Laari

Empowering Micro-entrepreneurs, especially street vendors in developing economies through modular, portable, affordable, and sustainable infrastructure for business and solar battery-powered technologies for cooking and storage.

There are 10 million+ street food vendors in India who depend on street vending as their family's primary source of survival. They are not recognized or not even their population is not thought about as they have migrated from rural areas to urban/semi-urban and are seen as doing business. 

They face 3 main challenges

1. Access to finance: Street food vendors have difficulty accessing finance to start or grow their businesses, as they may not have collateral or credit history.

2. Infrastructure: Street food vendors face challenges related to infrastructure, as they do not have access to stable and reliable electricity and water supplies.

3. Health and hygiene: Street food vendors face challenges related to health and hygiene, as they are required to meet strict standards for food safety and cleanliness. This can be especially challenging in busy urban areas where vendors may have limited access to clean water and proper sanitation facilities.

Due to the above problems, even though they are willing to, they are not able to get included in the formal economy and recognized as a business and be respected. 

These all lead to them not being able to survive and grow their business to feed themselves and their families. 

The solution here is creating a whole ecosystem of products and communities for street vendors to create more opportunities, inclusion, and revenue for them. 

It is to introduce 

1. LAARI - A Fully Modular and Foldable Vending cart (www.thelaari.com) that can be folded and carried in front of a 2-wheeler to their place.

2. Oorja - Solar Powered and Battery Operated hot plate to cook food upon.

3. Leher - Solar Powered and Battery Operated Refrigerator to store raw materials enhancing their life.

These products help them address the problem of infrastructure, health, and hygiene directly as the modularity gives them ease to move, and the heating and cooling give them access to reliable electricity. Due to modular infrastructure and the having to assemble and dissemble it, the food doesn't get stuck in corners which are the major causes of bad surroundings. Also, they can disassemble and clean the carts at their home or other premises where access to water is plenty. 

The core technology is the innovation of creating battery-operated (12V DC) micro-compressors for cooling and PTC elements for heating. Also, creating a battery management system that makes each of these last for more than 6 hours.

This whole ecosystem also helps meet vendors' guidelines to get recognized by Food Safety Authority and eventually avail loan and economic support from the financial institution to be included financially. 

We work directly with street vendors running their street businesses and are not able to make ends meet. 

Currently, they do not have awareness nor do they have the opportunities or suitable alternatives to the way they do business as well as the equipment they use to perform the business. 

This solution gives them a better alternative, something which they can incorporate into their life without changing any behaviors and habits to make the most out of their business and establish themselves. 

This solution provides them with an ecosystem of similar people and helps them be included in the formal financial system. 

Our team consists of Aditya Dave - Electronics and Communication Engineer turned Product Designer by education who is an avid foodie, Mahobat Baraiya - 20+ years of experience in fabrication and manufacturing space while himself comes from a very deprived background and Jayesh Raval first one from his family in generations to actually receive high school education and committed to creating grassroots solutions for his community of street vendors. 

We as a team in our life have spent 2+ hours every day for the last 2 years with street vendors to understand them as people, their struggles, their aspirations, and their way of living. 

We also have actual hands-on understanding and experience in creating technology, design, and community-enabled solutions which makes us very uniquely positioned to solve problems for the community and help them create a better future for themselves. 

Aditya Dave (Myself) from the team has worked at street carts for 60 days with vendors full-time to understand their psyche and the depth of the problem they face. We have done our primary research with 268 street vendors in our city Ahmedabad to see how big the problem is and how it affects each vendor and their families.

Jayesh and Mahobat coming from backgrounds and families of vendors get us unique insights into the problem. 

We also worked on 3 projects for 5 and half months with a leading organization in India, Pratham supported by Tata Steel Foundation for a project which included 26 women vendors in the state of Orissa in India to see and understand how the needs change in different geographies, demographics and sociographic of this vast nation within the same audience. 

We created our first fully foldable cart, manufactured 20 pieces of the same, gave them for pilot across 7 cities to 20 vendors, and monitored their use to see how our potential users engage with solutions. We have now collected feedback for 3 months and based on the insights we have gained, we have redesigned and now developing the same product with changes to see how the acceptance changes.