I spent July in Shenzhen, securing exclusivity from my supplier of unique product who I have an excellent relationship with, agreeing on a turnkey model for their order fulfillment to my customers, identifying 2nd and 3rd product offerings, getting the first barebones website up and running at www.rstoem.com (check it out!), and took 30 units of the largest, most heavy-duty product with me to India for trialing with end users and sales. On to India efforts:
I've benefited a lot from introductions to people and organizations in the rural area of Orissa I'm based in, near the small town called Parlakhemundi. I'm happy to be based out of a well equipped, rural school called Jagganath Institute for Technology and Management.
View of campus from the library of JITM.
Importantly, they consist of a business school, technology school, and a vocational school. Two of the MBA students volunteered to help me plan and execute the marketings surveys and user testing. I decided we would present our plan to the vocational students since they come just from the surrounding villages, giving us the introductions we needed into their communities. (Students from the other schools, by contrast, come from all over the entire state of Orissa and then some, making them inappropriate for introductions). That presentation succeeded nicely, and we got four villages meeting the criteria we stated.
Following this, so far individuals from one local village and one small town have been carefully seeded with K-Turn Monsters for 1 week of user testing. Each person gets surveyed about their lifestyle and income, and puts down a twenty Rupee deposit (about 50 cents US) to ensure they ascribe some value to the product during the week of testing. After the week is up they will be surveyed again on if and how they used the product, and finally be given the opportunity to buy it. Excitement during our visits from people who listen to us introduce the product is always high, but I know that this is transient and must be backed up by their experience during the testing period. Right now am deciding which if any other villages will be visited.
Major learnings from this so far are centered around village segmentation. One
village will have lots of electricity on-time while another will not. One village will have high correlation of cell phone signal on-time to electricity on-time while another will not. (That correlation is important, villages with accessible cell phone signal even when there is no electricity, surprisingly common, are more compelling customers) Finally I'm more and more aware of an important BOP-marketing challenge - the greater the need of a village for a given good or service, the less accessible they are likely to be, and the less their ability to pay for products. So efficient targeting is paramount, so villages can be selected efficiently. Also efficient word of mouth building is critical, so that needful villagers can select themselves to seek out the product wherever it is stocked.
On the technical side of things, only last week noted that the units I'm carrying
differ from my sample in important ways. The dynamo diameter was subtly but importantly smaller which reduces its effectiveness on phones. Also, all of the units, including the approved sample, lacked lubrication and had a handle joint that was prone to slipping out. Luckily this school I'm based out of has a vocational branch where I was able to procure grease and adhesive to solve these problems. It just takes some time to make these fixes, about 10 mins per unit, so my little dorm room here looks like a workshop.
As I've been writing this post, have gotten feedback from one of the vocational students that his unit isn't continuously charging the phones he has tried on. If that's correct, it is unfortunate as the units I've provided for user testing that have performed well on my test phones. Phones he has tried on, Nokias, Micromaxes, and China's G5, are particularly prevalent in this environment so his feedback is important. Also as an electrician vocational student his opinion will be particularly referred to in his community. I'm having the student bring his K-Turn tomorrow so I can test it and with any luck, fix it so it works on his phone.
Finally, got feedback from the Jamaica/Haiti mobile operator, unfortunately negative. They
reported that the samples work as advertised, but, quoting: "
- The manual factor was not very appealing
- The life of the charge for the effort was not great
- The price point of the device was high "
So summarizing, progress is strong, but encountering negative market feedback... Anyways I'm particularly enjoying the successful relationship navigating, something this engineer has been historically very bad at . . . this is one point where some INSEAD org-behavior simulations are turning out very helpful. And I'm deeply indebted to Dhanada Mishra, Prof. Haribandhu Panda, Aid India / Aid-ITC organizations, and Orissa's JITM / Centurion Institute of Technology, and of course Patrick Walsh for all of their support through these efforts.
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