I first spotted Myshkin Ingawale at the Social Capital Market (SOCAP) conference in 2011 where he was showcasing his medical device ToucHb. I was enamored by his easy to use technology for detecting anemia, a major medical condition commonly found in women and especially pregnant women which if not treated could be life threatening to both the mother and child. I featured his startup in my post – Five Social Startups That Will Make You Go Wow. I was stunned again this year when I heard about his new invention uChek and connected with him recently to understand how and what motivates him to develop such cool technologies.

Deepa Chaudhary (DC): You are an Electrical Engineer and have done Ph.D in Management. How did you venture into the medical field and came up with these ingenious ideas?

Myshkin Ingawale (MI): It’s pretty much a team thing. I started Biosense Technologies in 2008 with my school friends who come from different professions – doctors, engineers, designers. One of my doctor friend had experienced first hand problems in public healthcare system in India. His experiences inspired us to develop ToucHb, an affordable, easy to use medical device that can enable doctors and health care workers in rural, low-resource areas to proactively screen for anemia right at the doorsteps of pregnant women.

DC:Tell us about uChek and how people can use it?

MI: uChek is a smartphone app that people can use to test their urine to regularly assess and manage their health. Urine testing is used by clinicians for 25 medical conditions, including complications of diabetes, kidney problems and Urinary Tract Infection. Now with our app people can run the urine test right at the comfort of their home and can instantly get results. The test result shows presence of compounds like glucose, proteins, bilirubin, ketone and more that could provide information on range of medical conditions. To get started one has to first download the app, currently available for iPhone at the app store for 99 cents and buy the uChek kit for $40 which consists of of the cuboid, the mat, and sample dipsticks. The uChek system automatically records the test strip result and log test data. The stored results may be analyzed as a trend over time. We’ll soon have the app for Android phones too.

DC: Tell us how does it feel to be a TED Fellow and to present at TED?

MI: It’s a great honor and privilege to be a TED Fellow. Feels great to be surrounded by other people who are all doing ridiculously crazy things in their respective areas. I was pretty nervous to present, especially the second time over as I had to do a live urine test.

DC: How has the TED Fellowship helped you in your work?

MI: The TED fellowship has definitely given credibility to our work. Being on the TED stage has helped create global awareness about the issue. We’ve had so many offers for help, direct and indirect that has really helped to further our work.

DC: So how did TED spot you?

MI: It was at the Unreasonable Institute (Incubator for social startups) demo day where I showcased my technology ToucHb for detecting anemia. The TED people present there really liked what I showed and encouraged me to apply for TED Fellowship. To become a TED fellow one needs to go through the formal application process.

DC: You’ve recently authored a book called, ‘The Unreasonable Fellows’, could you tell us about that?

MI: The book is a story of 10 crazy people on a mission to change the world. They were my fellow mates at the Unreasonable Institute. The institute brings together highly talented and crazy people to live together under the same roof for six weeks. When I was there with these people, it was like a novel unfolding around me. So I decided to capture their stories and started interviewing 10 of the entrepreneurs about their personal life, how they grew up, what motivated them to do what they do, what they plan to accomplish, etc. I started writing the book while I was there in 2011 and just got around to completing it. Which was good in a way as I got to capture what happened with their ventures post the Unreasonable Institute. Many have done really well, some are doing good and many have failed. The entrepreneurs have been really candid in their interviews about what led to their failures, how they changed path, etc. If you’re interested in learning about the stories of these entrepreneurs and how they are doing today, you could get a copy of the book here.

DC: So what’s the next big thing you are working on?

MI: We’ve already covered urine, maybe sweat analysis might be next

To learn more about uchek and how it works, visit their site.

BRCK is a wifi router, plus a battery backup all wrapped up into one portable box that charges itself and provides internet when power is available and maintains your internet connection when you lose power or when your primary internet connection goes down.

The BRCK itself gets its internet access using a GSM modem like the ones in your mobile phone. Ushahidi claims the battery would last around 8 hours which should be enough time for power to return and the BRCK to recharge itself.

I believe this is a fantastic product for people who suffer from poor internet and power supply. The device could even potentially save lives by helping people maintain connectivity and open communication channels during storms and other events.

Ushahidi has launched a Kickstarter campaign to fund the production of the BRCK and are offering some cool swag to the backers.

The positive outcomes for data driven businesses has got nonprofit thinkers and leaders excited to try and spark the same kind of excitement around data in the social sector. Currently, there is a talk around how big data can fuel social good, my goal with this article is to help nonprofits and social startups understand how they can apply data thinking in their everyday work and hopefully demystify this trend.

Nonprofits Are About Small Data

First up, do not be daunted by all the talk around big data. The truth is that most social startups and nonprofits will never have to deal with big data. Big data refers to terabytes of data being generated every single day as a side effect of our activities on the web. Big Data requires large technology investments from storage, Hadoop clusters to engineering expertise before one can begin to process and derive valuable insights. Typically nonprofit data is not that large as to requiring big data technologies however it’s still important to learn to collect and manage data.  A good definition of small data is that which can be stored, processed and used on an everyday computer. Small data does not need big complex tools, like Hadoop clusters which are extensively used in the big data world.

Where Does Data Come From?

There are different types of data that a nonprofit generates on a daily basis that can be used in deriving key business insights. Web and social media data, donor and volunteer data, client/customer data. Being conscious and aware of the data you have and are generating is the first step to using data to grow your bottom line.

How to Manage and Mine Data?

There are many simple and free tools out there which nonprofits can use to manage and analyze their data so as to drive decisions. I’ll like to highlight few key ones here.

Salesforce CRM – Great for managing all your people interactions data be it your donors, volunteers, customers, partners, sales people etc. With Salesforce CRM you can track all your interactions, activities and transactions in one place, which can be accessed from any place and from any device. Salesforce Foundation has a very active CRM donation program to nonprofits and social startups. You can find more information about that on their website. The Salesforce CRM dashboard and report generation capabilities are extremely powerful, providing you real-time insights about things you would  like to track and act on for instance funds raised so far and their sources, top donors, top volunteers etc. It basically takes over your excel sheet, making it easy to store, share and gain insights.

Google Analytics – A free tool from Google which helps you monitor your website activity as it happens. Real-time insights into how visitors use your site, how they arrived on your site, where they are coming from, how you can keep them coming back and much more. This kind of data is very important to measure as it helps you understand what’s working and what’s not and what can be done better to gain and engage visitors. For instance knowing how people are discovering your website (Is Facebook, Google or some other site sending traffic to your site) and which part of the world they are coming from can help you be more strategic about all your promotional activities.

Email Analytics – Emails are a critical part of any campaign. Email campaign management solutions such as MailChimp or Vertical Response allows you to not only successfully send out a large number of emails but also allows you to be data driven by providing rich analytics such as click through rates, user engagement numbers etc. This data allows you to test various email formats and content in an analytical way so as to get the best results from your campaign. A great example of this is how the Obama campaign successfully tested various email subject lines and content to maximize donations. Most of the $690 million Obama raised online came from data driven fundraising e-mails.

Google Fusion Tables – Is an amazing visualization tool from Google. It helps you convert your data into images and stories that you could use to educate people about your cause and impact. It also helps you find related data sets that are made open on the web and to collaborate to present the big picture. Fusion Tables are being extensively used by journalist and in crisis response to tell compelling stories and presents a great opportunity for nonprofits to tell their stories backed by data. You can learn more about Fusion Tables here.

The above tools are really simple to use and something you could apply in your everyday work to be more data driven. If you need expertise, have large data sets and would like to draw some key insights or have a well defined data problem, you could approach Data Kind (formerly known as Data Without Borders). They conduct weekend data-dives and have access to data scientists who they could help place on a short-term basis in your organization.

Slow Money is asking Americans to rethink their investments – distant investments in abstract schemes or local investments that will benefit our communities over the long term by creating jobs, supporting local businesses and fostering the local food chain. The goal is to have 1 million Americans investing 1% in local food systems, within a decade.

In the 21st century, investing is not only about markets and sectors and asset allocation. In a world that is speeding up and heating up, losing its soil and losing its sense of common purpose, investing is also about reconnecting and healing broken relationships. What could make more sense than taking a small amount of our money, turning in a new direction, and putting it to work near where we live, in things that we understand, starting with food.” – says Slow Money Founder and former venture capitalist Woody Tasch.

Slow Money movement though young is spreading rapidly – over 24,000 people have signed the Slow Money Principles, a new vision of finance that promotes soil fertility, diversity, care of the commons and nonviolence . To date, Slow Money has invested over $24 million in more than 190 small food enterprises around the country and a few abroad.There are now 16 Slow Money chapters in the U.S. and one in France.

Next week in Boulder, Colorado (April 29-30) Slow Money holds its fourth national gathering; bringing together farmers, food entrepreneurs from around the country and a roster of conscious investors and star speakers from the world of finance, food and the environmental movement. The conference will be live streamed both the days, presenting a wonderful opportunity for you to learn about the Slow Money movement and thoughts of dozens of leaders, activists, investors and food entrepreneurs on the future of food and money. To join the live broadcast, click here

To learn more, visit the slow money website. The founder of Slow Money, Woody Tasch has also authored a book, Inquiries into the Nature of Slow Money: Investing As If Food, Farms and Fertility Mattered.

Changemakers  with consumer ideas are able to offer niche and inspiring products, thus attracting backers and hitting their fundraising target, at times closing much higher than their initial fundraising goal.

Take for instance, 1:FaceWatch, a simple, stylish watch that comes in six colors, each color representing a cause that part of the purchase price will go to. The project was founded by brand development firm Mirza Minds, who wanted to use the power of consumers to change the world.  The campaign was launched on Indiegogo with a fundraising goal of $25000, they ended up raising more than $350,000, with over 6000 people backing their campaign. For contributing at least $40, backers would get a face watch in the color of the choice. The sleek facewatch, offered as a perk to backers helped attract huge number of contributors, resulting in raising 1428% more than their initial goal and signing-up their first set of customers.

Another highly successful fundraising campaign that recently concluded on Kickstarter was of Ricefield Collectives. Ricefield Collectives crafts handmade knitted accessories that keep indigenous people of the Philippines on their ancestral land. With just an idea in mind to sell knitwear, hand knitted by the indigenous people, the founders turned to Kickstarter to raise funds to launch their first line of knitwear accessories. Their goal was to raise $24,000, in about 10 days into the campaign they surpassed their initial goal, raising over $50,000 and laying a new stretch goal of $85,000. The new goal would help to turn Ricefield Collectives from a volunteering gig into a formal cooperative, with a full time staff and a permanent base in the Ifugao region of the Philippines. Ricefield Collectives ended up raising close to $75,000, 296% more than their initial goal. The rewards offered of trendy knitted accessories in vibrant colors and add-on rewards as they kept moving closer to the goal, helped keep the tempo and attract over 1000 backers.

There are numerous instances of how changemakers and social startups have leveraged Kickstarter and Ingiegogo to launch their world changing products and businesses. You can keep track of these crowdfunded products by following EthFolk’s board, Crowd-Funded Ethical Products.

What’s good about these crowd-funding sites is that they not only help with raising  funds to develop the idea but they are also great place to discover your first set of customers and take pre-orders. A great example of this would be, Activyst, currently taking pre-orders on Indiegogo, for their new line of gym bags, the purchase of which supports girls to play sports in developing countries.

They are doing this by bringing beautifully crafted, one of a kind products to the  global markets, handmade by female artisans from the developing world.  These brands are using trade instead of aid to help women beat  poverty.

31 Bits: A jewelry company that works with women artisans from Northern Uganda. The female artisans handicraft  the jewelry  using 100% recycled paper and other locally sourced materials. The California-based  31 Bits, has created a buzz around their jewelry collection, with Jessica Alba and few other celebrities being spotted wearing their stunningly beautiful pieces.

Bliss: Works with adolescents girls and women from Pakistan, teaching them embroidery and needlework on fabric, which are then finished into stylish  handbags for sale in global markets. Available in vibrant colors and hues, Bliss bags boasts of traditional embroidery and design from different regions of Pakistan, which the girls in the program design and create themselves.

 Invisible Children: You may have heard of Invisible Children from their famous Kony 2012 video, the most viral video of all time, with over 94 million views on YouTube. Besides creating awareness about the atrocities of LRA in East and Central Africa, Invisible Children also has a rad line of merchandise , under the label MEND. Their products are handcrafted by women artisans from northern Uganda  who were affected by the LRA conflict.                                                                     

Krochet Kids: Is using crochet to help women in Uganda and Peru rise above poverty. They work with women artisans in these two countries, teaching them crochet and then selling their beautiful handmade products  - beanies, scarves and other accessories in the U.S. They are particularly famous for their beanies, available in bright colors and designs.

Raven + Lily: Their collection feature exclusive handmade and eco-friendly jewelry and accessories from North India, Cambodia, and Ethiopia. Raven + Lily’s designers create original, high-end looks and work directly with the women artisans to complete each piece. Their work is enabling HIV positive, formerly trafficked and other marginalized women in these countries.

On this International Day for Women, we salute the above mentioned organizations for collaborating with marginalized women – creating fairly paid jobs, boosting incomes  and providing  avenues for growth to them and their families.

To discover more such brands, visit EthFolk‘s collection, Handmade by Women.

Acopio: Has built a cloud based software (which can also work offline) for information management at Coffee Co-operatives, currently focused on getting the co-ops in Latin America to use technology to better manage their business processes.

Refuel Me: Is a mobile app that allows teens to earn money and rewards based on their safe driving performance, positioning it to be a win-win solution for all concerned parties – the teen, their parents and the insurance companies.

Project Repat: Up-cycling the textile industry’s excess into trendy and fashionable accessories like bags, scarves etc.

CheckInOn.Me: A mobile app that allows your freinds, family and colleagues to check-in on you in situations where you might feel unsafe.

GivKwik: Aims to make charitable giving easy and fun, specially on mobile devices. They’ve come out with a Giv button (similar to Twitter, Facebook share button) which would make giving of small amounts easy and on mobile devices.

DIIME: They are building a whole range of medical devices to improve maternal and infant health-care in developing countries, currently focused in Ghana. Launching with Hemafuse, a low-cost, simple to operate device for blood transfusion for women suffering from massive internal hemorrhage due to ruptured ectopic pregnancy.

Africa’s Talking: An app platform for developers to build basic mobile apps (non smartphone apps) built on sms, mms etc. With over 700 mil mobile phone users and over 190 mobile companies operating in Africa, the venture is focused on developing communication solutions for Africa’s vast mobile market.

What I found impressive was that the start-ups building mobile apps were all thinking of a platform strategy right from the onset, making their APIs available for others to build on the missing pieces. Thinking platform early on displays a high level of sophistication in all of these entrepreneurs. By allowing others to leverage the capabilities of their products in unique and innovative ways can prove to be a winning strategy. In the consumer startup world, Instagram is an example of a successful startup  that thought platform right from the start.

In the midst of this data surge, my goal with this article is to explore how data can affect social change and help humanity. How non-profits which are more often than not resource constrained can take advantage of their data and be more data driven.

This is where Jake Porway comes in, data scientist extraordinaire with the New York Times. Jake is also the founder of DataKind; moved by the excitement and surge of data applications in the business sector and the lack of data thinking to solve the world’s social and environmental problems, Jake started DataKind to bring these skills and expertise over to the social sector.

Their goal is to connect expert data scientists with social change organizations who are seeking to better manage, visualize and understand their data. They mobilize the data community to provide their skills and services pro bono to this sector. Many nonprofits and social ventures have tons of data about people they are helping and the problems they are working on but lack resources and skills to drill down and make sense of how they could use this data to better their services or cut costs. On the other hand we have a data science community that is energetic, growing and looking to work on world changing problems. DataKind aims to bring the two together through a data scientist exchange, bringing exciting new problems to the data community and helping to solve social, environmental, and community problems alongside nonprofits, local governments, and social organizations.

So far, DataKind has conducted a number of weekend long data dives all across the US, working on the data challenges of various social change organizations such as Grameen Foundation, UN Global Pulse, MixMarket. They recently conducted one in Washington DC, where they built a project for DC Kids Count, an advocacy group that  collects data about child well-being in Washington, DC. Volunteer data scientists used the data to create an interactive map to help the organization identify new patterns and opportunities for interventions. Their next data dive is going to be in Chicago, the weekend of May 11 and are currently planning events in London, Boston, and NYC for the remainder of this year. In addition to data dives, DataKind is also planning to offer fellowships, placing data experts with social change organizations for short and longer-term duration.

If you are a high impact social change organization and are committed to using data to drive impact, you can register your interest with DataKind here. They not only help you with data discovery but also provides advice on how to build good data sources. If you are a data scientist and excited about using your skills to solve world’s biggest social and environmental problems, you can register to volunteer here.

No Nasties believes that organic farming in the best way to lower costs of farmers and allow them to continue farming without having to turn to loans. For No Nasties, the goal is to get farmers to switch back to organic farming by creating a market for organic cotton and they are doing this by offering stylish organic t-shirts that people would jump to buy.

No Nasties t-shirts are designed by a community of independent designers, made from organic cotton and manufactured using fair trade practices. They even go a step further by using only organic dyes, tags and they use Mirakle Couriers, a courier service run by the deaf to deliver the t-shirts. Besides, No Nasties donates a portion of their profits to two NGOs. The brand believes in 100% fairness and transparency and has made public their supply-chain on their website and how their t-shirts differ significantly from the rest.

By now I’m sure you’ll be excited to pick one, you can shop online on their website. They are also selling through few designer outlets in the major cities of India, you can find the information here.

In addition, they are looking for more designers, volunteers and international retailers. If you have any leads, contact No Nasties via email.

Does Crowd-funding Makes Sense for Your Social Good Startup? Before you follow the crowds into crowd-funding, here are few things to consider

Crowd-funding works best for small projects of reasonable (attainable) amounts ranging from anywhere between 1-8k. Through there have been exceptions such as a few projects that raised over 1 million dollars but thats not the norm. Consider crowd funding for things like having a prototype funded, a pilot, a video, travel expense or other small, bite-sized funding requirements of your startup. Do not expect to raise funds for your entire startup operations.

It requires resources. You need to invest in making a good video or presentation site that tells your story. Furthermore, you need to keep at it, aggressively, to get the word out on your project. You need a dedicated resource – yourself or another team member  to find creative ways to get the word out every single day till you reach your goal.

You still have to focus on your friends, family and your community before strangers start investing in your project. Strangers will only start discovering and begin trusting your project once you’ve reached a certain level of funding, which will then qualify your project for the popular or featured sections of the platform. To reach that stage you need to get your friends, family and connections to invest in your project first. Having a good follower base on social networks such as Twitter and Facebook helps.

You usually have two choices, go to the crowd to raise small amounts of money for parts of your startup or raise big money from few investors to have your startup completely funded.

The direction you take really depends on the nature of your project, stage at which you are (conceptual, launched, growth stage) and the resources you have available, you’ll need to weigh in as to where to put your maximum fundraising efforts. For instance, If you are just starting off and your project does not fit into the established criteria of institutional funders or major donors, then going to the crowd will be a good bet to at least have the project off the ground before you could go to mainstream investors for second round of funding. If you have volunteers/interns or more people available at hand  you can do both as part of your fundraising strategy.

5 Tips for Successful  Crowd-funding If you’ve decided to go to the crowd, here are 5 tips that will help you.

1. Create a good video

2. Go wild in promoting your campaign – through your social networks, bloggers,  press. We spoke to two organizations who were over funded on Kickstarter, Project Repat and JeepNeed – they both mentioned that getting the project out in the press greatly helped in achieving their targets.

3. Offer attractive rewards – Project Repat attributes offering tangible products to the backers as key part of their success.

4. Keep at it every single day of the campaign period. If you’ve maxed out on your networks think of other creative ways to draw attention like how Will Baxter of I AM. got on a treadmill, vowing not to get off until the Kickstarter campaign for his social venture I AM. was funded. Will ended up raising close to $50,000 way more than his initial target of $ 45,000.

5. Once you’ve met your target, keep your backers updated. If you do a great job with keeping your backers engaged they’ll be your first advocates when you need to raise funds the next time.

Have you tried crowd-funding? If yes, what was your experience like?

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Five startups providing a complete back story on goods they are selling  - Where its made? By whom? How and what goes in? How the purchase impacts the lives of the makers?

Abe’s Market:  An online marketplace selling all things organic and eco-friendly. Offering a wide range of products  in the category of bath, beauty, home care, health, baby and food. The uniqueness of this marketplace is that it facilitates a deeper interaction between buyers and producers. Buyers are provided the opportunity to learn the story behind the product, straight from the product creators. The site provides detailed information of each and every  seller, their stories and even direct chats with sellers to ask specific questions so you know that you can trust and be comfortable with the products you bring into your home.

Hoop Fund: Hoop Fund goes a step further in facilitating the connection between buyers and producers. They are engaging shoppers  right at  the beginning of the product’s origin. Hoop Fund offers a wide range of fair trade products on their website and provides the buyers the unique opportunity to make a small loan to artisans and farmers who are making the goods. By making a loan to the producer, you become a part of the good that you’ll enjoy right from the start, in addition you get your loan money back over the period of time. Furthermore, when you buy a good along with making a micro loan to that buyer, you get a great deal on the price.

INDIGENOUS: The pioneers of eco fashion, works with the artisan network of Latin America to bring organic and fair trade clothing to the world. To provide a view to their shoppers into how the fibre is raised and the artisan communities they work with, INDIGENOUS recently introduced a mobile app. The app let shoppers see where garments originate and how fibers were raised; to meet the artisans who hand-make them and to learn about INDIGENOUS’ positive social impact. INDIGENOUS will begin shipping its 2012 Fall line with a QR code on hang tags that connects to the garment origin traceability tool via any smart phone.

Honest by: Belgium based Honest by is the world’s first 100% transparent company that shares the full cost breakdown of its products. The word Honest refers to the way in which the Honest by store operates, with an 100% transparency policy. It collaborates only with designers which are open to share their personal production information from yarn and button origin to fabric and manufacturing details, information which honest by then communicates to the client. In communicating all information regarding a garments production process, Honest by wants to shed light on the questions: where is it made and by whom. Products in the Honest by store are made with consideration for all beings.

Glore Store: Germany’s first sustainable store, committed to help small sustainable brands from all over the globe. Glore has number of outlets in Germany as well as offers online shopping  They’ve recently partnered with India’s The Tipping Point to offer  complete information on the organic cotton clothing sourced from India. Buyers are presented with precise information on how the cotton was farmed, where, by whom and how this purchase will impact the life of the farmer. The 2012 Unreasonable Institute finalist, The Tipping Point is sourcing the stories of India’s organic cotton farmers and inputting it into a software so that the stories are carried along the supply-chain and presented to the shoppers at the point of purchase.

Do you know of other sellers who provides such precise information on the origin of goods and would you be more likely to purchase from such stores?  We’ll love to hear in the comments below or tweet us.