Joomla Software solutions Template

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!