Despite being a zealous over-achiever – having graduated with a Bachelors from Princeton and a Masters from Cambridge, and then going on to launch her social venture m.Paani – Akanksha Hazari is undoubtedly modest about her achievements, taking every opportunity to praise her team.

She launched m.Paani having spent a year working in agriculture in rural India where she witnessed the mobile phone revolution in action and noticed the unjust paradox between the way in which international brands, such as Coca-Cola and Unilever, are able to reach these remote communities, but that government fails to provide the most basic services for them. 

Photo credit: TEDxOxbridge

Pioneers Post: What is m.Paani?

Akanksha Hazari: m.Paani is the world’s first mobile based loyalty programme focussed on serving the mass market or the lowest income segment in emerging markets.

What that means is the low income user has a loyalty programme where, similar to other loyalty programmes, they can earn points when they spend with specific companies or local stores. Those points can be exchanged for rewards that can change lives...Rewards like water filters, English learning books and sporting equipment.

The idea is that this impact-focussed loyalty programme can change consumers’ lives for the better, whilst simultaneously making social impact part of the corporates’ core business strategy. They want to build loyalty among the masses, so they can do this by having an impact.

Starting-up and smart data

After being awarded the Hult Prize in 2011 by President Clinton and receiving the US$1m seed capital from it to start the business, m.Paani officially launched in 2013. The team have since conducted a successful research pilot in Mumbai and are now ready to partner with corporates to scale the business initially across India, and ultimately internationally. 

PP: How do the relationships with corporates work? What are they more interested in – the potential to improve customer loyalty or the social impact?

AH: First and foremost, businesses are interested in business – unfortunately or fortunately – and so we very much start with that conversation. We also think that is far more sustainable. When we go into a company the first meeting will be with their head of marketing or their head of sales.

We will say we want to deal with your core business – because CSR projects comes and go. All the loyalty programmes offered by companies are being run by independent loyalty companies, so the business of companies dealing with loyalty service providers is an old one. 

While they may already have a company working on the loyalty of high-value customers, we’re going to be the solution for low income customers that make up around 70% of the customer base and have very low loyalty today. 

PP: Can you explain the concept of smart data?

AH: The business sector has been using data for a long time to sell you more t-shirts, more shoes by knowing where you are, what your age is and what your education level is. Why can’t we do the same thing for the lowest income sector where we know who they are? But what we use that information for is offering them rewards that will help them overcome serious challenges they are facing, for example a lack of access to education and clean water. 

Leading the way

PP: Who are your role models?

AH: Firstly, there’s my mum, which is very cheesy but it’s true. She raised us whilst going to school and working two jobs. She’s super-human to me so in terms of my day-to-day values, she is my primary role model.

I also really admire the Larry Pages of the world because I think they’ve built phenomenal organisations that have fundamentally changed the way the world works. Google has changed the way we look at, research and aggregate everything. Information changed because of Google. 

PP: What’s your biggest business mistake?

AH: I think we could have gone faster. We spent a year doing a research pilot, but retrospectively I think we didn’t need to spend as much time in research and I would have liked us to move a lot faster. 

Over time we’ve made mistakes in hiring and have learnt to create a much more robust hiring process. This is still a learning curve.

And I have a lot of personal flaws I’m working on. I know I’m incredibly impatient – which is not always the best thing. 

PP: What’s next?

AH: I would say the priorities for m.Paani today are…

1. Scale: achieving what we have on a small scale on a much bigger one and structuring our organisation so that we can scale not just in India but elsewhere in the world.
2. Culture, mission, values: as we grow – when I started it was just me, now we are 16 people and we’re projected to be close to 100 people by the end of the year – we must work out how to build an organisation with a strong values foundation. We need to stay true to who we are in the many things that can distract you. For example we have a huge data vision and data can be used in many ways, not all of which are aligned with our values, so we need to make sure we are always true to our commitment to our members and protecting their data, honouring the trust they’ve put in us. 

Akanksha is an Ashoka fellow, you can watch her TEDx Talk here. Ashoka is a global network of social pioneers working to tackle the world's biggest challenges and an international champion for social entrepreneurship.

Photo credit: Abhijit Kar Gupta