For many, the first word that comes to their mind when they think of the Indian startup scene is ‘jugaad’. This is unfortunate, especially considering what they usually interpret ‘jugaad’ to be. ‘Jugaad’, as most people understand it, are shortcuts that circumvent existing constraints. More often than not, these constraints tend to be laws of the land. And for most of the rest of the time, they are really rather sub-optimal ways of achieving tactical short-term targets to keep the company afloat.
I will never begrudge startups having to resort to ‘jugaad’ for, in almost every instance, they do so only because they lack the resources needed for a better solution. At the same time, knowing all the problems that depending solely on ‘jugaad’ entails, I can never jump onto the bandwagon that portrays this concept as the heart and soul of the Indian startup scene either.
In this column, I want to propose a concept that I don’t feel the startup scene in either India or in any of the startup hubs internationally, has explored enough. For ease of nomenclature, I will call it ‘reverse jugaad’.
Remember the first principles for a successful startup? First, the product or the service offered by the startup needs to be solving a genuine problem. The problem can be either something a large number of people are facing. Or if it is in a much smaller niche, then the problem is big enough that people are willing to fork out money to have it solved.
Second, there has to be a product-market fit. The startup should be offering the right thing at the right time and the right place.
Ever so often it happens that a ‘jugaad’ idea satisfies the first principles. Take, for example, something that Dr Sayeba Akhter from Bangladesh came up with in 2000, when she saw too many women being lost to post-partum haemorrhage, i.e. uterine bleeding caused by childbirth. The intrauterine devices that were medical standard to stop such a thing were both too expensive and hardly available in Bangladesh. So, she resorted to ‘jugaad’. Using a condom, syringe, catheters, and some saline, she came up with something that solved the problem. It was a genuine problem, and her solution also perfectly fit the market she was in. It was a ‘jugaad’ that met the first principles. Today, there are many companies, that have fine-tuned this ‘jugaad’ to make it more reliable and easy to manufacture, pack, and distribute, without losing on what made the ‘jugaad’ work. This, to me, is a classic example of ‘reverse jugaad’.
Or in Rwanda, take the example of SafeMotos, a bike-taxi hailing app that uses the gyroscope on the passenger’s phone to arrive at an idea of how safely the notoriously dangerous bike-taxi pilots are riding and rate them appropriately. In a place like India where similar issues exist, apps that operate at scale like Uber or Ola, or even a new entrant into this space that wants to differentiate itself, can ‘reverse jugaad’ this idea for India.
At the grassroots, and in markets that are not the most obvious to where most entrepreneurs are starting up, there are often ‘jugaad’ ideas that are working, and these may be an invaluable source for an entrepreneur who wants to start up.
The author heads product at a mid-sized startup in the real estate space