Underdeveloped, rural India isn’t the first place you’d expect an entrepreneur to head, nor would it appear an obvious source of ROI for businesses. Crippling poverty, lack of basic facilities and poor access to education mean people living in these areas are often left in the shadows of progress and modernity.

But the Delhi-based social enterprise Boond is helping to improve people’s living conditions through a sustainable business that is both profitable and ethical. Profit-making is the means, not the end for this initiative, as money made is invested back into the community.

Boond manufactures rural survival kits consisting of a solar lamp, water filter and mosquito net, and sells them through local partners and rural NGOs.“The development kit was born out of our own research,” says founder Rustam Sengupta. “We discovered that lighting was the first thing that helped to increase a rural family’s productivity.”

Despite years of investment, more than 300 million Indians still don’t have access to clean water or electricity.

More grim numbers paint a bleak picture. Three million people die each year from preventable waterborne diseases and every week, mosquito-borne dengue fever and malaria kill thousands. “If people’s basic needs are taken care of, they can become productive, which in turn helps people to get out of the poverty trap,” says Sengupta.

Boond sources carefully designed items that are environmentally friendly and affordable to villagers. The kit on the whole costs slightly more than $50 (₣36) and the sale is done through an army of grassroots entrepreneurs dubbed Boond Officers. The only condition is that the officers come from the community they work in.

“India has hundreds of different languages and we need these entrepreneurs to be effective communicators,” says Sengupta. “The other issue is social acceptance – the local communities need to be comfortable with the officers, to be able to trust them.”

The local entrepreneurs’ salaries are commission-based. They buy the kits from Boond and pay for them in small monthly instalments if they cannot afford to do so outright.

The salesmen are trained by Boond and highly motivated, but there are issues. “It’s often difficult to incentivise people and get them to think with a business frame of mind.

It is also sometimes hard to get them to understand basic tools like book-keeping and marketing. But we are seeing rapid progress.”

In addition to selling its kits, Boond conducts education and awareness campaigns to boost the quality of life in rural areas. “One of the key principles is to try to get people to believe that they can be instruments of change through whatever is in their capacity to contribute.”

A challenge for ethical start-ups is lack of support. “Legal structures are really complicated and legal people don’t understand what social enterprises are all about. What we really need in this country are changes in government policy and more transparency. But it all takes time,” Sengupta says.

Boond’s plans include converting its brand into a private limited company and expanding into more than 60 villages (it is currently in 14). Sengupta wants to grow the model beyond rural areas, ideally to help the semi-urban population who live in terrible conditions. Currently Boond has modest annual revenues of around €25,000 but he says the company’s potential is huge. “In the short term we are going to form partnerships and look for new and better products. In the long term, with three to five years of growth behind us, I’m hoping we will build enough enterprise value so we can market ourselves as a rural retail chain with a social conscience.”

Sengupta’s plan involves growing distribution chains that deliver products with developmental value to villages until Boond becomes a widely recognised household goods company. “Rural India is changing slowly because people are getting more access to information through technology, through networking,” he says. “Social activism and campaigning are also on the rise and Indian people respond well to ideas and have a thirst for knowledge.”

For social entrepreneurs operating with shoestring budgets and basic operations structures, logistics are still a constraint. “Rural India has a very poor infrastructure – getting to places can be difficult,” says Sengupta. “The rural mindset can be a problem, the caste system still rules in a way and traditions can hamper development.” Yet India’s business landscape is increasingly populated by such entrepreneurs. “There is a huge buzz around social enterprise and its mindset. Business people are waking up and realising it’s not all about how much money they are making but it’s also about helping others, those who are less advantaged.”

Joe Phelan, head of India operations at the International Business Leaders Forum – an NGO – agrees. “The combination of consistent GDP growth, major infrastructure challenges and large, diverse and underserved populations is driving new approaches to doing business,” he says.

“India is becoming a powerhouse for inclusive businesses – those that include previously excluded groups as customers, suppliers, clients or employees.”

Sengupta himself returned to India after turning his back on a high-flying banking career with Standard Chartered in Singapore. Before that, he had studied in the US on a scholarship and started his financial career with accounting giant Deloitte.

“My time overseas helped me to develop a skill set that could be utilised to develop rural India,” he says. “I saw how things were done in the developed world. I learned a lot about business and entrepreneurship which I then wanted to put to good use.”

He approaches each day withenthusiasm: “As a social entrepreneur there are so many issues that are out of your control, but once you learn the ropes you will begin to enjoy it,” he says. “The most satisfying thing is that I’m working on some of the world’s biggest challenges and I am hoping every minute that I put into Boond helps to make a difference, even a small one.”