India, as most other countries, needs communities that are significantly more resilient, with less dependence on externally sourced products and services for their basic needs fulfillment. It is imperative, therefore, that transformation towards a truly sustainable society be driven through business models with distributed epicentres of local value creation that rely on the regeneration of natural resources, access to energy, right-sized technology and skilled human resources. This will need innovation at systems levels higher than that of simple products and services.

Supply chains that transport finished products across vast distances and through a large number of intermediaries are more than likely to get stretched and eventually broken. Large businesses of the
future will therefore, be compelled to market goods and services through business networks that empower the micro-and small-scale service providers to create value locally by up-cycling a diverse range of materials, particularly waste into safe, strong, energy saving and easily usable materials.

Typically, as big brands continue to become more valuable assets for both large corporations and small entrepreneurs, franchising models would be the most competitively placed to deliver solutions at scale; particularly to the hundreds of millions of households that still have unmet basic needs. Collaborative ‘incubation models’ between large corporations and social businesses such as Technology and Action for Rural Advancement (TARA) which is a part of the Development Alternatives Group could use their respective strengths to put together ‘business-in-a-box’ packages of technology and know-how for local entrepreneurs; adding a few critical inputs to secure their own revenues on a recurring and long-term basis.

This edition of the Development Alternatives Newsletter highlights ways in which growth can be de-coupled from the unabated consumption of vanishing resources to regenerate our environment and create sustainable livelihoods in the millions. Take for example, the initiative through which tens of thousands of diesel genset operators can be encouraged to shift to solar power; providing electricity to their customers in a clean, efficient and reliable manner.

In recent years, the focus of our work has been on the incubation of social equity enabled, commercially sustainable, entrepreneurial value chains for last mile delivery of basic needs products and services for the poor. Increasingly so, it places emphasis on how critically needed investment from large pools of under - utilised capital can be drawn into disaggregated business models; driven in part, by much needed changes in the policy environment.

In our view, the development trajectory described here stands out as an absolute imperative, not only from the point of view of accelerating local transformation, but also on account of the broader global environmental, social and economic goals of sustainable development.  q