one of the guy
named Irfaan. He is actually a neighbour of my friend in Begusarai. So she introduced him.
By that point of time I came to know that this is the same person who had won the first prize
in Bussiness Bazigar, a show on Star Plus(probably) where people had to prove his or her
business mettle. He has just stated the business of providing rikshaw to the poor people to
earn livelihood. Name of the company is SAMMAN. The other person who was along with
him was very silent and was in his own world. He was very untidy and hair was totally
uncombed. I thought he may be one of his friend from village. The moment Irfaan introduced
him to me I was awaked. He was an IIM,A pass-out of batch 2004-06 in ABM stream. His
name was Kaushlendra. He was a gold medallist of his batch. He did not talked so much to
me and same applies to me.

BUSINESS IDEA

Through the same friend, I came to know about that Kaushlendra would be a good option on
which I can write. Any way I contacted him to proceed further. He talked about his life in
IIM,A then he said that he did not opt for placement in the IIM and was very determined to
start his business. He had an idea in his mind right from his childhood- to do something good
to the poor people of Bihar. His native is Nalanda district, Bihar and the whole Nalanda is a
vegetable growing belt. So he thought for backward and forward integration of the vegetable
grower and end consumer.

STRUGGLE

Considering the package which he could have got through placement, everyone was opposing
his decision. His family was not convenience by his decision. He stated meeting with the
IAS officers residing as MD in various government departments of Bihar like agriculture
department, horticulture department to know what are the benefits, government are providing
through various programmes to promote entrepreneurship. By hearing that he is an IIM, A
pass-out, government officials used to respond in a better way.

No bank was ready to provide money to him. Then he took help from family and friends. He
registered his venture as Public Charitable Trust Registered under Registration Act 1908,
guided by Indian Trust Act 1882. Trust is named as Kaushlya Foundation. Function started
in 2007. He took several professional persons who were his friends in:

BOARD OF TRUSTEE
(1) Mr. Kaushlendra
MBA IIM Ahmedabad

(2) Mr. Om Prakash Singh

MBA IIM Ahmedabad
Managing Director, KNIDS Green Pvt. Ltd.
(3) Mr. Dhirendra Kumar
PG (Chemistry), Magadh University

(4) Ms. Vineeta Singh

Programme officer, Livelihoods, American India Foundation, Delhi.
She holds a degree in Rural Management from Faculty of Management Studies-Institute of
Rural Management, Jaipur with over 4 years of diversified experience in managing
development project especially for livelihood generation programmes for the poor, covering
all areas from planning to implementation. She has previously worked with the Ministry of
Rural Development, Govt. of India, Delhi and Rural Development Department, Bihar.
(5) Ms. Rashmi Ranjana
Assistant Manager, RMAG, ICICI Bank Ltd.
She holds degree in Agribusiness Management from MANAGE Hyderabad with over 3 years
of experience in commodity trading and agribusiness financing. She has worked with Karvy
Comtrade Ltd in the past.

(6) Mr. Irfan Alam

Founder and Chairman, SammaaN Foundation
A social entrepreneur is working towards organizing rickshaw pulling sector in India. He
started work with grass root people from college days, founded SammaaN Foundation. In
2006, he won ZEE T.V reality show “Business Baazigar” (First ever Entrepreneur hunts). In
2007 he has got half dozen national – international award nominations in social entrepreneur
& economic development category like Bihar Innovation Award and most importantly
nomination for “LEAD – Times of India Future Leader Award”.

GOVERNANCE
KF is a Public Charitable Trust Registered under Registration Act 1908, guided by Indian Trust Act
1882
Registration No: 131/2008-09 under Section 12 A of Income Tax Act, 1961
File No: 80G/08-09/2211-14 under Section 80G A of Income Tax Act, 1961

The KF is governed by a team of young professionals dedicated to social development and

agriculture business. The team work under the guidance of advisory board comprises persons
from management expertise and planning knowledge.
Organisation’s daily activity is operated by different project manager who lead field base
team members who are considered to be the most crucial human resource of the organisation.
BUSINESS MODEL
KF came into being in 2007 by endless efforts of group of members of agribusiness and rural
management background. The primary stakeholders in this business model are vegetables
growers, vendors, organized retailers, input suppliers and agriculture expert. It realized the
importance of integrated supply chain particularly for vegetables which is a highly perishable
product. So it takes the holistic view of the vegetable supply chain and is organizing the two
far ends of the chain. Presently it is working towards integrating the existing vegetable supply
chain to make it more profitable from the view point of all the stakeholders with particular
importance on primary producers. For this it takes following steps.

organising farmers and infused them into a group to act as collective unit
Establishing and creating the supply chain infrastructure
organizing road side and other vendors to market vegetables.
ensuring complete backward and forward integration of market.
disseminate required information on farm practices among farmers particularly women.
promote adoption of economically viable technology at farm level.
providing plant protection measures through pesticide marketers.
providing social, finance and information security like:
Provision of identity card to the road side vendors
Identity cards to the vegetable growers
Insurance and credit facilities to the small and marginal farmers as well as
vendors.

KF partner with:
• Agriculture Technology Management Agency (ATMA), a subsidiary of ICAR.
• Bihar Agriculture Management and Extension training Institute.
• Punjab National bank
• Women Development Corporation of Bihar.
• Friends of women’s world Banking, Ahmadabad.

KF believes in knowledge generating and sharing the same with other organization directly or
indirectly linked with this particular field. Having a wide exposure to the ground level reality
about this particular market, it shares its expertise and knowledge on mutual basis with other
organizations like:
• Women’s Development Corporation, Bihar
• Uttar Pradesh Agricultural Produce Marketing Board
 • Bihar State Co-operative Marketing Union (BISCOMAUN)
• Agri business management programme , Birsa Agriculture University Ranchi
• SEWA Bharat, Munger
Time to time state agriculture marketing board of Bihar and UP takes valuable consultancy from this
KF to strengthening their state agriculture marketing mechanism for the benefit of farmers.

Vision of the organization:

• Equal dignity and identity for all
• Formal introduction of small and marginal farmers into mainstream market
mechanism
• Improvement and creation of livelihood opportunities for the marginalised people
• Better returns to growers and vendors

Objectives of the organisation:

• To connect vendors and marginalized growers to the mainstream of the society
• To provide platform and support to vendors and marginalized growers in the evolving
economy
• To prepare vendors and marginalized growers for new market challenges
• Creating infrastructure for proper functioning of the model.

Working model/Strategy:
The sensitization programme is an intensive effort to inform and
Sensitization introduce the vendors and producers on the intervention, project
program on the scenarios, inform them on the value of collective action and on the
value of collective value of coming together under a business model. This is being done
action through sensitizing community continuous interactions with the
primary producers. By the time of the third sensitization meet,
enrolment into the program is initiated.
 Through a participatory process, groups (producer and marketing) are
Organising encouraged to develop an agenda for the meetings, developing micro-
members into plans and encouraged to save to develop their equity in the program.
groups The members are requested to provide critical information on their
livelihoods, credit history etc to help build and consolidate a database.
To demonstrate value of intervention, a first effort is to enhance
productivity and marketability – both in terms of economic value and
Enhancing volume. This is being done through first level value addition,
productivity, introduction of efficient technology, making processes more efficient,
marketability and infusion of finance etc. Besides enhancing the productivity and
value addition marketability, first and second level value addition concepts will also
be explored that would help achieving incremental margins, without
substantial investment.
Supply chain network has been established to facilitate primary
Establishing the producers to link up with input suppliers as well as with the market
supply chain and government programs / extension agencies. The supply chain is
network made more efficient through professional set up.

A key strategy of the approach is to develop dedicated operational and

Developing strategic relationships with key players like development agencies
dedicated banks, insurance companies etc. in the value chain. It is built on the
partnerships existing relationships that KAUSHALYA Foundation already has
with government agencies and private organizations.

A creative marketing strategy is key to the success of the approach.

Direct home delivery services has been introduced in the city which
Developing has become very popular among the medium and high income group
creative customers. Vegetables vendors are assigned a new role of sales and
marketing marketing executives, process executives. Male vendors are appointed
strategies as sales and marketing executives while women vendors has been
designated as process executives where they do sorting, grading and
packaging of fresh vegetables as per the order.
Source: http://www.kaushalyafoundation.org/index_files/Howwedo.htm

Value/Supply chain of the enterprise:

 • Vegetables are collected from villagers through field level worker and brought
to Smriddhi Grameen Kendra (SGK)
Small and • Supply of farm inputs, agriculture information, extension service.
marginal farmers

• Vegetables are sorted out and standardized and graded to add value.
• Graded vegetables are transportaed to Distribution centre (DC)
SGK

• Vegetables again sorted out and graded.

• Sent to the Smriddhi city centre (SCC)
DC

• SCC distribute the graded vegetables to various focul point for selling like Road
side vendors, Institutional selling, organised retailing etc.
• Branded push cart.
SCC

How he differentiated his product?

product

Product is branded as Knids Green

Freshness- to maintain fresjness of the vegetable, he introduced Ice-cooled

Ice cooled pushcart. This
push cart was designed by IRFAAN who is running SAMMAN. It is made of plastic fibre so
is light in weight and act as insulator.

Quality- to maintain quality, proper grading and sorting of procured vegetable was done. In
brinjal what happens insect bore the fruit and lay eggs but from outside it look normal. In
order to ascertain quality of brinjal, proper checks were done.

Faith/Trust – pushsh cart is mounted with electronic weighing machine in order to build trust.
On vegetable it is mentioned from which village it is procured.

How does the business make money?

The business has four revenue streams:
1. Through direct sales of vegetables to the consumers
2. Through sales to associated vegetable vendors
3. Through institutional sales to restaurants, hotels and hostels etc.
4. Through selling of advertisement space on the panels of branded AC vegetable cart

Competition:
Competitors Unorganised vegetable vendors and organised
retailers of Patna

How different is your product or service? Substitutes that differ in price, value, quality and
It has... availability.

In what way is your product or service Vegetable has been branded as Sammriddhi
different?

How the interest of producers is Better price, timely payment, value addition of the
protected? product, dignity, promotion of collective action etc.

Progress made so far:

2006 2007
No. of employees Did not exist 16-25
No. of locations Did not exist 2-5
No. of customers Did not exist over 50
Turnover Did not exist 11-50 lacs
Profits Did not exist 1 to 5 lacs
Primary source of initial funding Family & friends
Primary source of additional Bank loans & mortgages
funding
Raised institutional capital? Yes
Amount (INR) 67,00,000/-
Investor Punjab National Bank

Benefit and impact of this initiative:

Smriddhi of KF foundation is still in its nascent stage. There is long way to go to fulfil its
goals and objectives laid down in the mission statement. Starting in 2007 this initiative has
shown various tangible and intangible impact on the society.

Benefit to the farmers:

• Assured and reasonable price for the produce.
• Reduction of the losses due to efficient assembling and transportation of the produce.
• Guidance on cultivation practices that lead to increase in the productivity.
• Timely input supply, crucial for cultivation.
• Dignity and confidence among farmers.
• Linkages of farmers with formal market mechanism.

Benefit to the Vendors/ organised retailers:

• Regular and timely supply of vegetables.
• Quality and quantity of their requirement is met in possible manner.
• Credit facilities are available for vendors.
• With indigenous refrigerator technology, shelf life of vegetables goes up and it helps
vendor to maintain quality for longer period.

Benefits to the consumers:

• Assured with quality of the product.
• They can avail vegetables at very reasonable price due to efficient inbound and
outbound logistics.
• Timely availability is also a benefit to the customers.

Benefits to the society:

• Empowerment of poor farmers and vendors both economically and socially.
• Creating interface between corporate and primary sector.
• Employment of local people in this venture.
• Encouraging others to take up this type of venture which in turn will be beneficial to
the society as whole.

SWOT Analysis:

Strength:
 • Mobilised and loyal producers.
• Integrated backward market linkages.
• Efficient and dedicated field staff and project manager.
• Professional and technical members of advisory board.
• Rural and agriculture business background of the staff.
• Good understanding about local production and market environment.
• Supply need based extension service in timely manner.
• Good will in the society for its care for the producers.
• Support from Vendors and organised retailers.

Weakness:
• Scale of business and area of operation is small and it can hinder the scale of
economics.
• Value addition only in the form of gradation, no scope for processing.
• Capacity of Push cart is not sufficient to meet the rush in harvesting season.
• Wastage is not eliminated but minimised due to lack of technical handling of the
vegetables. It calls for introduction of more improved technology.
• Although it partners with PNB in recent time but still it faces problems in regards of
financial requirement.
• Problem is

Opportunities:
• Good scope to expand business in adjoining areas.
• Huge production of vegetables in the surrounding districts of Patna. It will pave the
way to increase the scale of operation. KF just started leveraging upon this and
planning to reach out other districts.
• There is growing demand of quality vegetables in organised retail as number of such
modern trade retailing keep increasing.
• There is enough opportunities to sell the products in neighbour states like Jharkhand,
Orissa, Eastern UP etc.
• Diversification of business is possible by venturing into other agriculture items which
need similar marketing arrangements.
• Establishment of suitable and economically viable processing plant for vegetables can
change the economics of whole arrangement and it will certainly benefit all the
stakeholders associated with it.

Threats:
• Retention of skilled manpower is the big problem for the organisation as payment is
comparatively lower than market trend. It is so because it is a non profit organisation.
 • This kind of business model is easily replicable. So there is continuous threat from
new entrants as well as those working on the same line.
• Quality and quantity of vegetables is a big issue as these are dependent on weather,
cultivation practices, level of input use etc.
• Pest attack is the major threat for the continuance of this enterprise.
• Political and bureaucratic complexities are the hindrances for the expansion of the
enterprise.
• Threats from the organised retailers who have their own backward market integration.
E.g PAN India for Panatloons.

Future plan of the organisation:

ü To expand its operation in two neighbour districts Bhojpur and Jahanabad.
ü To employ more and more professional and technical persons to increase the
operational efficiency of this model.
ü Finding out scope of processing the vegetables and marketing the same.
ü Export the vegetables to neighbour states considering the demand.
ü Initiate welfare programmes in the field of health, education etc in the operational
area.
ü Include more and more growers in this efficient marketing system.
ü Mobilise professional to work for underprivileged people.