More recently,I suggested to Sapgreen’s Ashwin that they could take to tricycle for transporting saplings. The three-wheeler should be painted in company colour with a green message. Visualising Anil-Ashwin riding a tricycle on Mysore streets with a bunch of saplings for planting,I thought it to be a marketing idea worth a try. Besides being cheaper than power-driven light-cargo vehicles use of the green tricycle would give Sapgreen much needed visibility. Ashwin gave me a polite hearing and a disarming smile.
Perhaps, we need to work more to promote the humble bicycle as a ‘cool’, green option. The pedal-powered bike needs to be re-invented to make a social statement. There is, perhaps, case for an ad. campaign, showing M S Dhoni going on a bike to have a haircut in his native Ranchi. Those organizing fund-raising runs for varied causes could encourage participants to do it on bicycles.Blogger Tanay Bahera in a recent post referred to a tricycle devised to carry-and-purify water as you ride it. The model, in its current form designed by its California-based innovators, may be expensive for adoption in poorer countries that need it most.
But the California design for a tricyle looks slick and stylish; and can be modified as ‘pizza’-carrier. Home-delivery pizza joints in Mysore and other smaller towns can replace delivery motor-bikes with fiber-glass finish tricycles. Food-World and other big stores can customize tricycles to suit their home-delivery requirement.
