I remember sitting in a tacky cafe in Chennai. It was February 2014 and I was meeting Akshat, one of my brother’s best friends since he was in town for the day. With a glint of excitement in his eyes, he leaned forward and said “I’ve been reading about this organization in South Africa using shipping containers to build schools. What do you think about starting an NGO which sets up something like budget private schools in rural areas?”
I had spent the last two years in Chennai working at a development economics research center and had been looking for an opportunity to start a social enterprise. I was truly convinced in using market-based solutions for solving problems at the bottom of the pyramid. Akshat, on the other hand was a managing partner at a furniture company, a business started by his grandfather over sixty years ago.
After a lot of though, I told him, “You don’t know how to run an NGO, and neither do I. What you could do well however, is make infrastructure out of these containers. So why don’t we make low-cost infrastructure for the development sector and sell it?”
Out this conversation was born our startup, Aadhan.
The Startup
The word Aadhan is derived from Sanskrit, meaning a box or a receptacle used to contain something.
We refurbish and modify shipping containers retired from their tenure at sea, and repurpose them into movable buildings to be used by the development sector in rural areas in India. This eliminates the need to invest in land or immovable infrastructure, and organizations can simply rent land to operate an off-the-grid facility anywhere in the country. Our container facilities provide a turnkey solution for organizations; which can establish a presence, conduct a program and subsequently move base.
But why containers? What’s so cool about them is that they’re part of a standard logistics ecosystem, so the infrastructure needed to move them is already available everywhere. Meanwhile, if we use the frame of an old container, the buildings can be built in a very short time frame. Further, after use it doesn’t have to become a derelict eyesore and can be easily relocated an unlimited number of times, or recycled.
This allows us to operationalize activities more economically in remote areas. Imagine a vocational training facility with high-tech tools pops up for a year and after training locally available candidates, moves to its next location. A fully equipped cataract surgery center could drop into town for a few days, or a classroom pre-equipped with a VSAT system and biometrics to monitor attendance can connect students in Himachal Pradesh to an IAS training facility anywhere in the country, simply shifting base after the examination.
As a business, we can sell these facilities to any stakeholder and have a larger, indirect impact on the entire ecosystem. This is the reason we’re focusing on creating designs for scalable products.
Pilot Project
After a few months of fieldwork, we identified the first scalable product to build. Our first prototype is a skill training facility for programs run under the Ministry of Rural Development’s (MoRD).
17 million Indians entering the workforce annually need to be trained, while current annual skill capacity in India is estimated at 7 million. The skill training capacity in the country has to be reformed extensively over the next decade, meanwhile implementation agencies find it extremely difficult to find buildings in rural areas that fit government training standards.
Aadhan is contributing to this by helping implementation agencies scale up their skill training programs. Our mobile container based classrooms, designed as per government standards, allow implementation agencies to scale quickly and cost-effectively.
The way the skill training business is structured, the only way to profitability is scale and the infrastructure problems faced by these agencies pose a barrier to scaling up.
With the help of our design partner Common Ground Practice, we proceeded to design a facility which fits the MoRD’s guidelines and can be set up in a span of a few days anywhere in the country. We’re also working on getting the design pre-certified by the relevant government agencies. This would save a lot of work on part of the government, while making it easier for implementation agencies to open new training facilities.
We’re currently building our first classroom at a training center in Mathura. Our implementation partner is really excited to expand their training capacity in an existing center and they envision that in the future, they can take up smaller facilities and simply expand training capacity by adding container classrooms.
The Future
Once we’ve optimized our skill training product, we’re going to start thinking about our other focus areas, health and sanitation.
We’re working on providing a completely off-the-grid solution, which includes solar power and a bio-digester system for toilets in the facility. Additionally, once we manage to make a few sales we’ll reinvest our funds into producing our next prototype.
At the end of the day, we just want to build something great! Something that satisfies an immediate need and is really contextualized to the Indian ecosystem.
About Author-
Nikhil holds a bachelor’s degree in Economics from New York University (NYU) and has an extensive background in development work. He previously worked with a development economics research center where he handled stakeholder outreach, and short-term policy research projects. He has also published research on macroeconomics, impact evaluation and microfinance.