Diana Jue
Search Filter
Diana Jue 2013 fellow
Bold Idea
Deliver life-improving technologies to the people in India who need them most by developing innovative distribution channels embedded within existing local retail networks.
Organization
Despite the invention of hundreds of life-improving technologies, such as affordable solar lantern and water filters, few of these products are reaching and impacting their intended end users because distribution channels are broken. Essmart is a distribution company in southern India for these life-improving technologies. We create a marketplace for these goods in places where people already shop - their local mom-and-pop retail stores by aggregating a catalogue of existing, high-quality products, demonstrating them in stores, and training shop owners to sell them. Essmart is filling a significant gap in the global supply chain while improving local businesses and enabling technology access for rural households.
Biography
Diana Jue is COO and co-founder of Essmart, a distribution for life-improving technologies in southern India. Before starting Essmart, Diana spent five years studying technology dissemination through her undergraduate and graduate studies at MIT. Throughout her field work in rural India and China, she realized that many community development initiatives were not achieving their intended impact because of poorly established distribution channels. She explored this further through her Master's thesis on social impact technology dissemination in rural southern India, which served as one of Essmart's research foundations. Diana's writing has been featured in other publications including the USAID Frontiers in Development, MIT Entrepreneurship Review, and Stanford Social Innovation Review blog. She has been awarded additional distinctions, including the Fulbright-Nehru Research Fellowship to India and multiple awards from MIT to pursue research and work on Essmart.
