QUALITY AND COMPLIANCE

COMPLIANCE AND QUALITY STANDARDS

ROPE meets the quality, company and social compliance requirements of our customers.

ROPE has the production systems in place to ensure all products it manufactures meet customers' quality requirements. Like all large manufactures, ROPE guarantees customers' products will be delivered on time and to their specifications. Meeting customers' quality requirements is fundamental to ROPE and its success.

Large customers have their their own internal compliance demands. ROPE will meet any requirements dictated by the customer. For example, ROPE is compliant with Ikea IWAY.

ROPE meets and exceeds all social requirements demanded by law and by our customers: this includes working conditions, no child labor, and fair wages. Our success is most apparent in the social impact ROPE is having with our rural workers.

ROPE has a robust monitoring system in place that includes independent monitoring and audits.

LEADERSHIP

Leadership

   Sreejith NN: Co-founder and Managing Director

Sreejith is focused on implementing and refining the supply chain model that is central to the success of ROPE. He establishes the distributive rural production centres and sets up management systems across them ensuring quality and timely delivery of the products. Sreejith has experience and success in organizing and working with the rural informal sector. He has managerial experience in sectors such as micro finance, rural enterprise promotion, start up incubation and entrepreneurship development. Sreejith holds Bachelor of Technology in mechanical engineering from Government Engineering College, Thrissur, and a Postgraduate Diploma in Development Management from Tata-Dhan Academy, Madurai.

   Patrick Fischer: Co-founder and Director

Patrick draws on his unique experience and knowledge of best practices in both the private sector and international development sector to provide key strategic inputs to ROPE. An Investor in ROPE himself he is actively helping ROPE in establishing its financial, technological and managerial systems. An engineer by training, Patrick started his career in the aerospace industry, working in several Asian countries. He then transitioned to international development, moving to Namibia where he helped manage a $20 million dollar program reaching 60,000 people. Patrick holds a BS and BA from the University of Notre Dame and an MBA from the Kellogg School of Management. Patrick is passionate about the ROPE model and believes in its ability and potential to expand internationally creating large scale rural employment

   Dr. Aarti Kawlra: Director

Dr. Aarti is a social anthropologist with over 18 years of experience in teaching and consulting at prestigious institutions such as the National Institute of Fashion Technology, Chennai and the Indian Institute of Technology, Madras. She currently teaches in the Department of Humanities in IIT Madras. Her keen interests are design and ICT based design communication. Dr. Aarti was instrumental in establishing ROPE and has served as a mentor to ROPE's entrepreneurial team from the beginning.

   Kunal R Sachdev: Director

Kunal is a nominee to the ROPE board by the National Research Development Corporation, an investor in ROPE. Kunal has more than two decades of experience in retail, marketing and communications. He is currently Managing Director at Caravan Craft Retail Pvt. Ltd. and Principal Founder, Navarac. Previously he was CEO of Hidesign, a leather accessories brand headquartered at Pondicherry, India, where he was instrumental in building the Hidesign brand and growing it internationally. Prior to Hidesign, Kunal was Head of Marketing for Retail Liability Products at ITC Classic Finance Pvt. Ltd. Kunal holds an MBA from Indian Institute of Planning and Management.

   Dr. Ashok Jhunjhunwala: Advisor

Prof. Ashok Jhunjhunwala is Professor in the Department of Electrical Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology, Madras, and leads the Telecommunications and Computer Networks group (TeNeT) at IIT Madras. TeNeT group has incubated a number of technology companies to develop world class products for rural markets. He also chairs the Rural Technology and Business Incubator (RTBI) of IIT Madras. Dr. Jhunjhunwala is the recipient of many prestigious awards, including the Padma Shri. BusinessWeek Magazine named him one of India's 50 most powerful people. Dr. Jhunjhunwala sits on the boards of the State Bank of India, TTML, BEL, Polaris, 3i Infotech, Sasken, Tejas, NRDC and IDRBT. He is a member of Prime Minister’s Scientific Advisory Committee.

   Paul Basil: Advisor

Mr. Paul Basil is Founder and CEO of Villgro Innovations Foundation which identifies, grooms and markets innovations that have rural benefits. Paul and Villgro co-founded the Lemelson Recognition and Mentoring Programme (L-RAMP) with IIT Madras. Villgro has so far identified and activated close to 1500 social innovators, impacted more than 350,000 rural users and created social returns worth USD 5 million. Paul is an Ashok fellow and holds a B Tech degree in mechanical engineering and a post-graduate management degree from Indian Institute of Forest Management, Bhopal.

FROM RAW MATERIALS TO FINAL GOODS

FIRST THE RAW MATERIAL- A LOCALLY AVAILABLE AND RENEWABLE SOURCE

OUR PROCESSING UNIT

EMPOWERING INDIVIDUAL LIVES

ENHANCING SKILLS AND BUILDING CONFIDENCE

MEET OUR ARTISANS

ROPE & SOCIAL IMPACT

ROPE has sustainable social impact for rural workers and the environment.

Currently in India, ROPE provides work to over 500 people (95% women). These artisans have seen their average annualized income increase from US$270 to US$720 after working with ROPE. Increased incomes lead to increased savings and investments for the future such as housing, health and children’s education. Apart from financial security, belonging to a larger network of producers / employess and also the sense of catering to global customers increases pride in their work. Furthermore, by allowing people to work close to their villages, they can avoid migration to cities and life in the slums and instead stay close to their families and social networks in rural areas.

Poverty in general, and specifically in rural areas, negatively affects all aspects of life, most notably health and education. Poverty is the single largest reason for the migration of rural poor to urban centers, where they often end up in slums with a decreased quality of life. Rural artisans toil long hours and often earn less than a dollar a day. Their work is inconsistent and they are under constant pressure from middlemen and employers to reduce their wages. These difficulties often cause rural workers to neglect their family's health and education which contributes to a cycle of poverty. In a country like India where the economic divide between urban and rural poor is widening, it is imperative to create quality jobs in manufacturing / production for rural workers. By providing work to the rural poor, one allows them to improve their general quality of life and their family's health and education.

ROPE's products are eco-friendly. ROPE's materials are naturally and sustainably grown in rural areas where the artisans live. ROPE uses natural indigenous renewable plants to derive many of its materials. Furthermore, many of ROPE's materials come from agricultural waste bi-products, such as banana rope which is made from the banana tree trunk which is normally discarded after the bananas are harvested.

THE ROPE MODEL

The hub and spoke model of ROPE focus on employing local populations enhancing or leveraging their skills at the same time ensuring scalability and adherence to excellence in quality in and social compliance. ROPE organizes clusters of production units with central hubs for aggregation and monitoring. Systems for production management, product quality and delivery are implemented at the individual production unit and hub levels. The hubs aggregate the output and deliver to global buyers.

To make the ROPE model possible, ROPE uses best management practices and innovative technology. With our success, ROPE offers a very powerful product to its customers: customers can purchase fashionable, environment friendly products of contemporary designs while making a social impact. That is, adding substance to style.