Unreasonable Institute, a non-profit based in Boulder, Colorado, has thrown open the Unreasonable Marketplace for 2012. Every year, the institute invites 25 social entrepreneurs from across the world to spend six weeks at its headquarters. The entrepreneurs receive training and build long-term relationships with mentors and investors and get legal advice and design consulting.
The 25 entrepreneurs, dubbed Unreasoanable Fellows, are chosen from a list of 46 finalists. The cost of attending the six-week programme is $10,000. But instead of having the entrepreneurs pick up the tab, the Unreasonable Marketplace gives them an opportunity to raise the money through donations within 50 days.
This year, six companies from Asia are among the 46 finalists who are competing to become Unreasonable Fellows. Out of these, four are from India. At StartupCentral, we’re putting our money (yes, we are making a donation) behind Poop2Power — we love the fact that the idea is so simple. More power to Poop2Power.
Meet the six Asian finalists:
Poop2Power | Sanitation & Clean Energy | India
Swapnil Chaturvedi, the serial entrepreneur behind this unique company designates himself chief poop collector. It’s appropriate because Poop2Power, the company he founded in 2010, collects human faeces every day and converts it into biogas. The gas is used to generate electricity, which is then used by rural consumers to charge batteries and power light bulbs and mobile phones. Poop2Power has a tie-up with a manufacturer for toilets, which it maintains and charges for on a pay-per-use basis. It has completed a pilot with 50 toilet users and 15 electricity customers. So far, it has achieved a 90 per cent retention rate with toilet users and a 100 per cent rate with electricity users. The team also includes Shiv Chaturvedi and Tania Ganguly and has a $100,000 grant from the Gates Foundation.
Vote for them here.
(Image Courtesy: Poop2Power)
Ja Bru Rigs | Traditional Crafts | China
Founded by former marketing manager Ellen Li, the company makes products such as bags, boxes and notebooks using traditional Chinese embroidery. The products are made available to consumers and companies and the company ensures that the artisans get fair prices for their work. The company released its first product – embroidered boxes – in 2009 and currently retails out of 13 stores in China and one in the Netherlands. The company puts five per cent of every purchase into a social development fund for the craftsmen. The team, apart from Li, includes Luo Xu, a graduate of the Beijing Institute of Fashion Technology who heads design, and Sun Feng Xia who manages production.
Vote for them here.
(Image Courtesy: Ja Bru Rigs)
The Tipping Point | Fair Trade Cotton Farming | India
Ashoka Fellow and Netherlands native Gijs Spoor started The Tipping Point to help cotton farmers in India to connect with the end consumer. Farmer groups feed information about their production activities into the TiP database and the TiP track-and-trace system enables the information to travel through the value chain to the consumer. At the retail end, if consumers see and like the social and environmental impact of the product they intend to buy, they can leave a tip at the store which goes to the farmer groups. The objective is to encourage responsible shopping and build a direct relationship between consumers and producers.
Vote for them here.
(Image Courtesy: The Tipping Point)
Milk Path for Women | Dairy Services | Sri Lanka
Founded by dairy technologist Samanthi Ratnayake, the company empowers rural women with a weekly cash flow of $15 in exchange for dairy products. It organizes for the milking of cows and attends to animal health and allied services. The long-term objective is to produce 8.6 metric tonne of cheese annually at villages, yield revenues of $850,000 and generate a household cash flow of $518,400 in for 500 families. The company produced 1,200 kilogramme of cheese in its first year and generate $10,000 in revenues.
Vote for them here.
Green Basics | Agriculture | India
Srikakulam, Andhra Pradesh-based Green Basics uses a hub and spoke nursery model to enable paddy cultivators to use less resources for maintaining and cultivating paddy before it is transplanted. It provides seedlings for transplant, which reduces the use of seeds by half and fertilizers by 20 per cent. The company provides ready-to-plant seedlings and machinery for a charge. Founded by Tata Institute of Social Sciences graduate Ramana Killi, has raised Rs 2.8 million in funding, partly from angel investors. It has provided skills training to 2,500 farmers in seed multiplication, generated employment for 20 people and distributed Rs 5 lakh salary.
Vote for them here.
(Image Courtesy: Green Basics)
Rural Development and Marketing | Vermicompost & Bamboo Incense | India
The company uses natural resources such as bamboo and biomass available in Bihar to generate products that can help rural citizens improve their income levels. It processes bamboo into incense sticks, using both mechanical and manual processes. It also processes biomass waste such as cowdung into vermicompost using earthworms. Founded five years ago by Ravi Chandra, also the founder of Bihar Development Trust, the company has established incense production under the trust. RDM markets the incense. Sales for bamboo sticks, rolled sticks and scented sticks stood at more than $60,000 in fiscal 2011. The company has also established a network of 5,000 retailers to sell the sticks in Patna and Bhagalpur. In addition, the company has access to farmers for the production of vermicompost. It has sold 400 tonne of vermicompost, worth $40,000 in fiscal 2011.
Vote for them here.
(Image Courtesy: Rural Development and Marketing)
