Social Entrepreneurship Vs Foreign Aid - Kind of Like The Pig and The Chicken

There's been a lot of discussion about the effectiveness of foreign aid, INGO's and donations versus social entrepreneurship when it comes to dealing with issues of poverty, infrastructure development, etc., especially in developing countries -- and I can't help but think of the classic story about the chicken and the pig, which goes something like this:

A pig and a chicken are walking down a road. The chicken looks at the pig and says, “Hey, why don’t we open a restaurant?” 

The pig looks back at the chicken and says, “Good idea, what do you want to call it?” 

The chicken thinks about it and says, “Why don’t we call it ‘Ham and Eggs’?” 

“I don’t think so,” says the pig, “I’d be committed, but you’d only be involved.”

Although we can't make blanket statements, but for the most part, it seems to me social entrepreneurs are committed, whereas foreign aid and donations are involved. You can't bring about sustainable change without having your skin in the game.

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How to Count Beans when you don't have QuickBooks

I still recall the sense of relief when I mastered (well, sort-of) the art of start-up accounting during my first CEO gig. Our accountant (who visited us twice a month) gave me a crash course in QuickBooks, taught me how to read PNL, Balance Sheet, A/P, A/R - and also how to make entries for money coming and money going out. I have never been good at accounting, but I got QuickBooks - and pretty soon, I was dangerous enough to keep track of the business via these wonderful reports that QuickBooks could spit out on-demand.

But then came the two companies that I set up in Nepal, so far away from QuickBooks land. The first one is a software company, and we hired an accountant, an auditor (and also a lawyer to complete the triumvirate) -- and they were able to concoct something in Excel that let me get the reports I needed -- so far, so good. However, the second company we set up in Nepal last year - our solar energy company Gham Power -- now that totally threw me off.

For starters, there's more retail activity compared to software business - lots of client transactions, inventory to track,  VAT calculations, import tax, custom clearance, supplier credit lines, etc. etc., and I was very afraid. So I asked our team to get a decent accounting system in place - "it must be computerized, and we need to have up-to-date data each day", I said. 

Taking a cue from my startup experience in the US, I first suggested QuickBooks, but our accoutants found the interface too weird - "this is made for people who don't know accounting, we are accountants and we do direct ledger entries, dammit!". Well, you have to pick you battles, so I let them figure out the right course.

First - they brought in a software called Tally, I think with a trial license (the actual license cost was about USD $1,000 plus yearly support fee - yikes! higher than my beloved QuickBooks). Then they took about a month to set it up, and then told us it still wasn't right, and probably will not be right until we bought the actual license AND got a consultant to set it up.  Phew!

Meanwhile, I needed our numbers, so there was a parallel system in place using good old Excel, which takes 2 full-time staff to maintain - one to record each financial transction on paper and compile paperwork, the other to make entries in Excel. Needless to say, it is far off from where it needs to be, but sort of gets the job done.

Now I'm at a point where I'd rather just have someone scan all the financial paperwork and send it to a QuickBooks consultant who'll at least get me what I need. But one would think there's gotta be a better way - right?

I'd love to hear from fellow startup entrepreneurs in this part of the world (Nepal, India, China, etc.) on this. What has worked for you? Anyone use QuickBooks, or found a QuickBooks for this part of the world? Is Tally our only option as far as software goes? 

Until then, we keep counting beans using Excel, while dreaming of QuickBooks.

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Multi-Lingual Keyboard - Lekhika 2007

I was very encouraged today to hear the announcement of Lekhika 2007 - a wordprocessing application that covers ten scripts and 3000 characters and supports Windows, MAC and Linux, with a unique way of converting regular keyboards into local language keyboards by creating a simulated keyboard on the bottom part of the screen. See a demo/clip here -- http://www.ibnlive.com/videos/52667/lekhika-takes-technology-to-masses.html

This summer when I was in Nepal, I was fortunate to connect with a group of people working on Open Learning Exchange Nepal (OLE Nepal) -- who are working to produce localized content and educational material aimed for OLPC (One Laptop Per Child) project. OLE Nepal is putting a lot of effort to produce Nepali-based content, but the XO laptop's board is still US English-based -- which stresses that a key obstacle for a truly localized computer is not having a local language-based keyboard.

There have been keyboards that support multiple languages (Japanese keyboards comes to mind), but just like any business, they are meant for languages that have a sizable market that wants to buy and use computers. But what about languages like Nepali for example? Being a developing country with no computer manufacturing facility, where can Nepal expect to get laptops that have a Nepali keyboard? And likewise, I'm sure there are so many other students that will be able to get much more usage out of a computer if they had one in their language.

So I hope software like Lekhika paves the way for a new line of innovations that make it easy to enable localized keyboards, and a truly localized computing experience. Sure, because of its origins, the dual nature of keyboard (i.e. local language + English) will still be needed for some time. But if projects like OLPC are truly aiming to have a laptop for every child (regardless of what language they speak and where in the world they live) -- then they must incorporate a solution for 100% localization which includes the keyboard.

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Conquerer of Crises

Prayer lamps @ Sankata Mandir - Kathmandu, Nepal

I've been on sort of a hiatus all summer (if you can't tell from the blog posts or lack thereof). Anyway, I worked from our Kathmandu (Nepal) office for almost all of July/August, and also spent quality time with the entire extended family.

It's one thing to read and hear about globalization, but utterly amazing when you are smack dab in the middle of it. Kathmandu is, well, increasingly chaotic. A coalition government is struggling to restore stability, while there are protests of all kinds happening on a daily basis, sometimes going to the extremes of calling a "bandh" (general strike), which mostly means no vehicles allowed on the streets (except for ambulances and tourist buses, after all the local economy badly needs the tourists).

Still, life goes on, people figure out a way to get their business done. For IT-based businesses, these "bandh"'s really don't matter a lot. "High-speed" (usually 128 kbps) connection literally provides the information superhighway to get past the "bandh". Let's just hope no one stops the traffic there.

For logical thinkers, it is hard to explain how the city/country functions at all -- but it does, and has been doing so for quite some time. The rate of technology adoption is just nuts. Entrepreneurship is on the rise. All the while an uncertain political climate looms, but perhaps people have figured out over time -- this too shall pass -- and carry a strange confidence that their families, jobs, businesses will somehow always find a way to survive.

The Sankata Mandir is an old temple right in the heart of old Kathmandu. We got there as I followed my family through lots of temples. I was mostly looking after the kids, not being much for organized religion myself, but hoping somehow this might help our young ones develop an appreciation for the higher powers. Most of these temple, I'm sorry to say, are uninspiring -- but something about Sankata felt different. Perhaps it's the name -- a loose translation will be "conquerer of crises" -- that symbolized the current state of Kathmandu and Nepal.

And so even after all the daily accounts of various "crises" -- I came back hopeful, for just like these prayer lamps in Sankata Mandir, there are enough souls in Nepal that carry a strong yet silent power inside them. While these people claim they don't know what's keeping the place together in midst of these chaos, they don't need to look any further, just need to look inside themselves. I truly hope they conquer all their crises.

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