Ideas @ Work

By Radhika Saxena

• CHALLENGE : Banking is one of the oldest sectors in India. But, even today, millions of Indians who are potentially ‘bankable’ remain under-banked or un-banked leading to a huge financial exclusion in the country.

• IDEA : The cell phone is rapidly evolving as a social identity and can now be found in even the remotest part of our country. What you’ll also find in even the tiniest Indian village is the local retailer. So could the ubiquitous mobile phone and the small local retailer be put together to extend banking services to millions of unbanked Indians?

• IDEA @ WORK : Can your cell phone become your debit card and the small grocery shop on your street work like an ATM or teller point? Yes, says Abhishek Sinha, CEO and Co-founder, EKO India Financial Services – a low cost distributer of financial products and services.

By Kaushik Satish

• CHALLENGE : Almost everything we do today creates waste. As a society, we are creating more waste today than ever before. The process of exhausting earth’s natural resources to create products, which we then throw away, causes irreparable harm to our environment – and does not create a sustainable society.

• IDEA : Start small with the everyday waste around you. Look at them as a resource to create better, longer-lasting products. For example, did you know you could use tetra pak to make cool-looking carry bags?

• IDEA @ WORK : Think products made out of waste, and you are most likely to knit brows over their aesthetics and viability. Not so, if you know Thunk in India. The company’s cool-looking suite of made-from-waste products – bags, stationeries, wallets – are finding it easier to pop out of consumers’