TECHNOLOGY INFORMATICS DESIGN ENDEAVOUR (TIDE)

Organizational Vision
Citizen Base Strategy
How It's Working
Lessons Learned

Organizational Vision

TIDE aims to adapt technologies such as stoves, pottery kilns and food processing tools used for production in at-home industries to a more environmentally-friendly and efficient state. Use of the TIDE products simultaneously increases productivity, lowers cost and benefits the environment. Ashoka Fellow S. Rajagopalan founded TIDE based on the idea of adapting environment-friendly technology with a focus on meeting the needs of local producer communities. By reducing production costs and simplifying designs to be compatible with local home-based industries, TIDE impacts both local ecology and the wealth of its population. Through the organization’s marketing and training program, TIDE developed an entrepreneurial class of home-grown middlemen from surrounding communities to reach the often isolated cultures of these rural villages. These middlemen already had the necessary trust required to enter these communities, and TIDE’s training program prepared them to adapt TIDE’s products to meet local needs.

Citizen Base Strategy

Train entrepreneurs to let them do the work and turn a profit

TIDE founders recognized the potential benefit of their innovative products but faced the challenge of reaching customers. The organization began training local entrepreneurs, developing a new class of middlemen, to disseminate TIDE’s affordable and ecologically-sound technology. Rather than create an expensive and cumbersome centralized sales staff, TIDE made a smaller investment by training entrepreneurs who would not only bring TIDE’s products to market, but also customize them for local production requirements. TIDE adeptly predicted that this layer of middlemen would have far greater reach into the local communities because they were from these villages, understood local needs, and could provide the needed customization. TIDE also offered seed loans to help entrepreneurs launch their own businesses, training them in production design and the business skills necessary to market TIDE’s technology and make sure it fit its rural customers’ needs.

Some of TIDE’s profits come from direct sales. The majority, however, comes from the entrepreneurial middlemen who pay TIDE a 5% commission on each sale. This low-cost technique allows TIDE to simultaneously spread its technology, increase its client base, generate revenue and stimulate environmental entrepreneurialism in new sectors.

Provide incentives for entrepreneurs that strengthen the organization

TIDE assures its success knowing profit motivates its entrepreneurial workforce. And the entrepreneurs understand that it is the credibility of TIDE’s core products that ultimately generates their sales. TIDE’s local champions are also aware that it is their skill at customizing TIDE’s products for their local markets that will provide them the greatest return. TIDE encourages its entrepreneurs to take risks in adapting its technology, because they also know the entrepreneurs will maintain the integrity of TIDE-branded designs. This combination of product integrity, creative distribution, and flexible customization allows TIDE to spread its technology into unlikely demographics. As an added benefit, it has also convinced people to change their environmentally wasteful customs and use more efficient and ecologically-sound technologies.

Engineer creative subsidies

TIDE minimizes costs by partnering with local institutions to provide raw materials at a subsidized cost. In making these deals across the commodity chain, TIDE increases the affordability of its products. This approach ensures that the consumer purchases a quality product at market price while the entrepreneur retains her/his profit margin. At the same time, this process builds relationships that engage the broader community in TIDE’s work and mission. In so doing, TIDE creates benefit for all its stakeholders - the entrepreneurs, the community, and TIDE.

How It’s Working

• Approximately 50 percent of TIDE’s annual budget comes from entrepreneur-commissioned sales.

• TIDE accrues 5 percent of earned income in a corpus account, available to either its producers or entrepreneurs, for emergency funds.

• TIDE’s technology allowed home industry producers to gain increased control of their work and minimize health and safety risks.

• TIDE diversified its income stream by renting out purchased technology to other producers.

Lessons Learned

• Work together. Unlock the collective power of entrepreneurs and allow their natural human interaction and productivity to create a steady stream of sustainable resources.

• Be aware of opportunities for integration and collaboration. Incorporating the product designer, vendor, and reseller enables successful co-development, innovation and effective solutions that would be otherwise unachievable.

• Root yourself in your local environment. Create access to rural local markets with an insiders’ level of trust. Tap into the local entrepreneurial drive of homegrown changemakers and deliver a variety of winning scenarios for the entrepreneur, the village, and the citizen sector organization.