Media Lab Asia: Renovating Business Model for Underserved

Media Lab Asia (MLA) has been incepted in 2001 with the collaboration of MIT Media Lab and Department of Electronics & Information Technology (DEITY), Government of India. It is working on the paradigm of collaborative research from the lab to land in developing and operationalizing technologies to bridge the gap through educating, equipping and empowering common man. MLA is working in four sectors: livelihood, healthcare, empowerment of the disabled and education. MLA is successful in collaborating with Research & Development (R&D) organizations, institutions in Government, Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs), academia and industry. A long list of collaborators of MLA includes 59 partner agencies. MLA role, however, had confined to provide funding to the partner agencies. The collaborative organization develops product, tests and launches the projects. The reach of the project touches major states in India. eGalla, Chic, mDhanwanthari, and Sehat-Saathi are some of the projects developed by MLA and collaborators. eGalla is a retail management software, and Chic is developed to simplify the traditional craft for livelihood generation. mDhanwanthari and Sehat-Saathi are based on healthcare to rural communities. MLA has developed 75 projects since its inception. The projects have reached the beneficiary but lack in scale and commercialization. The parameter of success for MLA includes the potential for commercialization of the products or projects and self-sustaining mechanism of the impact of these products and projects. There are not many obligations for commercial success being a Section 25 company; however, a self-sustaining mechanism was critical. DEITY, the parent organization, has sought external support to develop a new business model to overcome the limitation.