siliconindia | | April 20179Dr. Wilfried Aulburdue to the first mover ad-vantage. A case in point is the FastCard, a Rs.1/sheet mos-quito repellent that enables In-dian farmers a quiet sleep by keeping mos-quitoes at bay.Of late, a few MNCs have started to get the frugal engi-neering game right. A case in point is Renault with its much acclaimed Kwid. The Kwid, an entry level SUV, is a clean slate development, i.e., no existing platform in the Renault-Nissan universe was used to develop the ve-hicle. Rather, teams of French, Japanese and Indian engi-neers set out fresh to develop a vehicle that could challenge the market leader Maruti-Suzuki in the entry level segment by providing all the features that Indians value ­ roomy in-teriors for large families, heavy-duty air conditioning, fan-cy navigation & media systems, attractive styling, low fuel consumption, low after sales cost, value-for-money pric-ing, and other aspects ­ at a very attractive price point. The Kwid has been selling at around 10,000 cars/month pretty much since its launch and has firmly established Renault as a company that understands what it takes to succeed in India and what is needed to leverage India as a base for developing and producing globally relevant products for other emerging markets.Last but not least, we have the `Meteoric Mavericks', startup companies that are driving the frontiers of what is possible in India. Here again, a frequent complaint is that often business models from the West are just copied and applied to India. In part, this is true and it is true not only for startups but also for other Indian companies. It is also inevitable. As countries develop, copying good ideas from other markets is necessary in order to leapfrog develop-mental stages. Having said this, making business models work in India takes its own set of innovation, as one has to fight a challenging logistics infrastructure, demanding customer requirements, difficult suppliers, and so on and so forth.Beyond this however, true innovation happens as well. Take redBus as an example. The company is an aggregator for bus tickets and was born out of the pain of buying a bus ticket in the pre-redBus days. Sitting at the interface of customers, travel agents and bus operators, redBus creates transparency around seat availability, performance of bus operators, profitability of routes, and other aspects, and in the process creates a win-win-win situation for all stake-holders. redBus even tries to improve the bus travelling experience internationally via its first foray into Singapore and Malaysia. As in the case of the `Smart Spartans', the edge for In-dian companies and startups is to come up with innovations that positively impact the lives of the six billion emerging market customers. It is this mass of customers that can be adequately served by frugal innovations driven by the un-derstanding of real life constraints. Here, Indian innovation will make probably the biggest difference. In turn, the scale effects will be a fertile ground for Indian players to take on MNCs in due time.
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