Industry Offers Lessons In Deployment Of Technology In Developing Countries

LAUSANNE – Using their own experiences, a panel of technology industry representatives last week identified factors that could accelerate technology flows to developing countries.

In the beautiful Lavaux region, classified as a World Heritage Site by UNESCO, a session at the International Conference on Technologies for Development (“Tech4Dev”) presented case studies under the title “Sustainable Development of Technology Solutions in Emerging Countries.”

Moderated by Jennifer Brant, director of Innovation Insights, the discussion brought four representatives of technology providers addressing their companies’ experiences in deployment of technology and transmission of know-how.

The third annual Tech4Dev, co-organised by the UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) chair in technology and development, the Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne (EPFL), and the Swiss government, was held from 4-6 June at the SwissTech Convention Center in Lausanne.

Financing New Business Models in Solar Energy

Paul Needham, president and co-founder of Simpa Networks, which is a for-profit and social enterprise with the mission of expanding access to clean technology in northern India, explained how the technology has been crucial from the perspective of its different stakeholders, i.e., customers, investors and entrepreneurs.

While over 400 million people in India lack access to electricity, effective energy solutions exist, such as small-scale solar home lighting systems, which can meet the essential energy requirements of a household or small businesses, said Needham.

However, these clean energy technologies involve significant upfront costs – around US$ 200 – which is not affordable for energy-poor households and small businesses in rural India.

To address this energy access gap, Simpa Networks has developed an innovative business model of turning energy users into paying customers.

Customers make an initial small down payment of US$ 20 for a solar photovoltaic system, and then prepay for the energy service by topping up the system with a mobile phone. Each payment for energy adds toward the final purchase price and once it is fully paid, “the system is unlocked permanently,” he explained.

Two different pools of capital were required to establish Simpa Networks. The first was for operating expenses used to run the business itself, and the second was for financing the upfront cost of solar equipment, he said.

In its early years, the company met these investments through a global mix of social impact investors who care “to make a financial return for themselves and a social impact,” he said.

In addition, this philanthropic capital has played a tremendous role in proving the commercial viability of the model at a smaller scale in order to ultimately mobilize mainstream commercial capital to achieve massive scale, said his study. Needham said it could reach “purely commercial investors who care about nothing else than the financial return.”

Throughout the scaling up process of Simpa Networks, different investors with distinct objectives were required, and in this context the technology has been essential for each of these stakeholders.

“The solar panels convert the sunlight into electricity for customer, but that is not enough to build a business on,” he said. “We need technology to help to turn energy users into paying customers, and we need technology to show our investors … our cash flow … in order to unlock the capital we need to scale up.”

Turnkey Biomanufacturing Modular Factory

Allison Mages, senior counsel at General Electric (GE), assessed that “adequate supply of bio-pharmaceuticals could lead to better healthcare outcomes and significantly reduce related spending throughout the developing world.” But, she said, “Both the start-up costs and the expertise required to establish and operate the requisite facilities have presented substantial roadblocks to local production.”

Mages presented KuBio, a GE HealthCare solution, which is an off-the-shelf modular factory for biomanufacturing of monoclonal antibodies. Reducing the start-up costs, this solution also provides assistance in all stages of the process from facility design to production and through continuing education.

“To ensure a complete transfer of knowledge, a well-defined knowledge transfer framework is used to assist in all stages of biomanufacturing, including process design and staff training,” she stated in her paper.

Wireless Technology for Underserved Communities

Stephane Tronchon, senior counsel at Qualcomm, presented the Wireless Reach initiative through which Qualcomm invests in projects that bring wireless technology to underserved and under-connected communities globally.

“Digital inclusion happens with the convergence of phone and internet,” Tronchon said, as most of the time, access to internet in emerging markets, especially in rural areas, is through a mobile device. “We have the belief that access to 3G and next generation mobile technology can improve people’s lives,” he said. Projects have to comply with several criteria, such as meet community needs and be sustainable, which means financially independent.

Tronchon also considered that the ecosystem enabling serving those communities is a strong intellectual property system.

“In the wireless industry in particular, protecting intellectual property is the first and foremost step in assuring inventors of the security of their labors and, in turn, encouraging the development of new technologies and applications,” he said in his paper. “The importance and success of identifying and securing IP is clear.”

Technology Diffusion at the Bottom of the Pyramid

According to Balaji Parthasarathy, associate professor at International Institute of Information Technology, Bangalore, the market at the bottom of the pyramid (BoP) has proven difficult for innovators to actually reach. Among the difficulties, he said, are affordability, the lack of physical infrastructure and limited knowledge.

In order to overcome these challenges and achieve what he called “a frugal innovation,” design strategies deploying new technologies and organisational approaches are needed, he said.

Parthasarathy focused on four case studies of successful technology diffusion in healthcare from India developed especially for the BoP market. The first two cases involved diagnostic devices and products while the two others concerned healthcare delivery.

For each of these cases, he provided insight into the factors responsible for the deployment of these innovations and drew extensive new research about how companies could acquire such a market, which is based on in-depth interviews with either the founders or heads of the firms and complemented with secondary data from the websites of the firms and press reports.

“For the diagnostic, the challenge of positioning a new offering in the diagnostic devices ecosystem, especially in terms of quality and cost figures prominently,” his paper said. “For service delivery, the challenge is to negotiate and manage the balance between the technological and human elements in servicing those needing care.”

The full papers of the four speakers are available here.