Jugaad Innovation - Jugaad King

This article brings us to the 4th Principle that is, Keep it simple. Dr. Sathya Jeganathan is a pediatrician in Chengalpattu Government Medical College, a rural hospital in South India. She was getting troubled by the low mortality rate of the infants in her hospital. Of each 1000 babies that were born, 39 died in the first four weeks of life. The case was similar across the entire country. Roughly 2.6 crore children were born each year. Out of which 12 lakh died during the 1st month of their birth. The solution was in the west in form of incubators. She tried to import few for her hospital, but the setup itself coasted her lot of money, had high maintenance cost and it required a well trained staff to operate. It was a solution, but for the rich west only. It could not be implemented in the rural India. Undeterred, she tried to do some Jugaad thinking. She decided to design her own incubator, one that was simple, inexpensive and easy to use. She teamed up with neonatal nurses an...

By being frugal, Jugaad innovators not only make cost effective business models but also pass it on to the consumers by providing them with cost effective products and services. Rather than sticking on to what they know and what they can provide, they try and workout ways to help the consumers solve their problems. In 2010, KPIT Cummins Infosystems, an Indian engineering and IT services provider launched Revolo. It is a low-cost plugin parallel hybrid solution for cars. It is a brain child of Tejas Kshatriya, who worked at KPIT Cummings. This idea struck him when he was waiting at a crossing for the signal to turn green. What Revolo does is, it converts kinetic energy generated by applying the breaks into electricity and stores it in the battery. This can be used later on to power the car. The conversion kit consists only of a rechargeable battery pack, an electric motor and a pulley. It can be retrofitted in just six hours by a KPIT Cummings certified mechanic. It can be fi...