What Social Enterprises Can Learn from India’s UID Project010
UIDAI, based in New Delhi and chaired by Infosys Technologies Ltd co-founder Nilekani, aims to assign 12-digit universal identity numbers to more than 600 million citizens over the next four years. This article in the Mint describes the current team, the significance of the UID, and the challenges the program faces as it starts the first large scale national tests over the next six months. In this piece, Robert Moore talks about what social enterprises can learn from India’s UID project.
Here at Villgro our incubatee companies not only spend a lot of time figuring out how to successfully market new products or business strategies to rural India but also how to learn from their mistakes when they fail. An issue that all of them come across is that the Indian market is disparate which forces them to incorporate tweaks in their marketing plan for each area that they want to market to. This causes trouble when trying to quickly scale their companies but our incubatees are not alone, with large MNCs dealing with this same problem and most recently the Unique Identification Authority of India as it launches its first large scale national test.
The unique identity program, also called Aadhaar, is a program designed to assign a 12-digit identity number to a majority of Indian citizens over the next four years. Coming from the USA where we have the social security number, I can definitely see how having a UIN will make the lives of Indian citizens better – especially those who have no other formal means of identification such as passports or drivers licenses.
But the social implications don’t end there. This is a massive undertaking in marketing and something this big will truly provide some great opportunities to learn more about the Indian market. To complete this task an advisory team has been formed which includes Kiran Khalap – Founder of Chlorophyll brand consulting firm, D.K. Bose – one of India’s most experienced social marketers, Praveen Tripathy – President of Pidlite Industries which is regarded as one of the smartest marketing companies in the country, Santosh Desai – chair of Futurebrands, and Sumeet Vohra – marketing head of Proctor and Gamble India.
There is a great quote by D.K. Bose on the project that goes “Marketing quite often is seen as an effort towards profiteering, an effort towards extorting people’s motivation. This, meanwhile, is concept marketing, value marketing, intangible marketing. When you promote education, you don’t say ‘I’m marketing education’. You’re marketing certain values and concepts.” This quote is significant because it describes a challenge the social entrepreneurs in India also face every day. I often feel that they aren’t given the credit they deserve as they are not only creating profitable businesses in difficult markets but molding values and introducing new concepts as well.
As the Unique Identifier Authority spends the next six months launching a learning program and a large scale national test, social entrepreneurs should pay close attention to its successes and failures as it will provide valuable learning for how to ultimately reach more and more of the many markets that make up India.