Burro Brand Ghana Ltd.

What are we doing here in Ghana?

Well, not long ago, I was contacted by the former founder and President of Cranium, Whit Alexander, with whom I worked closely when I was there several years ago. Cranium was sold to Hasbro in the Spring, and he was working on some ideas about what to do next. Here is what he had identified:

• In the developing world (specifically Africa, where Whit has 5 years previous experience), there are very few actual jobs - where you go everyday and get a regular paycheck


• Most people who don't have a regular job either farm together for basic subsistance and to bring to town on market day, or they keep small shops on the side of the road (as shown below) or in the permanent markets that exist in larger towns


• A few people have "franchises" to deliver goods or services for large brands, like the MTN (cell phone company) stands (as shown below) to sell the pre-paid phone cards people use to add to the minutes they have available for calls

So, Whit determined that any business idea in these parts of the world would have to do at least two things:

1. Increase people's ability to make a living and feed their families or


2. Improve the quality of everyday life

...preferably, both.

Based on his initial research (a University of Washington intern sent to Ghana for the summer of 2007) indicated there would be significant interest in a number of life-improving products, but no one had any money to buy them. So, he turned his attention to areas in which people are already spending money and it would be possible to satisfy the two objectives above and also take market share away from the current leader by provided a better product and better service.

This led to an idea that incorporates the following additional pieces of information:

Much of the developing world has limited access to electrical power.

Even in areas which have electrical power infrastructure, connection costs are often prohibitive for much of the population

In many of these areas, even, delivery of the power is unreliable (our power has been out for several hours about every other day since my arrival)

Therefore, battery operated radios, flashlights, lanterns, etc. are ubiquitous

Most battery consumers purchase the cheapest low-life batteries available

These batteries, therefore, end up discarded (often several per week by a single radio user) and contaminating the land and ground water. Some of them even leak right in the device when their power begins to run low

Also, because the duration of these batteries is so short, people ration their use of the batteries, thereby impacting productivity and access to information, as well as enjoyment

So, the business concept is simply this:


Provide re-chargeable batteries AND the re-charging service for a monthly subscription fee


The initial version of our battery offering is shown at right.

The batteries are nickel hydride AA cells that can be used as AA batteries or as D cells when inserted into a plastic sleeve. Although they are re-chargeable AA sized battery cells, they provide more power than the Tigerhead batteries shown in the photo above.

Most of our customers use them as D cell batteries.

In my mind, this business plan provides a perfect trifecta (still to be proven out - hence, this pilot we are now conducting) with social, environmental, and business benefits:

1. Social benefits - Provides employment and income to hundreds or thousands of agents who sign-up customers and perform the battery exchange service when batteries run low;
   Also increases the amount of time people can or want to spend: farming (by providing music, news or conversation on the radio to make the time pass more pleasantly); hunting (snails are hunted in the dark, using flashlights); keeping their shops open (it gets dark around 6:30), and so forth - because they don't have to ration their use of batteries anymore.
   
2. Environmental benefits - removes thousands of tons of batteries from the waste stream (if a single Burro branch (region of about 15km radius) rents 25,000 batteries that are replaced weekly with freshly charged batteries, that would remove 1.2 million batteries from the waste stream annually).
   
3. Business benefits - this is a for-profit enterprise which can be expanded to a number of stable developing countries, and provides a delivery and service network that can be used for other products in the future.

So that's the nutshell version. For more information, visit Whit's company blog at http://www.burrobrand.blogspot.com/

XO