Can NCWS-A BOP model: Be a replicable social business in India?

Abstract

Naandi Foundation has been created in 1998. Its goal is to eradicate poverty. It is active in three sectors: education, sustainable livelihoods and safe drinking water. It is this last sector that we will study in this paper. Safe drinking water is a big issue in India, as we know that diarrhea itself kills more than 1600 people every day in the country and that 21 per cent of communicable diseases are water borne. Millions of Indians only have access to unsafe and contaminated water. To face this concern, a safe drinking supply model has been developed by Naandi Foundation and its branch Naandi Community water Services (NCWS), the village of Bomminampadu and two technology providers, Waterhealth International and Tata Project. The pilot of the project has given purified water to 730 households in the village. The project is expending over the years. The demographic context puts pressure on the government to act quickly all the more that 1.6 billion of people will be there in 2050. To study the business model from the heart and have feedbacks from the field, one of the team members went to Hyderabad to work at Naandi office and visit some plants. We want to study the ability of Naandi to solve the major issue of access to safe water to as a many people as possible. It reminds us the Danone slogan: “Bring health through food to as many people as possible” that we could apply to NCWS mission: “Bring health through safe drinking water to as many people as possible”. It is essential to start by studying the concept of BOP model that legitimizes the will of Naandi to target poor people, so as to succeed to build a sustainable business model that provides safe drinking water at a low cost. We are going to study this original model at the frontier of a NGO and a social business. The latter must be studied in depth as well to understand the steps that need to be respected to have a real sustainable model that is financially autonomous.