Balanarayan NT

Why all the hoopla about ‘jugaad’?

I see trend coming up and I don’t think it’s a trend at all — I’m talking about ‘jugaad’ here. I think it started off with this post by Sarah Lucy of TechCruch (she’s been writing a lot about startup scene in India = awesomeness) and now I see a story at Business Week on the same lines. My question… why the sudden hoopla about jugaad?

The basic funda behind  jugaad is to get the work done ASAP with minimal investments but aren’t there lot of people doing that already? The only thing new for someone from the west is the word and not the concept. Don’t believe me? Check out ‘There I’ve Fixed it‘ people have been doing all over the world through the years. It’s no different from one of the home made remedies my mom would come up with if an insect bit me. Jugaad is about meeting the demand without wasting much time.Real time blogging is jugaad. You add more info as and when it comes.

Jugaad is about satisfying the basic need, no added features, just one solid feature. It’s also about an idea, one brilliant idea which, if developed well could become something much bigger over time. To an extant Twitter two years back was jugaad. It just had one feature update your status message. No @replies, no lists, no organic RTs no nothing. It just catered to people who wanted to keep people posted about their whereabouts.

Jugaad is about desperation. I’m late for work and my vehicle just broke down. Autorickshaw refuses to go and what do I do? I hitch a ride. If you think of it, running a website via cloud is also jugaad. Going for shared hosting instead of a full server is jugaad. Using wordpress to design a website instead of developing a CMS+front is jugaad.

So why west… why go over over the top with jugaad? At best your efforts might help land the word in oxford dictionary, if it hasn’t already and may be a place in management books of the future. Apart from that the term doesn’t deserve more attention.

8 responses to “Why all the hoopla about ‘jugaad’?”

  1. litterateuse Avatar
    litterateuse

    I’ve begun to believe people are the same everywhere. Much as the concept is known, I think there’s always some charm in using phoren terms to get that certain je ne sais quoi (See what I mean? 😉 )

    And jugaad in particular is especially endearing – no? 🙂

    Well I didn’t have a super-intellectual comment – thought I’d jugaad for now 😐

    gauri

    Reply
    1. | Balu | Avatar
      | Balu |

      Ha ha jugaad is good.. both the word, the concept and the comment 😉

      Reply
  2. Renganathan Ramamoorthy Avatar
    Renganathan Ramamoorthy

    You wouldn’t believe this, but “jugaad” based management and learning is already part of the education, both in East and West. I agree with you that “jugaad” is not a big thing and it shouldn’t be. It’s almost common sense. But many times, managing people and situations and management, common sense is missed. Trust me. I have learnt it the hard way.

    So, I think that there should be a drive towards common sense based management, based on frugality, based on customer centric innovation, to hit the ground up and running at the lowest cost possible.

    Most importantly, it should be done in places like India that are presented with the best opportunity to do life changing innovation that will alter and better the lives of billions of people.

    So, while I agree with you, I also maintain that “jugaad” is a big deal and should be considered so, more so by developing and emerging economies that simply ape the West. =D!

    Reply
    1. | Balu | Avatar
      | Balu |

      Your description of jugaad sounds like ‘survival instinct’ what say.. almost same no?

      Reply
  3. Priya Q Avatar
    Priya Q

    completely agree!… everyone across the world does it… they call it ‘bandaid solutions’….still India has been highlighted for the hindi word jugaad!

    its not the first where India has been highlighted this way… after slumdog millionaire..people around the world talked about the Indian slums…forgetting that the same movie could have been shot with the same shots in Paris or for that matter any other slum in the world!

    Reply
    1. | Balu | Avatar
      | Balu |

      You said it =)

      Reply
  4. xylene Avatar
    xylene

    If they want to popularize on the Indian word, so be it.

    Reply
    1. | Balu | Avatar
      | Balu |

      He he I think they’ve succeeded =D

      Reply

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