S. Rajagopalan and Svati Bhogle—Technology Informatics Design Endeavour (TIDE)

Komalalvalli with vegetables that she will supply to a school, grown in a poly house. Image courtesy of TIDE

The Organization

Established in May 1993, TIDE is devoted to promoting sustainable development through technological interventions. It identifies economically rewarding, environment friendly technologies invented in India’s research institutions, and develops them into successful enterprises. TIDE focuses on those technologies which are suitable for the rural environment, address energy issues and build rural entrepreneurs. Amongst the many technologies promoted by TIDE are energy efficient stoves. These have been developed for various informal industry sectors like Ayurvedic medicine preparation, rubber band making, areca boiling, textile processing, sericulture etc. All these products save at least 25–30 % fuel.

The Innovation & Impact

Training in rain water harvesting at a community site. Image courtesy of TIDE

Traditionally, technologies for rural areas have been delivered through centrally planned, centrally executed, subsidy driven, government sponsored “national” programmes. TIDE does not follow the traditional “technology transfer” model of lab to land. Neither does it believe in giving subsidies. It believes in creating an ecosystem of rural entrepreneurs. TIDE ensures that the technologies are replicable and that the necessary legal, administrative, financial and social infrastructure is in place.

Over the last 13 years TIDE has worked on technologies related to biomass energy in non formal rural industries, sericulture, post harvest processing, fish drying, waste to energy conversion and rainwater harvesting. TIDE has established nearly twenty enterprises. Their collective turn over in the last year was Rs 15 million.

More than 8000 rural enterprises and 3000 rural households directly benefit from the improved devices developed and promoted by TIDE and made and delivered by their entrepreneurs. TIDE works extensively in the South Indian states of Karnataka, Tamil Nadu and Kerala.

The Entrepreneurs

Dr. S. Rajagopalan is an alumni of IIT Delhi and also holds a management degree from IIM Bangalore. His father was a post master and he spent his early years in villages. His belief that introduction of appropriate and ecological sound technologies can mitigate the poverty, unemployment and backwardness in villages, led him to join the Karnataka State Council for Science and Technology (KSCST). This government institute focused on development of rural innovations.

Dr. Rajagopalan served in various capacities at KSCST including 10 years in a leadership position as CEO of the organization. After 14 years, Rajagopalan along with a few of his colleagues left the KSCST and founded TIDE in 1993. They believed that activities of building rural markets, developing enabling mechanisms and entrepreneurship development are as important as the work of scientific innovations. They also wanted to prove that non subsidy based, environmentally sound rural enterprises could make economic sense.

He was Chairman of TIDE for the period 1993 to 1999. He now serves as Honorary Chairman of TIDE devoting 20% of his time to the organization. Currently, he is Managing Director, Spatial Data Private Limited (Spinfo) an IT Company specialising in GIS products and solutions. This company was initiated by TIDE as an enterprise to disseminate GIS/RS applications developed at TIDE for the health, education and natural resources sector.

Svati Bhogle—A Master of Technology (M.Tech.) in Chemical Engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology, Powai, Svati too worked with the KSCTC. Here she was involved in technology generation, improvement in energy efficiency, and improvement in the quality of products for various rural process industries.

After 10 years of consulting with various organizations, she joined TIDE in 1997 and soon took over as CEO and secretary of TIDE. Svati believes in the need to work on projects that have a strong focus on technology and society. She sees both science and technology as a tool for designing innovative technologies that meet the needs of a society where both resources and skill are in short supply.