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[Music] you had referred earlier to the idea of a social business and you explained how
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that differs from a conventional business and one example of that is gramine Denon Foods uh what I find
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really remarkable is that you are able to to produce uh Power yogurt or Shakti DOI for 5 cents for an 80 uh for uh for
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an 80 g cup how can you explain how the economics of that works and whether that
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model is scalable yes very much because it's a business that's what the whole
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idea is should be running as on business principles that you have to cover your cost and generate some Surplus so that
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uh the business can keep running but the idea of social business is investors have invested the money not for the
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benefit of their owns it is invested to achieve a social objective in this case of gramin Danon objective is to bring
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nutrition to the m narish children what we have done we put all the micronutrients uh which are missing in
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the children in the yogurt and make it very tasty children love it they pay that 5 cents to buy a cup and if a child
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eats two cups a week and continues to do so for 8 to 9 months he or she gets all
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the micronutrients back and become a healthy playful child so that is the objective of the company uh so that is
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how it is done and others it's a cost it's a question of how much it cost the
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milk cost how much processing cost equipments and distribution cost and so on once you're in Social business lots
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of cost go down because you don't need to inut those costs for example you don't need any elaborate or fence see
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marketing because as long as people know what you're doing and they're interested
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in it they so you don't have to go on television or newspaper uh we are here and life is uh
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meaningless without eating uh uh sh we don't say that uh uh we explain what it
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is as the people come and gradually it spreads um and that's it so the marketing cost goes down and we have in
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our design we made it sure that extra cost are cut off uh trimmed off for example we made it a very small
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plant so that uh you don't produce too much uh around your own plant there's
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enough consumers to buy it rather than go at a long distance the idea is to cut down the cost of coal chain if you're
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producing in a big plant you have to carry all this to long distances and you need coal chain and coal chain is a very
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expensive item so we reduce that we eliminated that so our idea is to have many many many small plants all around
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the country so that you reach out to everybody this is number one plant which is already operating then we are getting
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ready for the number two plant we want to have about 50 plants to cover all the children in Bangladesh and each one is
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self-contained each one makes money Prof it will cover the cost and so on sometimes you get to uh difficulties
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like suddenly during the food crisis last year the milk prices jumped uh we couldn't maintain that price uh
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tag that we had on the uh product so we are wondering what we should do we came up with many kind of alternatives to
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keep the prices down uh at the same time without losing the micronutrients and so
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on so quickly we came out with the shock the drink so that the milk becomes less
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other elements becomes more water and other things but keeping that and have a good taste for it keeping the price uh
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low as before but we are lucky milk prices went down again we continued and so so we have to cope with those kind of
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fluctuations without losing the whole uh focus of the company in in addition to uh gine Denon and and Intel I think you
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have a relationship also with BASF for antimalarial Nets do you have any joint ventures or Partnerships with other
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companies in the works yeah many countries uh many sorry many companies are coming up with ideas uh to work with
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us for social businesses and we're giving them ideas uh one already is in operation as a very important social
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business that we have right now is a gramine violia violia is the water company is a French water company one of
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the largest water company in the world uh many of the US cities are served by violia for their water so we this giant
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company we persuaded them to create a tiny little uh water treatment plant in The Villages of Bangladesh to serve
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50,000 uh people in the village because our problem is a big problem in Bangladesh with arsenic in our water
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very high level of poison uh in the water and millions of Bangladesh is almost half the population of Bangladesh
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Bangladesh has a total of 150 million people so half the population is 75 million uh they drink um water with high
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level of Arsenal so we are putting up this company to supply clean viia Quality Water to every
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household in the village and they will be paying for it very small amount nobody will mind paying for that uh and
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it will cover all its cost and it will become a social business V is not there to make money out of it but the fact
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that people are drinking poison every day uh now we can do this we can overcome that uh nothing is happening
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through any other program so we said let's move on and do that so this becomes another example of social
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business and once you can do that successfully for 50,000 uh people in the village you have
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developed a seed then all you need to do is to plant the seed in other places because each
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one is self-contained so you can do as many as you want and cover all the people so development of the seed is the
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most important thing in Social business like Gamin Danon is a seed now you can take it you can take it
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anywhere any country uh we have been already approached by India we have been approached by China they would like to
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have gamine done on in China in India and so because they have the same problem malnutrition is a very common
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problem so if this one works and uh Health authorities uh saying that yes this is a big problem and uh this works
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and we have invited gain Global Alliance for improved nutrition which is a a big
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NGO based in Geneva concentrates on the uh monitoring of the nutrition situation
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globally to monitor whether this is really true whether this is just a gimmick that we do or is a real are the
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children benefiting and the nutrition level is increasing and so on so you have the gramine done on and you have
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the gramine violia gramine Intel and there are some in the pipeline and very interesting programs like one shoe
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company uh very big shoe company uh we have they approached us what can we do said well one I would say you have a
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theme and the theme would be or a motto would be nobody in the world should go without shoes as a shoe company this our
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responsibility make sure to do that so you come up with shoes that the poorest people can afford it's a good quality
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with your brand name so that it's not a second class third class thing so you
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take the ownership of that shoe and make it very cheap they like that idea then they suggested why don't you start with
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making shoes for uh under $1 so you cover the people who can who never be able to use that brand name
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shoes in their lifetime ever but now every kids everybody will be doing that and so on so there are many on the
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pipeline BSF is one already we signed agreement and do the moscon Nets treated mosqu net and also nutrition s for
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pregnant women and malnourished women because women nutrition is again another area where uh not as satisfactory as you
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one would like to be so this company would be producing that and uh and make it possible for everybody to afford that
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nutrition at the same time while we are having this uh nutrition supplement we'll be focusing on the diet itself
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because it's not forgetting about the diet and just going to the artificially
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taking the nutrients inside the body so we'll be also encouraging them to have
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uh right kind of food as they go on [Music]