Greater Malabar Initiative (GMI)
GMI focuses on bringing malabar region into tourism map with home stay, etc. We visited Rubber plantations near Kozhikode in the backdrop of beautiful Wayanad foothills. Rubber plantations also provides plenty of opportunities for automating the cutting, collection processes. It is always good moving up in the value chain, as it protects the farmers from price volatility. There are entrepreneurial opportunists in value addition of rubber. It’s important to create a local investor community that would support these entrepreneurs as they can connect with the problems better. Good discussions with few HNIs in Kozhikode around this.
“Why create a single enterprise worth thousand crores….why not a thousand enterprises worth a single crore ?”…..the defining philosophy of our theory of change for positively transforming the craft sector by creating equitable value across stakeholders.
The key component of the narrative at ‘The Craft Catapult’ Delhi Roundtable Meet yesterday led by Centre for Innovation Incubation and Entrepreneurship‘s Startup Oasis where the dialogue panned ground realities, situations, and concerns over the product- market fit, need for appropriate and timely design intervention, effectively countering competition, particularly from the factory made, artisan and stakeholder incomes, long gestation periods and resultant irregular cash flows, craftspeople motivation and orientations, use of technology to maximize process efficiency, ‘one of a kind’ vs ‘volume’ production
There was plenty of cross-learning and education geared towards evolving an ecosystem for creating, incubating, nurturing and accelerating, ethical, eco-friendly, value-oriented businesses by startups working in the craft environment.
Nice bringing this point again “If crafts is available to the middle class someone will still live in poverty and the next generation will not be interested in continuing the skill.” along with Siva Devireddy of GoCoOp at the Women on Wings event.