MBAs Without Borders: Lessons from Tamil Nadu, India

What does it feel like to smoke 400 cigarettes in one day*?  How would it feel to work with an appliance that kills more people each year than HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis, and malaria combined?  Welcome to a reality that nearly half of humanity faces on a daily basis – the world of the traditional indoor cookstove.

The damage from indoor cooking smoke is horrendous" stated president of World Bank, Jim Yong Kim. “Each year, four million people die from exposure to smoke from these stoves." Consider this number again – four million people.  This is a quiet pandemic.  Yet unlike a disease or natural disaster, it can be resolved through human ingenuity, entrepreneurial spirit, and a willingness to help others.  Thankfully, these three ingredients are coming together in a unique collaboration: Sustaintech, a young social enterprise based in Tamil Nadu, India that sells commercial clean cookstoves, PYXERA Global’s MBAs Without Borders, an initiative that sends MBA graduates to volunteer their professional expertise in emerging markets, and Penn State graduate, Paul Belknap.

MBAs Without Borders helps local business to grow

Paul recently embarked on a five-month pro bono assignment through MBAs Without Borders to help grow Sustaintech’s sales, profitability, and impact in India.  Since arriving in August, Paul has performed a market analysis, immersed himself in Sustaintech’s portfolio to assess consumer needs, and identified barriers that were impacting Sustaintech’s ability to distribute large numbers of commercial cookstoves quickly and efficiently. At the moment, he is working on the design of a distributor network poised to scale the organization’s business throughout the state of Tamil Nadu and eventually, the rest of India.  “I’m really excited that we are getting a distributor channel up and running,” Paul said. “Adding this channel has great potential for Sustaintech, including helping the social enterprise reach more people.  A local distribution of partners could help to address many of the challenges that Sustaintech faces right now. But we will need to find the right incentives and support mechanisms to make the program successful for both the distributors and Sustaintech.” Paul’s excitement about Sustaintech’s efforts to transform India’s commercial cookstove industry sparked him to author a piece on The New Global Citizen about their work.

MBA graduates increasingly favor social purposes

Paul exemplifies a growing trend among MBA graduates.  He seeks to apply a social purpose to business theories he learned in graduate school such as market analysis, sales strategy, and emerging market landscapes. His assignment with Sustaintech is taking him far beyond academic learning and providing him with hands-on experience that will serve him well in his professional development.

Intelligent failure in emerging markets

“Business in the real world is a lot messier than the cases we were taught in business school,” Paul pointed out.   “At a very basic level, in MBA coursework, access to data is a given.  Yet, gaining access to good data is a large obstacle for companies in emerging markets like Sustaintech.”  Social start-ups in emerging markets have less established models to follow and this often means trial by error.  In order to be successful, they need to fail intelligently by learning from their mistakes and making adjustments along the way.

For example, Sustaintech, found that one model of stoves was damaged frequently because the firewood logs supplied to road side restaurants were too long.  Yet cooks jammed these logs into their stoves.  The obvious reaction to this is, “Why don’t they just chop down the logs?” Take into consideration, however, that the typical roadside restaurant in Tamil Nadu uses nearly 80 kilos of firewood each day.  It would be an impossible endeavor, logistically and in regards to available resources, to chop all of the necessary wood down to size. Sustaintech has already fortified the stove with steel mesh and is exploring the idea of supplying mini chainsaws to recurring customers.

Local expertise is paramount

At business school, you learn the importance of understanding your target market in order to create products that serve their unique needs. In a high context culture such as India, the need to have a localized lens regarding product design and marketing is paramount. Sustaintech exemplifies a social enterprise that understands the importance of local expertise. Working with Sustaintech has given Paul the ability to learn first-hand how localizing product development and outreach can lead to success in emerging markets.

Clean cookstoves: two decades in the making

Sustaintech’s cookstove design stems from nearly two decades of research on consumer mindset and lifestyles that focused specifically on the use of cookstoves by the “base of the pyramid” in India. Today, not only are the company’s cookstoves designed and tested specifically for its customers and their unique cooking styles – the company is also taking a localized approach to sales and marketing. The distribution network that Paul is working on will focus on building relationships with local distribution partners who are already working with local restaurants owners – a time-saving solution compared to cold sales calls in unknown areas.  

“We are definitely learning as we go to make this happen,” Paul noted, “but if we can find the right solution we can greatly increase the number of Sustaintech clean cookstoves in the market and thus the impact that they are making.” 

The convergence of these three actors – Sustaintech’s dedication to providing clean cookstoves, Paul’s commitment to leveraging his business skills acquired through his MBA, and MBAs Without Borders’ ability to bring them together – exemplifies the power of cross-industry collaboration and innovative approaches to tackling serious and direct threats to human health.  There are approximately 800,000 road side restaurants and tea stands in India, and even a marginal increase in the use of clean cookstoves in Tamil Nadu, India would result in thousands of lives saved.  

*Various studies have stated that cooking on a typical household indoor cookstove amounts to smoking the equivalent of 40 cigarettes a day. Using this same formula for commercial cookstoves, Sustaintech estimates that the equivalence increases to 400 cigarettes a day.

About Jailan Adly

Jailan Adly is the Director of MBAs Without Borders (MWB) at PYXERA Global, where she is responsible for the overall design and implementation of the MWB program. She also manages International Corporate Volunteer programs for companies such as IBM, FedEx, John Deere, Medtronic, and Novartis across multiple continents. In addition, Ms. Adly serves as PYXERA Global’s lead tourism expert on various projects.

Prior to joining PYXERA Global, Ms. Adly was the Deputy Director at Rising Sun Energy Center where she designed and managed strategic leadership training programs.  Ms. Adly received a master's degree in Tourism Administration and a Bachelor of Arts in International Affairs from The George Washington University.

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