Frugal innovation: a coherent approach to meet the objective of make in India

Diversity in India leads to various challenges that can be met by presenting varied solutions in terms of products, services and their delivery systems. Organizations are using this multiplicity to create products and services that can leverage the talents and capabilities in a virtuous cycle of frugal innovation. In India there are large numbers of businesses involved in producing low cost, high quality industrial and consumer products, using their product innovation capabilities. Right from Arvind Eye care system, Dr. Sethi's Jaipur foot, cheap mobile phone, low cost clay fridge, Tata swatch water purification system to husk power rural electrification system and many more shows India's capabilities to undertake both traditional structured innovation and frugal innovation. It is India's socio-economic context that has motivated entrepreneurs and enterprise to focus on frugal innovation. Many new initiatives intended to assist investment, foster innovation, protect intellectual property and build best in class manufacturing infrastructure have been put in place under the ‘make in India’ initiative. The diversity of our nation form an opportunity to create living labs for frugal innovation, where entrepreneurs work on an idea, experiment on it with limited resources and then design, test, market and deploy affordable solutions for the consumers. Local solutions to local problems, resulting from local research and frugal innovation by local entrepreneurs can truly lead to the dream of make in India initiative possible. The present paper highlights the role of frugal innovation to meet the objective of make in India.