TEDIndia 2009
Shaffi Mather: A new way to fight corruption
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Shaffi Mather explains why he left his first career to become a social entrepreneur, providing life-saving transportation with his company 1298 for Ambulance. Now, he has a new idea and plans to begin a company to fight the booming business of corruption in public service, eliminating it one bribe at a time.
Shaffi Mather - Social entrepreneur, lawyer
Shaffi Mather is the founder of 1298 for Ambulance, Education Access for All, and co-promoter of Moksha-Yug Access. Full bio
Shaffi Mather is the founder of 1298 for Ambulance, Education Access for All, and co-promoter of Moksha-Yug Access. Full bio
Double-click the English transcript below to play the video.
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The anger in me against corruption
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made me to make a big career change
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last year, becoming a full-time practicing lawyer.
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My experiences over the last 18 months,
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as a lawyer, has seeded in me
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a new entrepreneurial idea,
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which I believe is indeed
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worth spreading.
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So, I share it with all of you here today,
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though the idea itself is getting crystallized
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and I'm still writing up the business plan.
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Of course it helps that fear of public failure
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diminishes as the number of ideas
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which have failed increases.
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I've been a huge fan of enterprise and entrepreneurship
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since 1993.
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I've explored, experienced,
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and experimented enterprise
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and capitalism to my heart's content.
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I built, along with my two brothers,
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the leading real estate company in my home state, Kerala,
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and then worked professionally
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with two of India's biggest businessmen,
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but in their startup enterprises.
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In 2003, when I stepped out of the pure play capitalistic sector
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to work on so-called social sector issues,
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I definitely did not have any grand strategy
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or plan to pursue and find
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for-profit solutions
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to addressing pressing public issues.
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When life brought about a series
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of death and near-death experiences
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within my close circle,
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which highlighted the need
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for an emergency medical response service in India,
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similar to 911 in USA.
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To address this, I, along with four friends,
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founded Ambulance Access for All,
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to promote life-support ambulance services in India.
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For those from the developing world,
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there is nothing, absolutely nothing new in this idea.
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But as we envisioned it,
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we had three key goals:
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Providing world-class life support ambulance service
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which is fully self-sustainable from its own revenue streams,
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and universally accessible
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to anyone in a medical emergency,
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irrespective of the capability to pay.
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The service which grew out of this,
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Dial 1298 for Ambulance,
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with one ambulance in 2004,
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now has a hundred-plus ambulances in three states,
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and has transported over 100,000 patients
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and victims since inception.
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The service is -- (Applause)
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fully self-sustainable from its own revenues,
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without accessing any public funds,
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and the cross-subsidy model actually works,
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where the rich pays higher, poor pays lower,
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and the accident victim is getting the service free of charge.
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The service responded effectively
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and efficiently,
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during the unfortunate
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26/11 Mumbai terror attacks.
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And as you can see from the visuals,
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the service was responding and rescuing
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victims from the incident locations
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even before the police could cordon off
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the incident locations
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and formally confirm it as a terror strike.
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We ended up being the first medical response team
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in every incident location
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and transported 125 victims,
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saving life.
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(Applause)
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In tribute and remembrance
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of 26/11 attacks
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over the last one year,
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we have actually helped a Pakistani NGO,
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Aman Foundation,
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to set up a self-sustainable life support ambulance service
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in Karachi, facilitated by Acumen Fund.
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(Applause)
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It's a small message from us,
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in our own small way
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to the enemies of humanity,
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of Islam, of South Asia,
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of India, and of Pakistan,
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that humanity will continue to bloom,
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irrespective of such dastardly attacks.
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Since then I've also co-founded two other social enterprises.
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One is Education Access for All,
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setting up schools in small-town India.
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And the other is Moksha-Yug Access,
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which is integrating rural supply chain
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on the foundations of self-help group-based microfinance.
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I guess we seem to be doing at least a few things right.
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Because diligent investors and venture funds
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have committed over 7.5 million dollars in funding.
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With the significance being these funds have come in
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as a QT capital, not as grant or as philanthropy.
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Now I come back to the idea of the new social enterprise
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that I'm exploring.
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Corruption, bribes, and lack of transparency.
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You may be surprised to know
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that eight speakers yesterday
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actually mentioned these terms in their talks.
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Bribes and corruption have both a demand and a supply side,
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with the supply side being mostly of
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greedy corporate unethical businesses
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and hapless common man.
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And the demand side being mostly politicians,
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bureaucrats and those who have discretionary power
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vested with them.
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According to World Bank estimate,
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one trillion dollars is paid in bribes
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every year, worsening the condition
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of the already worse off.
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Yet, if you analyze the common man,
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he or she does not wake up every day and say,
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"Hmm, let me see who I can pay a bribe to today."
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or, "Let me see who I can corrupt today."
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Often it is the constraining or the back-to-the-wall situation
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that the hapless common man finds himself or herself in
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that leads him to pay a bribe.
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In the modern day world, where time is premium
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and battle for subsistence is unimaginably tough,
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the hapless common man
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simply gives in and pays the bribe just to get on with life.
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Now, let me ask you another question.
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Imagine you are being asked to pay a bribe
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in your day-to-day life to get something done.
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What do you do? Of course you can call the police.
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But what is the use if the police department is in itself steeped in corruption?
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Most definitely you don't want to pay the bribe.
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But you also don't have the time, resources,
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expertise or wherewithal to fight this.
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Unfortunately, many of us in this room
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are supporters of capitalist policies and market forces.
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Yet the market forces around the world
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have not yet thrown up a service where you can call in,
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pay a fee, and fight the demand for a bribe.
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Like a bribe buster service,
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or 1-800-Fight-Bribes,
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or www.stopbribes.org or
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www.preventcorruption.org.
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Such a service simply do not exist.
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One image that has haunted me
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from my early business days
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is of a grandmother, 70 plus years, being harassed
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by the bureaucrats in the town planning office.
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All she needed was permission to build three steps
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to her house, from ground level,
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making it easier for her to enter and exit her house.
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Yet the officer in charge would not simply give her the permit
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for want of a bribe.
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Even though it pricked my conscience then,
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I could not, or rather I did not
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tend to her or assist her,
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because I was busy building my real estate company.
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I don't want to be haunted by such images any more.
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A group of us have been working on a pilot basis
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to address individual instances of demands
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for bribes for common services or entitlement.
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And in all 42 cases where we have pushed back such demands
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using existing and legitimate tools
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like the Right to Information Act,
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video, audio, or peer pressure,
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we have successfully obtained whatever our clients
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set out to achieve without actually paying a bribe.
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And with the cost of these tools being substantially lower
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than the bribe demanded.
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I believe that these tools that worked in these 42 pilot cases
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can be consolidated in standard processes
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in a BPO kind of environment,
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and made available on web, call-center
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and franchise physical offices,
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for a fee, to serve anyone confronted with a demand for a bribe.
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The target market is as tempting as it can get.
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It can be worth up to one trillion dollars,
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being paid in bribes every year,
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or equal to India's GDP.
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And it is an absolutely virgin market.
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I propose to explore this idea further,
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to examine the potential of creating
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a for-profit, fee-based BPO
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kind of service to stop bribes
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and prevent corruption.
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I do realize that the fight for justice
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against corruption is never easy.
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It never has been and it never will be.
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In my last 18 months as a lawyer,
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battling small- and large-scale corruption,
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including the one perpetrated by India's biggest corporate scamster.
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Through his charities
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I have had three police cases filed against me
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alleging trespass, impersonation and intimidation.
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The battle against corruption
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exacts a toll on ourselves,
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our families, our friends, and even our kids.
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Yet I believe the price we pay is well worth holding on
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to our dignity and making the world a fairer place.
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What gives us the courage?
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As my close friend replied, when told
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during the seeding days of the ambulance project
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that it is an impossible task
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and the founders are insane to chalk up their blue-chip jobs,
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I quote: "Of course we cannot fail in this,
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at least in our own minds.
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For we are insane people,
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trying to do an impossible task.
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And an insane person does not know what an impossible task is." Thank you.
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(Applause)
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Chris Anderson: Shaffi, that is a really exciting business idea.
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Shaffi Mather: I just have to get through the initial days where I don't get eliminated.
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(Laughter)
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CA: What's on your mind?
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I mean, give us a sense of the numbers here --
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a typical bribe and a typical fee. I mean, what's in your head?
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SM: So let me ... Let me give you an example.
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Somebody who had applied for the passport.
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The officer was just sitting on it
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and was demanding around 3,000 rupees in bribes.
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And he did not want to pay.
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So we actually used the Right to Information Act,
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which is equal to the Freedom of Information Act in the United States,
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and pushed back the officers in this particular case.
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And in all these 42 cases,
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when we kept pushing them back,
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there was three kinds of reaction.
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A set of people actually say,
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"Oh, let me just grant it to them, and run away from it."
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Some people actually come back and say,
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"Oh, you want to screw me. Let me show you what I can do."
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And he will push us back.
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So you take the next step, or use the next tool available
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in what we are putting together,
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and then he relents.
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By the third time, in all 42 cases, we have achieved success.
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CA: But if it's a 3,000-rupee, 70-dollar bribe,
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what fee would you have to charge,
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and can you actually make the business work?
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SM: Well, actually the cost that we incurred
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was less than 200 rupees.
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So, it actually works.
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CA: That's a high gross margin business. I like it.
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(Laughter)
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SM: I actually did not want to answer this on the TED stage.
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CA: OK, so these are provisional numbers, no pricing guarantee.
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If you can pull this off, you will be a global hero.
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I mean, this could be huge.
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Thank you so much for sharing this idea at TED.
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(Applause)
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ABOUT THE SPEAKER
Shaffi Mather - Social entrepreneur, lawyerShaffi Mather is the founder of 1298 for Ambulance, Education Access for All, and co-promoter of Moksha-Yug Access.
Why you should listen
Shaffi Mather was a successful young entrepreneur, who brought a family-run real estate business to the forefront of the local market before moving on to take major positions at two of India’s largest communication corporations -- Essel Group and Reliance Industries. However, after a perilous ride to the hospital with his mother he was forced to confront India’s need for a dependable ambulance service. He left his career at Reliance and founded 1298 for Ambulance, a for-profit service with a sliding scale payment system that has revolutionized medical transport in Mumbai and Kerala.
Today, Mather is also a co-founder of Moksha-Yug Access, a microfinance instiution that operates in rural India, and The Education Initiative, which is involved in e-learning and in creating schools across India. In addition, Mather is a lawyer focusing on litigation in public interest -- battling for transparency in governance and use of public funds, human rights, civil rights and primacy of constitution. He is a TEDIndia Fellow.
Shaffi Mather | Speaker | TED.com