INDIAS MOST POWERFUL RURAL ENTREPRENEURS

1. MANSUKHBHAI JAGANI
Mansukhbhai Jagani developed a motorcycle-based tractor for India's poor farmers, which is
both cost effective - costing roughly $ 318, and fuel efficient (it can plow an acre of land in 30
minutes with two liters of fuel).
After 4-5 years of experiments, Mansukhbhai developed an attachment for a motorbike -- a
multi-purpose tool bar -- in 1994. This could be
attached to any 325cc motorcycle by replacing the
rear wheel with an assembly unit.
The 'super plough' called Bullet Santi (a cultivator
that pulverizes or smoothens the soil is locally called
as santi), can carry out various farming activities
like furrow opening, sowing, inter-culturing and
spraying operations.

2. MANSUKHBHAI PATEL
A farmer, Mansukhbhai Patel invented a cotton stripping machine that has significantly cut the
cost of cotton farming and revolutionised India's cotton industry.
Patel who studied up to Class X, invented a cottonstripping machine in 1991.
Patel's machine helps in in removing cotton from semi
opened and unopened shells of various cotton varieties.
The machine has won a United States patent.

3. MANSUKHBHAI PRAJAPATI

Mansukhbhai Prajapati, a potter, invented a clay non-stick pan that costs Rs 100 and a clay
refrigerator that runs without electricity for those who cannot afford a fridge or their electricity
and maintenance costs.
During the 2001 earthquake, all earthen pots were broken.
"Some people told me the poor people's refrigerators are broken.
They referred to the 'matkas'(pots) as refrigerators. It struck me
then that I must try to make a fridge for those who cannot afford
to buy a fridge," says Prajapati.
The patent winning Mitticool has been the most challenging
product for him. It needed a lot of experimenting. He started
work on it in 2001, the product was finally ready by 2004.
In 2005,he started the non-stick tava (pan) business. "My wife could not buy a non-stick tava as
it was costly. So I thought many people would be facing the same problem. That's when I
designed the non-stick tavas, priced between Rs 50-100," he says.

4. DADAJI RAMAJI KHOBRAGADE

Dadaji Ramaji Khobragade, is the rural farmer who invented the
HMT rice, a highly successful rice variety which yielded 80 per
cent more rice than the conventional variety.
HMT is now grown all over India, on 100,000 acres in five states.
A native of Nanded village in Nagbid tehsil of Chandrapur district
in Maharashtra, a decade ago, he selected and bred a variety of
rice, mystifyingly named HMT, which has become popular in
neighbouring States as well. When it first hit the market, HMT
fetched double the price of other varieties on sale, farmers said. Its popularity prompted the
scientists at the University to release PKV HMT after pressure from the farmers who wanted the

seeds. It fetches a higher price than most other rice varieties due to its short grain and good
eating and cooking qualities.

5. MADANLAL KUMAWAT
Madanlal Kumawat, a grassroots innovator with no
more than a fourth-grade education, developed a fuelefficient, multi-crop thresher that yields cleaner grains,
which can be bagged directly and eliminates the cost
of cleaning.
The modified thresher reduces setup time to less than
15 minutes to switch over from one crop to another. Its
latest variant can also handle groundnuts apart from
threshing other cereals and pulses.

6. CHINTAKINDI MALLESHAM
Chintakindi Mallesham, is the inventor of the Laxmi Asu Machine, that "ignited a revolution in
India's weaving community."
Mallesham's machine can make six saris worth
of material in one day, and "no human effort is
required beyond placing thread on the machine
and removing the material after the process is
complete."Weavers making the traditional 'Tie
& Dye' Pochampalli silk sarees used to undergo
a painstaking process, moving their hands
thousands of times in a day while weaving
sarees. But not any more.
Thanks to Mallesham's patented device to mechanise this process, hundreds of weavers in
Andhra Pradesh now spend less time on making a variety of designs.

7. KISHORE BIYANI
Next on the list is Future Group chairman Kishore Biyani . Called the 'Sam Walton of India' ,
Biyani's company operates about three million square feet of retail space in 25 Indian cities.

8. ANSHU GUPTA
Social entrepreneur Anshu Gupta who founded GOONJ, a system that transfers used clothing
and household goods from India's rich to its poorest communities, also featured on the
Forbes list.
Gupta collects 30 tonnes of cloth every month and distributes it across 20 states. He has an
amazing reach, a simple network and excellent supply chain management.

9. KETAN PATEL
Troikka Pharmaceuticals managing director Ketan Patel is 'India's pain-killer'.
Patel's business focuses on developing painless solutions for medical procedures. He developed
the world's first painless iclofenac injection, which helps alleviate acute pain and inflammation.
Patel's passion for innovation has been in the area of Novel Drug Delivery, wherein he has
several patents to his credit.

10. GYANESH PANDEY

For the villagers of Tamkuha, a dusty hamlet in rural Bihar, Gyanesh Pandey is the modern day
alchemist who transformed piles of discarded rice husk to light up their lives.
Today, every household in Tamkuha has been literally lifted out of darkness with an
uninterrupted, self-sufficient power supply, which many towns and cities in India still have not
been able to achieve even 60 years after Independence.

Tamkuha, however, is not alone in this matter. Around 50,000 villagers in 120 villages across
Bihar and 3 villages in Uttar Pradesh have been benefited by these 'green' power plants.
For villagers, this cheap and eco-friendly model of generating electricity is a miracle that has
transformed their lives. No wonder Gyanesh Pandey, the 33-year-old Non-Resident Indian has
won the hearts of many poor villagers. "Aap Bhagwan ho (you are God!)!" said a poor villager to
Gyanesh Pandey, when he first saw his house lit up.
After relinquishing a successful career in the United States, Gyanesh returned to his native home
state in 2007. A mind-altering Vipasana session reaffirmed his desire to come back to Bihar.
He teamed up with his friends Ratnesh Yadav, Manoj Sinha and Charles W Ransler to set up
Husk Power Systems, three years ago. Gyanesh, Ratnesh and Manoj had borne the burnt of the
power crisis and many problems while growing up and studying in rural Bihar.
Their idea was simple: to provide power to villagers who depended on agriculture as their main
occupation in a cost-effective and environmentally-friendly manner. After six years of research
and experiments, the team decided that the most feasible way would be making electricity from
rice husk.
Many were skeptical about its success. But today, HPS owns and operates 40 mini-power plants
(35-100 kw) across Bihar. Through this unique green technology, villages get uninterrupted
power for up to 6-12 hours by setting up a plant, which burns rice husk to generate gas to run
generators.
The company is set to MAKE PROFITS by the end of this year and plans to light up villages in
other states like Maharastra, West Bengal, Uttar Pradesh and Tamil Nadu.
Providing electricity to villages across India is just the beginning of Gyanesh's ambitious plan to
transform rural India. The company has already taken up the initiative to educate 200 children
from Tumkuha.

An optimistic and determined Gyanesh is chalking out a grand vision to build an integrated
network to upgrade health, education and energy needs of India's poorest people. He shares the
excitement, the trials and tribulations of bringing light in the lives of hundreds of poor people.

RURAL WOMEN ENTREPRENEURS IN INDIA

1. Ela Bhatt (Founder of SEWA)

Self Employed Women Association (SEWA) founded by Ela along with late Arvind Buch, the
then president of Textile Labor Association, is a major role player in empowering employment
among rural women in Bihar. The association, setup in 1972, assists the women to buy solar
bulbs with loans from SEWA and sell or rent them to families in the villages and towns of Bihar.
Recognising her excellent work in the field of microfinance and labor, Ela Bhatt has been
awarded the Padmashri, the Padmabhushan as well as the Ramon Magsaysay Award.

2. Thinlas Chorol (Founder of Ladakhi Womens Travel Company)

Born and brought up in the beautiful valleys of Ladakh, Thinlas is the only Ladakhi woman to be
professionally trained in the field of Mountaineering. Thinlas studied in SEMCOL, The Students'
Educational and Cultural Movement of Ladakh. As a guide with Around Ladakh with Students
(ALS), Thinlas has been on several mountaineering and expedition trips. With her 2009 found
Ladakhi Womens Travel Company she is trying to attract more and more women to take up
mountaineering and allied studies to earn a living.

3. Annie George (Founder of BEDROC)

Her organization helps build disaster-resilient, sustainable coastal communities. Disaster
management, Participatory Water Resource Management, and Coastal Vulnerability Mapping are
some of the key areas of operations of BEDROC. The main objective of this 2008 registered trust
is to leverage experiences of the 2004 Asian tsunami to create community-based, communityowned mechanisms for enhanced disaster response, mitigation and preparedness for coastal
communities, as reported at the BEDROC website.
4. Chetna Gala Sinha (Founder of Mann Deshi Mahila Sahakari Bank)
Chetnas foundation established in 1994 governs a regulated co-operative bank that is completely
operated by women and serves women customers. The bank was established with help of a group
of illiterate women and has now grown into a $562,000 firm by the end of 2011. In collaboration
with HSBC, Mann Deshi Bank established the Udyogini Business School in 2007. There are
thousands of girls who drop out of school in Maharashtra every year, and Mann Deshi Udyogini
aims at providing vocational training and financial training to these young women to enable them
to become entrepreneurs.

5. Shri Mahila Griha Udyog Lijjat Papad

Womens Co-operative Association

The association founded by seven Gujrati
housewives is well known for its products
launched with the brand name Lijjat. It
employs more than 40,000 women and
encourages self employment through a
number of branches across the country.
The seven women were Jaswantiben
Jamnadas Popat, Parvatiben Ramdas
Thodani, Ujamben Narandas Kundalia, Banuben. N. Tanna, Laguben Amritlar Gokani, Jayaben
V. Vithalani, and one more lady whose name is not known.

FIVE ENTREPRENEURS OFFERING INNOVATIVE SOLUTIONS IN

RURAL INDIA

1. EVOMO Research & Advancement - Abhinav Kumar CEO, EVOMO

Based in: Ahmedabad
USP: Aims to replace non-licensed local transport vehicles
Funding: Rs 5 lakh from NID
What it does: Designs and makes lowcost rural utility vehicle
As a young automobile engineer Abhinav Kumar dreamt of joining a professional racing
team. But a casual visit to rural Uttar Pradesh, where he saw a range of locally
manufactured vehicles being used to ferry people and goods, changed the 27-year-old's

career ambitions.
He realised there was consumer demand for a transport vehicle that was both affordable
and reliable. Soon he quit his job at auto-parts maker, Sona Koyo Steering Systems to set
up his own venture, Evomo, in 2010.
Evomo's rural utility vehicle costs Rs 1.5 lakh, which is less than the price of a Tata
Nano, dubbed the world's cheapest car. Kumar said he manages to keep costs low by
using locally sourced material and drawing from global design ideas that are past the
patent-protection stage. His target is to sell at least one vehicle in each of India's 6.5 lakh
villages in the next five years.
2. Ampere Vehicles
Based in: Coimbatore
What it does: Makes electric bikes
USP: These bikes are used for local distribution by small entrepreneurs
Target Revenue: Rs 100 crore in the next four years
Funding: Rs 20 cr from Forum Synergies and Spain's Axon Capital
In Coimbatore, electric-bike maker Ampere Vehicles is selling thousands of bikes being
used by retailers to distribute water and milk in villages. Founded in 2008 by Hemalatha
Annamalai, 45, a computer engineer, the company is expected to reach revenue of Rs 100
crore within the next four years.
3. iKure Techsoft
Based in: Kolkata
What it does: Sets up rural health centres
Target Revenue: Rs 1 crore this year
Funding: Rs 45 lakhs from Intellecap Impact and Calcutta Angels, Rs 70 Lakh from
WEBEL
Kolkata-based iKure Techsoft has built a network of rural health centres where doctors
are available through the week and pharmacists dispense only accredited medicines. In
addition the company has built a back-end software platform on which all health records
are stored. This is used to centrally monitor key metrics such as doctors' attendance,
treatment prescribed and pharmacy stock management.

Sujay Santra, iKure's founder said the idea for the business came to him when he realised
that his relatives and friends in a West Bengal village could not relate to his work at a US
technology firm. "I was not doing anything which would impact them directly," said
Santra, 36, who left Oracle to launch his healthcare venture.
4. Aakar Innovations
Based in: New Delhi
What it does: Builds low-cost machines that produce sanitary napkins
USP: The napkins are biodegradable
Target revenue: Rs 60 lakh this year
Funding: Rs 6.15 lakh loan from the NIF; Rs 3.6 lakh Mahindra 'Spark the Rise' grant

5. nanoPix
Based in: Hubli
What it does: Image and video processing products for agriculture, healthcare
USP: Machine vision-based blood smear analysis and automated cashew sorting
Revenues: Rs 2.2 crore fiscal 2014
Funding: Rs 80 lakh from friends, family; Rs 15 lakh loan from Deshpande Foundation
Thirty-six-year-old Sasisekar Krish makes image and video processing products for
agriculture and healthcare at his company nanoPix based in Karnataka's Hubli district.
Farmers use his product to sort agriculture products like cashew by shape, size, colour
and quality. The same technology also helps analyse blood smears to detect infectious
diseases.
nanoPix has already tied up with a few hospitals in rural Karnataka to use the product. To
keep costs low, Krish, a former engineer at Wipro, has done away with expensive highresolution cameras used in imaging technology.
Instead he combines images from several low- cost cameras and uses a software
algorithm to create three dimensional models of the objects to be analysed.