The Housing School
Reporting from the ShelterTech Accelerator bootcamp
What do transportable do-it-yourself cabins, up-skilling and certifying construction talent and bio-engineering a solution for sewage treatment have in common? They are answering the clarion call for India to create an affordable housing ecosystem that is stronger and more entrepreneurial. Initiated as a partnership between Habitat for Humanity’s Terwilliger Center for Innovation in Shelter and Centre for Innovation Incubation and Entrepreneurship, ShelterTech Accelerator has been identifying, fostering, and accelerating start-ups that offer innovative solutions that address critical concerns in the affordable housing segment.
Recently, the program selected three startups out of 50 applicants to be part of its second cohort: Modulus Housing, EcoSTP Technologies, and Kaushal Bhaav Skill Solutions. Modulus Housing has developed foldable, portable houses that can be set up on-site in just a few hours. Kaushal Bhaav Skill Solutions trains unskilled masons to use traditional building practices in developing affordable homes for people in the lower-income segment. EcoSTP designs sewage treatment plants that work on natural principles — using anaerobic bacteria — and require no electricity or operators.
While all the three startups are at a business development stage, they have already started implementing their solutions. EcoSTP Technologies has set up its plants across many cities such as Bengaluru, Delhi, Hyderabad and Goa; Kaushal Bhaav is working with masons in Rajasthan.
ShelterTech Accelerator has selected these startups not only based on the strength, feasibility and viability of their solutions but also the skillset and experience of their respective founding teams. EcoSTP’s co-founder Tharun Kumar has nearly two decades of leadership experience, besides his expertise in wastewater treatment; his co-founder Simar Kohli has been developing ideas and innovations around water-related challenges. On the other hand, ShreeRam and Gobinath from Modulus are young civil engineers-turned-entrepreneurs and their work on foldable structures are poised to take a special place in the future of construction. With a media and communications background, Laxman Shankar — the CEO of Kaushal Bhaav — has a had a diverse decade-long career in training and skilling, capacity building, entrepreneurial development programmes. Co-founder Priyanka, a journalist by qualification, adds to the strength of the startup through her rich experience in the development sector.
On April 26 and 27, representatives from these startups attended the two-day ShelterTech Accelerator bootcamp at CIIE in Ahmedabad. An integral part of the program, the bootcamp aims to help the budding startups identify and tackle the hurdles in their current approach to expanding their business. The startups benefited from the expert guidance of lead facilitators Sombodhi Ghosh, co-founder and COO at ChironX.ai, and Mainak Bhattacharya, Head of Partnerships & Strategy at ChironX.ai. A team of experts from Habitat and CIIE were also present to provide additional guidance to the participants.
The two-day bootcamp started with a program overview and the approaches that Habitat and CIIE follow towards investments and business support in form of advisory and connections. This was followed by the business pitches from the cohort. The hands-on workshop began with the startups, guided by the facilitators, honing the articulation of their products’ value proposition and underlying problems. This helped them map their stakeholders, understand the product market fit, and break down the market’s resistance towards product adoption. The startups also identified the customer segments.
In the initial sessions, the startups articulated and analysed their needs and problems in responding to customer interests, identifying loopholes in their value propositions. EcoSTP Technologies and Kaushal Bhaav, which already had their list of target customer segments, developed a more nuanced value proposition for each customer. Modulus Housing identified the customer segments that it must prioritise and the channels it can use to approach them.
Following this, the cohort endeavoured to comprehend their unique selling propositions. They also used the feedback collected from their early customers to strategise for a better way forward. The first day concluded with the startups learning how to better manage inputs from different customer segments and to use these for making smarter, customer-oriented business decisions in the future.
The ShelterTech Accelerator’s exhaustive first day crystallised the vision for the startups, with all three identifying gaps in their original pitch and revising the same. By the first half of the second day, the startups presented their revised business model, with more explicit value propositions for each customer segment.
The one-on-one sessions at the end of the bootcamp allowed each startup to delve into the specifics of their product offerings and get coaching on areas that are most critical for their success. As EcoSTP Technologies’ Simar Kohli said, “The learnings that we took home made us revisit our business pitch, and we have started approaching the target customers with a different value proposition.”
Learn more about Habitat for Humanity’s Terwilliger Center for Innovation in Shelter at http://bit.ly/HabitatInAP-TCIS and keep up to date with Habitat’s work across Asia-Pacific on Facebook and Twitter.
