Prakti

WE ARE DEDICATED TO THE BOTTOM OF THE PYRAMID 

To go from a good idea to a sustainable, affordable, widely available, useful product for poor communities, the following functions must be fulfilled:

We believe that any product from the idea must be designed, engineered and marketed to be practical in the intended region, cost effective, durable and be easily and widely available for the Bottom Of the Pyramid (BOP).

Some organizations (multinational companies, micro finance organizations, NGO's, dedicated distributors ect.) do their best to deal with market issues. But in general, they lack specialized designers and engineers who develop optimal products, including usability (adapted to local preferences), performance, cost, scaleability (production and distribution scale up potential).

Indeed, the existing global knowledge base on product design, materials, manufacturing, performance, durability and maintenance is applied systematically to products for “rich” consumers, but rarely to products for poor communities.

We try to avoid two typical drifts: 1. Millions invested from abroad without connections on the ground and 2., projects designed for low income communities by good-willing volunteer that stay too little time on the ground.

That leads to products that are not accepted by the population, too expensive, with inappropriate functions or not easily scaleable.

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TURNING APPROPRIATE TECHNOLOGY INTO VIABLE PRODUCTS

 We define OUR MISSION as: Turning appropriate technologies into viable products!

To use appropriate technologies to create user-friendly, easily maintanable products that bring measurable environmental and social benefit in areas of great deprivation.

As professional engineers, we develop a portfolio of products and publish packages that includes design/manufacturing/tooling specifications, field testing data and results of small pilot studies.

We use appropriate technology principles to designing products, that end users have a hand in designing, and which finally they may build for themselves. 

We want to cooperate with local NGO's that identify needs, ideas and support the adaptation of our design, marketing and rural distributors professionals that can deliver products to villages and manufacturers that can concretely make the products at big scales.

In this chain, we are the ones who are dedicated to the conception of an adapted, maintainable, low cost, scaleable product.

In 5 words: “We design for social change!”

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In it day to day operations, Prakti is driven by strong values:

• PASSION-DRIVEN. We love technology and innovation, but it is not what drives us. Bringing environmental/social benefits to vast numbers of people, that is what drives us !
  
  
• SOCIALLY AWARE. We target only “bottom of the pyramid” communities that deserve the best product design but can’t afford it in general.
  
  
• CUSTOMER FOCUSED. We involve the end user and their partners from the very beginning of our product design, through interactive workshops and local surveys; and we assure follow up and ongoing  improvement of our products.Moreover, we are seeking user’s feedbacks when the product is launched to work on its continuous improvement.
  
  
• OPEN SOURCED. We promote an open source model all along the design process: ideas come from end users or organizations that know them; end users and their partners are implicated in the process from the very beginning, through interactive workshops.
  
  
• ECO FRIENDLY. We develop our product to be ecologically sustainable, to protect environment, and to struggle deforestation and desertification.