Bottom of the Pyramid

Since the financial collapse, I hear more and more companies in India talking about targeting people at the Bottom of the Pyramid (BoP).  In a nutshell, it’s concept termed by Professor C.K. Prahalad that defines people living on less than USD 2.00 a day and when you aggregate their buying power it’s actually quite large.

There have been many case studies done on this idea and the big urban legend is that someone from P&G came to India because sales were dismal.  After a few days, the exec realized that selling products in single use sachet packets would be the way to big profits….SORT OF.  Funny thing I couldn’t find any case studies or documents about P&G, instead I found some info from a local player that had the idea of selling sachet packets (Scribd document).

This idea of targeting the BoP maybe a decade old idea, but then I realized there are people that have been targeting this demograph for decades – political people. And they have successfully sold people on a vision and hope for years and do it quite well. If anything a case study should be done on the political entities that have been targeting the BoP.  Granted, some of their tactics are probably not for corporate consumption but I do believe there might be a couple things that could be picked up from them and implemented.