by Brice, Tormod, Victor, Elisabeth, Vilde
One of the members of our group was in Shanghai this winter and came across an organization called Mandala Group. Mandala is a social enterprise with the vision to lift millions of people out of poverty via their unique offline mobile phone app store. Mandala Group was born in October 2015, so the organization is very new but has grown rapidly since the start with volunteers (mostly students and young professionals) from all over the world wanting to fight poverty. Vilde joined the team with the co-founders (Callum, Rohit and Martin) in Shanghai. During the time there, they worked on projects and worked on the pitch for the annual Hult Prize Competition – a competition focusing on innovation and the demand side of social entrepreneurship. Here’s a description of the idea behind Mandala Group:
Mandala Group believe that “connectivity is productivity and productivity is what will make poverty history”. Mandala will try to make this happen by providing the world’s first offline app store for the bottom billion. An offline app is a mobile phone based tool that supports people in poverty. It requires no internet, no smart phone and no downloading. This is important because in the target country, India, smart phone penetration is only 25% but mobile phone penetration is over 90%. The offline apps can help people transfer money, identify fake medicine, learn to read and much more. Today there are a growing number of offline mobile apps, and all are trying to solve major development challenges. But there is no current market place for all these apps, so Mandala Group made one. This is the first version of the offline app store (how it looked like earlier this year):
As an offline app store, Mandala Group provide a market place for offline apps, a common distribution and training channel and a platform for developers to build offline apps. Their app store is a combination of Mandala originals and partnered solutions. For each offline app, there is a description, a price per month and an access code.
Technically, an offline app generally works as follows:
A person makes a phone call or sends a text message to a phone that is connected to a computer. The computer processes the data from the phone call or text message. To process the data, the computer gathers information from backend databases and user profile. Then the computer sends the information back to the user.
Mandala Group was on a three months’ research trip to Mumbai last year to find out how the platform is supposed to work:
- Build: They build their offline app store – a marketplace that contains the solutions to the problems.
- Connect: They connect urban slum dwellers to an offline app store by their partner NGO network.
- Set up: Users register at local NGOs and learn how to use the offline apps.
- Deliver: The user can now begin using Mandalas services on their mobile phone.
For instance, an unemployed slum dweller in Mumbai can be helped to find a job through Mandala’s services. In order to help him find a job, Mandala has built M-Naukri – an offline job portal. It works as follows: The man goes to a local NGO partner who train the man on how to use M-Naukri. With the help of the NGO, the man fills out his user profile which goes to the database. The database then matches the man with the existing job opportunities and he then receives information on his mobile phone about job opportunities.
Mandala is a social enterprise aimed to help people in poverty, but the company will still charge the end-users a small amount for their services. The average app price per month is a small amount of $0,55. They strongly believe that end-users will pay these small amounts because people in the slums of India are already paying for these kind of services. The cost is less than 0,5% of their monthly income and payments are spread throughout the year. The variable cost is $0,35 leaving a $0,20 margin. In that way, Mandala Group has a business model that focuses on helping people out of poverty (responsible), but at the same time, it is supposed to generate income in the long run (profitable).
Mandala Group has launched a crowdfunding campaign and have been on the ground in India this summer to develop new products, create marketing campaigns, do corporate pitching, meetings with NGOs, train local teachers etc. It will be interesting to in see which direction the social enterprise develops and if it manages to become both responsible and profitable at the same time.
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What a fascinating concept. I was recently working in Nicaragua, and although a large portion of their population would spend a large amount of their savings on a smartphone for social status, many of them with smart phones either did not have data for them, or purchased very little and primarily relied on wifi to surf the web.
This application seems extremely scalable to parts of the world beyond China and India. I just wanted to clarify: To access Mandela’s market place, or offline app store the user sends a text message to a phone number given to them by an NGO? Or the offline app store its self is a physical location, and once the potential consumer has decided on an application he or she then sends a text message to a phone that will text them back the application with the information?
This idea sounds like an incredible gateway for development in poverty stricken countries. If consumers are already paying money for recruitment services in an informal economy without a guaranteed return of service, this application may have incredible legitimizing service as well for matching consumers with jobs.
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This sounds like a great initiative for creating sustainable opportunities for impoverished people living in India and China. I really like the concept of combining a for profit business with trying to create a better living for the poor, which enables it to be able to operate in the long run by not relying on charity. A very interesting read.
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