Kineer Water — Blessed to Quench Your Thirst
How Kineer Services empowers India’s LGBTQ community, one packaged drinking water plant at a time.
Established in 2018 by Manish Jain, Kineer Services empowers the hijra community with dignified employment opportunities and training programs by identifying gaps in society the community members can fill.
Read more to learn about one of BfE Cambridge’s most successful engagements.
Once Marginalised but Always Blessed
Hijras — eunuchs, intersex, asexual, or transgender people in the Indian subcontinent, have a long recorded history dating back over 4,000 years. Once figures of religious authority and revered by the Mughals, by the mid-1850’s British colonists deemed them a danger to public morals and a “threat to colonial political authority”.
While hijras’ very existence is no longer considered criminal, and as of 2014, the community is legally recognized as India’s third sex, acceptance into mainstream society has been slow. Still subjected to social discrimination, living on the margins has forced hijras to survive through begging, dancing, and prostitution. Recognizing these inequalities, Manish Jain sought to empower the hijra community by providing dignified employment opportunities, training programs, and a comprehensive support system for the community once fraught with historical prejudice.
Kineer Services graduated from the BfE Incubation Programme in 2020 after receiving support from the Cambridge Chapter. During the Programme, Manish learned how to approach and secure investment opportunities and addressed their core business challenges, all in an effort to increase their impact in the social enterprise ecosystem. We recently had the pleasure of talking to Manish Jain, Founder and Executive Director of Kineer Services, about his business, his engagements with BfE, and goals for Kineer Services in the years to come.
To start, could you tell me about what motivated you to establish Kineer Services?
After working in the Indian hospitality sector for over 22 years, I continued to notice gaps the transgender community could fill. In 2006, as the head of household operations at a five-star hotel in Goa, a problem at work arose: the male and female washrooms needed to be cleaned by employees of the room’s respective gender. The task required working only a few hours a day — not the most appealing schedule — causing hiring and retention issues. I thought that one person could easily complete this task instead, eliminating the existing issues and becoming more cost-effective for the business. My idea was to hire hijras to clean both washrooms: they would not pose a threat to the females and the males would not mind them.
At the time, diversity and inclusion issues were unheard of in India. Employing the hijra community was not socially acceptable, and remained a taboo topic. Thus, I was a bit hesitant to approach my then-manager, regardless of the benefits it would provide both parties. Cultural taboos and hesitations aside, I was motivated to prove that hiring members of the hijra community made sound business sense, all while offering the community greater opportunities and stable dignified sources of income.
As I did not know much about the hijra or the LGBTQ community, I needed to find a community member to learn from and ally with. It was then that I met Laxmi Narayan Tripathi, a well-known community member and hijra representative at the United Nations. She encouraged me to start a social enterprise because it would allow for maximising profit while implementing solutions to issues plaguing the marginalised hijra community. She was also the catalyst for Kineer’s packaged drinking water plants in Delhi.
What does social entrepreneurship mean to you?
“When an enterprise works towards the benefit of the society, and its profits are used for creating sustainability for the marginalised community, then the mission of the enterprise is like a family member for its beneficiaries.”
How was Kineer’s bottled water received by Indian society?
Kineer was an immediate success within Indian society. We had our first purchase order even before our first water plant’s operations were fully set up. Over time, one factory turned into five across India, all of which are operated and managed by hijras local to the community. Kineer’s bottled water is the initial and most successful revenue stream to date. Kineer’s tagline, “Blessed to quench your thirst” capitalises on their historically religious roles, supplying drinking water to well-known local businesses including Barclays, Lalit Hotels, and Sodexo.
As Kineer continued to grow, we applied and were accepted into the INVENT program, receiving a soft loan of 25,00,000 INR (33K USD), to assist with operations and expansion. As a result of our continued growth, we placed among the top 25 Indian startups out of 3,500 applicants selected to showcase our business at Slush 2019 in Helsinki; while in Finland, we connected with our first investor. Then things really took off.
How did you come across Bridges for Enterprise (BfE)?
In July 2018 I was looking for opportunities to increase Kineer’s visibility and impact in the social enterprise ecosystem. I spent a lot of time searching for organisations that incubate startups like ours, and BfE was one of them. While visiting the BfE website, I learnt the selection process Kineer would require to be accepted into their Incubation Programme. I wanted to be one of the selected startups on that list. Hence, being incubated by Bridges for Enterprise gave me a great sense of pride; it has been a huge accomplishment for Kineer and I.
Where do you see yourself five years from now, and what is your vision for Kineer in the long-run?
My long-term goal is to have a Kineer city; I want to build an entire city for hijras, starting with an orphanage. Sometimes, I get called in the middle of the night about a newborn transgender whose family wants to kill them. I connect these people with partner NGOs and ensure the newborn is taken care of and given proper documentation. If we had a Kineer Orphanage, we could take them in. Of course, there would also be a school, factories, a mall — everything that hijras need to develop and thrive as integral members of the community.
How has social entrepreneurship changed you?
“Vasudhaiv Kutumbikam is a Sanskrit word which means ‘The world is one family’. Every member of the family has a certain role to play. What is the higher purpose of my existence? Kineer, as an enterprise, has shown me what role I need to play.”
We also had the chance to sit down with Brandon Neo, former BfE Cambridge Chapter President and point of contact in the engagements with Kineer Services.
Could you give me a brief overview of how your two engagements with Kineer went during the Incubation Programme, and what your team dynamic was like?
We met with Manish once every two weeks, working towards our final deliverable by the end of December 2020. At the start of the engagement, we learnt about Manish’s mission and his most immediate goal of securing funding for business development. We helped Kineer create a marketing strategy, build a sales funnel, and conduct finance research. For Kineer’s marketing strategy, we offered suggestions on effective marketing metrics, web design, graphic design and social impact marketing, which ultimately contributed to an improved brand presence and webflow. Our Finance Advisory team then provided research into India’s impact investment trends, as well as a long list of potential investors.
Kineer is now better equipped to approach and work with investors, given our advice on best practices for pitching social impact and their business model. As a result, Kineer was able to secure a soft commitment for an investment of 6 crore rupees (800K USD) which they are planning to use primarily for operations, branding, and promotions.
What have you learnt from this engagement, and how has it helped you to grow as a leader or professional?
It is always an inspiring and eye-opening experience working with BfE startups. It was encouraging to hear how Manish — as someone who we would not traditionally associate with being an advocate for hijra issues — was able to find both social and business value in employing hijras. As student consultants, sometimes we can get a bit stuck in certain business frameworks, and whilst we provide more clarity to founders’ work through a third-party view, we also learn from their vision, passion, and unique business propositions to challenge how we think about business activities and what it means to create value.
What would you say to other students who would be interested in working on an engagement like this one?
If you are a student wondering how businesses and organisations can tackle structural inequalities and empower individuals, I encourage you to visit BfE’s website. The organisation provides a great platform to interact with inspiring founders and apply yourselves towards improving their ideas and the way they present them to the wider community. In a world where large corporate efforts often overshadow the works of smaller social enterprises, I think that BfE and other impact-driven organisations provide a great experience to understand how to work from the ground-up to build business value.
Interested in learning more about BfE? Please visit our website to learn more about social entrepreneurship and how you can get involved.
Dr. Manish Jain is Co-Founder & Executive Director of Kineer Services. Based in Noida, India, Dr. Jain has over 20 years of experience in the hospitality industry. He received his Doctorate in Social Services from the World Human Rights Protection Commission. Since 2018, Dr. Jain has continued to identify and advocate for dignified employment opportunities for members of the Hijra community. Please visit them here should you wish to support Dr. Jain and his cause.
Brandon Neo was the 2021 BfE Cambridge Chapter President, and led 60 students to advise and incubate social enterprises in BfE’s Incubation Programme. Graduating in 2021 with a Bachelor of Arts in Geography, Brandon is part of the first batch of Olam Ventures — Olam selects the best startup operators, potential CTOs and CEOs to form teams that build a startup with a chance to win $200K.
Vanessa Quintal is a recent graduate of Coventry University, graduating with a Bachelor of Arts in International Relations. She is passionate about assessing policies, procedures, and conceptual ideas in relation to political developments in a variety of countries. Currently, Vanessa is researching and gaining expertise on East and West African fragile states affected by violent extremism at ORB International.
