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Frugal Innovation products
The thin line between Frugal innovation and Jugaad technology goes more blur when Jugaad takes an organized approach to sell Frugal Innovation products to masses. Below are some Frugal Innovations which gained mass acceptance
- Vehicles
TATA Nano has to top the list in most innovative Frugal car ever made. With engines shifted in the rear of car and more interior space inside, it challenges most medium sized car present in India. It was priced at almost 2000 USD at its time of launch which is half the price of cheapest hatchback cars then. Check details of TATA Nano. Another vehicle of Frugal innovation is Tata Ace (India’s largest-selling light commercial vehicle), infact it was the grand success of TATA Ace which led to the development of TATA Nano.
- Lights
How would you light a bulb with limited electricity or none at all. Frugal Innovation has the answer ! SELCO INDIA is providing solution to Indian Villages with less or no electricty with their SOLAR Panels, SOLAR Water Heaters and Solar inverter and lights. These panels have been installed in more than 1,35,000 homes till date and counting.
What if there is no sunlight. In comes another frugal innovation GravityLight. Gravity light runs on gravity, you lift a weight and on its descent you get full 25 minutes of light.
D Light boasts of 34,455,217 installations while Litre of light with 15,000 installation in Philippines alone, can create solar bulbs with empty bottles, water and bleach. Each frugal innovation touches life of large untapped market, ignored by conglomerate!
- Refrigerators
80% Indians are still unable to use a refrigerator due to shortage of electricity. Godrej did frugal innovation and made Chotukool. This 35 Litres refrigerator consumes 62W and runs both on AC and DC (read battery / inverter). But what if there is no electricity at all ! Mansukhbhai Prajapati created Mitti cool refrigerator. It is made of clay and promises to preserve food, vegetables and milk for days. Based simply on evaporation principle it has a chamber on top from where water trickles down and evaporates making the inner chamber naturally cooled. Forbes considers this innovator among top 7 rural entrepreneurs in India and more than 5000 mitticool refrigerators sold till date and counting. While chotukool is priced about 70 USD, mitticool comes at about 50 USD !
- Medical and health
As more and more 5 star hospitals are opening in metros, villagers are getting blessed with more and more frugal innovation. Jaipur foot has touched more than 1.3 million lives and counting. An artificial limb at BMVSS costs as low as 45 USD compared with thousands of dollars in USA. Jaipur foot was initially made by a temple sculptor with rubber, wood, tyre and kept improving allowing its users to sit, squat, skate, climb trees, run, drive and you name it ! This Frugal innovation is a revolution which changed the prosthesis market around the world.
GE Healthcare understands this large market in India and its R & D innovated GE ECG Machine at a price about 800 USD in contrast to normal ECG Machine of about 5000 USD. With frugal innovation they focused on bare essential features and portability to make it available at distant hospitals in country. GE Vscan was also developed as a handheld ultrasound scanner at almost quarter of price of a normal ultrasound.
Clock Sense from Frugal digital can measure basic health data like haemoglobin in the blood, pulse, temperature, respiration rate, sugar etc. To make it handy it is made just like an analog clock and displays health in 3 colours, red indicating immediate medical checkup and green indicating good health.
Frugal innovation is not only about product creation it is also about process improvement. No wonder Narayana Hrudayalaya clinic in India is striving to conduct heart surgery at 800 USD. 5 star hotels oops hospitals in India charge more than 6000 USD for same operation. Same goes for quality cataract operation at Sankara Nethralaya.
- Mobile phones
If there is one field where frugal innovation is ubiquitiously seen its mobile cellphone world. While I-phone might have created the best smart phone, frugal innovation led to get almost same features in android phones. Today Micromax, Spice, Lava, Xolo, Intex, Karbonn etc. sell more phones together than Samsung or I-Phone. Concentrating on BOP people has made Micromax not only govern the Phone chip industry but also expand in various countries. Frugal innovation has made smart phones within reach of everyone and today smartphones are available for less than 150 USD.
- Mobile payment
M-pesa from Africa has changed Micro-finance in developing world all by the power of SMS. M-Pesa is a branchless banking service, designed to enable users to complete basic banking transactions without visiting a bank branch. Users are charged a small fee for sending and withdrawing money using the service, which still is less expensive than doing banking in the normal sense. By 2012, a stock of about 17 million M-Pesa accounts had been registered in Kenya alone. Today M-pesa has spread to south Africa, India, Afghanistan and eastern Europe.
