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This bullet point is not from me. It is from Julien Fortin, my associate in a new consulting group we are quietly launching. He also found the name of this group, Palaam, meaning bridge in Tamil. But I won't say more now, and just copy/paste what he learnt by reading The Blue Sweater, by Jacqueline Novogratz, Acumen's founder and CEO. He is part of our current "back to basics" effort. Read, interview... to find the way we want to act in this fascinating but confusing BOP universe. So, of course, it doesn t mean that we share all that we read and write in this blog, but that we hear!

A small personal reflexion. The more I read, the more I meet, the more it looks like BOP share a lot with start ups! Immature markets, infinite players trying to find their way because technology is more and more affordable, struggling to find an efficient model, claiming that they found but rarely really sustainable!

Today is dedicated to the bible of all social designers, Out of Poverty, from Paul Polak (Paul Polak, Out of Povery, What works when traditional approaches fail, Tata McGraw Hill Edition, 2008). The lattest is the founder of the biggest social design company in the world, IDEI! You find a bit between Prahalad and Karnani, want to come back to less theory and more action. This book should fit!

Just a first sentence before you all click on "read more" for the first series of bullet points about this wonderful book. I like the way he introduce simplicity and ground-based principles.And the proof that engineering is not exclusively for engineers (Paul Polas was psychiatrist before going to social design... special tribute to Thomas!)

"Poverty plays such a critical role in the incidence and prevalence of all forms of illness, I have always believed that learning about poverty and what can be done to end it should be a basic science in every medical school and psychiatric-training curriculum.". Read more by clicking on... read more!

This second serie of bullet points about major document regarding BOP market is for a very detailled report made by the World Ressource Institute, from household income from 36 countries.

The report assumes the "orthodox" theorical framework of Prahalad, and give detailled figures about BOP market. This market is considered as gathering every people gaining less than $3000 per year. It makes a large and heterogenous group, but facing common unmet needs, BOP traps.... Focus is not so on poverty fighting, but on providing better access by sustainable models.

 The comprehensive report can be found here

After one year assuming a concrete business development position at Prakti Design, around dissemination improved cookstoves, I found it useful to take some distance and read again texts and articles, in order to find some sense in this strange BOP universe!

 I already spoke in this blog about an insightful survey about innovative model for this new type of market. I will start a serie of 10 (or more!) bullet points of major text and books.

First is a very famous critic of Prahalad's Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid,by Karnani. 

Let start by the conclusion, you can read more by clicking on... read more!

"Private companies should try to market to the poor. However, the profit opportunities are modest at best and I suggest a cautious approach. Large companies that require scale economies should be even more hesitant. The best opportunities exist when the firm reduces price significantly by innovatively changing the price-quality trade-off in a manner acceptable to the poor.
The private sector can help alleviate poverty by focusing on the poor as producers. One way to do this is to make markets more efficient such that the poor capture more of the value of their outputs. Certainly the best way for private firms to help eradicate poverty is to invest in upgrading the skills and productivity of the poor and to help create more employment opportunities for them. This is the win-win solution ; this is the real fortune at the bottom of the pyramid."

Simple, clear, and indeed, I myself faced these questions : what quality/price point, expensive cost of distribution in rural area, who are we really focusing, do we target enough the poorest? how can we make poor not only consumer but also producer?

You can download the full article in PDF here.

I had this morning my second lesson about the importance of "auspicious" in India!

 My first one was some months ago, when we had to quickly finalize documentation for our accountant. Happy to meet the deadline on sunday, I was expecting to rush monday and give it the file! But a good advisor suggest us to wait for one day, for a more auspicious accounting day!

My second one is more interesting. Our combustion chamber is in part made of bricks, which are a very interesting material, light, insulative, low cost... But sometimes, during wet season, bricks can crack. That has absolutely no incidence on the performance of the stove. But one of our partner, working closely with Self Help Groups around Auroville, explained us how it was badly perceived by ladies using the stoves. In a traditionnal terracota stove, when a brick crack, it is immediatly change, it is not auspicious.

That helps understand how well-intentioned development program, giving stoves for free, can completely fail. Give 1000 stoves, nice, efficient, reducing wood consumption... If one brick crack, you don t care as an ingeneer, but your stove will never be use and the 999 remaining users will be aware in 2 days!

That is the interest of a pilot phase, which bring concrete feedback you can t guess otherwise, and a good personnal lesson about auspicious things you have to take care of.

I wanted to share a fascinating conversation I had recently with one of my colleague of the social entrepreneurship sector that works for a multinational that in India, works as well in the "for the Poor" space.

What he said really inspired me: "aspiration".

In the social sector, we want to be innovative, have different ideas, and work from different angles; but what about the basis of Marketing!? The Poor are just like us and they desire things that sometimes they don't need. The Monitor mentionned in our of their report that 80% of the Poor in India want and would buy in priority: (fancy) phones , TV and want to have big weddings. The Poor in India, as everywhere, see what is happening around them and don't see why they should not want all those new desirable products.

Everything works by aspiration. As soon as we have something, we want to know what will be the next step! the Poor is no different! A friend of mine that works for TERI, the big solar research center in North India was telling me that as soon as you give people lanterns, people that have never seen the light in their life: they use it, play with it, adopt it and moreover, quickly want to know what is the next step, how can they have more: can I charge my phone on my solar panel too? Can I have more light? Can I charge other appliances on the battery?

When you work in the sector and trying to sell your products through NGO and MFI (microfinance institutions), they are always asking you to do yourself the "awareness campaign" about the product. the awareness campaign is : a stand in a village, cookies and tea (a lot), lots of advertisement boards, samples for free if possible, etc. And you replicate this in as many as possible villages. At the moment, even the big players do not have the money to have those MASSIVE campaigns all over India.

So how to still manage and survive?  Aspiration can be an answer!

Create the aspiration in the people who will then want to buy your products, without spending thousands and thousands of rupees in awareness campaigns. It takes longer, but might be stronger in the long term too... I leave this for debate.

You can start by reaching the richest of villages (from rich farmers to bank staff) that buy your products and then create aspiration for the poorest to want it... a quite interesting idea that I think we tend to forget!

In my company, Barefoot Power, we try and create aspiration in many ways. The most simple is by having a wiiiiide range of products that go from simple lanterns/desklamps, up to home kits with couple of lamps. We are trying to work on Reversed Rural Electrification, instead of waiting for the government to come and electrify remote areas. Our idea is to start with a lantern and going up to a house electrified, and following that electrifying the whole village through mini grid. 

I let you all think about this and hopefully come back to us with challenging comments!