Business Innovation for Rural Development Challenges 

Meet your instructors

Solomon Darwin

Executive Director, Center for Growth Markets

Rhonda Shrader

Executive Director, Berkeley Haas Entrepreneurship Program

Gauthier Vasseur

Executive Director, Fisher Center for Business Analytics

Benjamin Bradbury

Lecturer, Haas School of Business

Mentors

Dr. Anil Shah

Cardiologist, Business Entrepreneur and Chairman of the Smart Village Movement

Dr.Iyyanki Muralikrishna

Retired Director of JNTU

Arding Hsu

Retired Siemens Senior Executive

Deepu Rathi

Chief Customer Success Officer, MayaMD.ai

Gautam Bandyopadhyay

Uday Kapoor

Engineer, IIT Delhi; Documenter, Computer History Museum, Silicon Valley

Chris Bush

Executive Director, Institute for Business Innovation & Former CEO, Monarch Media

SVM Fellows

Tulenam Laloo

Co-Mentor, Partner-Smart Village Movement

Alvarene Kharwanlang

Fellow (Healthcare)

Divine Dkhar

Fellow (Education)

Mebalaaihun Sun

Fellow (Agriculture)

Vanya Marak

Fellow (Agriculture)

Firstjune Mary Rymbai

Fellow (Household)

About the Program

In partnership with the Government of Meghalaya and Smart Villages Movement,  the Center for Growth Markets at the UC Berkeley Haas School of Business is offering a program in Business Innovation to Indian colleges, universities, and professional students. This program helps students build skills in innovation, entrepreneurship, and business models both through lectures and by completing a group project that involves proposing a solution and creating a business model for real-world challenges faced by villagers in rural India.
 
In the program, students first will receive three weeks of online lectures from instructors at the University of California, Berkeley, as well as mentorship from corporate and nonprofit organizations executives. The lectures will cover a range of topics: Open Innovation, Design Thinking, Lean Launchpad, and No-Code Data Analytics, to teach students the business and analytical skills they’ll need to complete their projects. Students will then work on a project for the next 8 weeks with the help of fellows on-the-ground and mentors. They will submit the project at the end of the program for evaluation to receive a certificate. 
Access to Project Platform & Mentors

While working on their projects, students will have access to both a weekly session with one of the program instructors, as well as to online office hours with dedicated mentors who can answer their questions and provide them with direction. They also will have access to the Smart Village platform, an online tool that will provide them with a variety of resources and contacts to help them.

By completing the lecture and project components of this program, students will gain a strong foundation in business innovation and analytics skills. Through their projects, they will also be providing solutions to help solve economic development challenges in rural India. These types of social business solutions are critical to help India continue to grow its economy and the human capital of its people, particularly in villages.

Challenges

Agriculture

Education

Healthcare

Household

 

Past Projects
  1. Bamboo Project
  2. Dried Kiwi Project
  3. Lemongrass Oil
  4. AI-Based Healthcare – Quit Tobacco

Reading

Required Materials

Required Pre-Work and Reading

  1. Read the HBR article by Steve Blank.
    https://hbr.org/2013/05/why-the-lean-start-up-changes-everything
  2. Watch the free Udacity course videos by Steve Blank. Attached is the link:
    https://www.udacity.com/course/how-to-build-a-startup–ep245. The total time is about 5 hours.
  3.  Petal diagram to identify competitors (including potential). Please read the article from
    Steve Blank.https://steveblank.com/2013/11/08/a-new-way-to-look-at-competitors/.  A lot of good materials there.
  4. Value chart to do comparison. Please watch the following video.
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Upt_28d-WGg
  5. VRIO diagram to validate if the competitive advantages are sustainable. Please watch the
    following video. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RMlbCpcpSt8
  6. Submit group’s “What for Whom for What Statement” (WHAT are the products/services
    that create value for WHOM customers for WHAT problem ) and a short text on
    usage scenario of selected solution by the end of 1st lecture. Note that that these are
    hypotheses and will be validated and changed during the practice of Lean Startup methodology.

Resources

Meghalaya Pre-registration
Non-Meghalaya Pre-registration

After you complete your pre-registration form, you will receive an email from UC Berkeley with next steps. 

Frequently Asked Questions

Coming soon…

Do you have questions about the course content? Contact us.

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