Price cuts in the prepaid economy
Sunil Bharti Mittal recently referred to a pattern of consumer behaviour that came as a surprise to Airtel Africa, leading to a rethink of their near future pricing strategy for this market. The Indian telecom company told participants at the Mobile World Congress 2012 in Barcelona, Spain, that it was surprised to find that the […]
Taking the long view – an emerging markets perspective
I read somewhere recently about the difference between those driven by quarterly earnings and Wall Street valuations and those taking the long view on business returns. The latter tended to have a more cohesive strategy and patience to create a market and demand – so very applicable to the challenges of addressing the lower income […]
Staple diet
This post was written by niti bhan and rss originates from www.nitibhan.com
What does it mean when Chinese manufacturers enter the social enterprise space?
“The market has been destroyed for solar” or so I heard today from someone who prefers to stay anonymous but I’d hazard a guess knows a fair bit about what is happening on the ground in East Africa from the point of view of social enterprises. Interestingly, I’d brought up the question of whether “It […]
The customer is the king; the beneficiary will remain a pauper
We weren’t beholden to our customers until we starting thinking like a business. We didn’t hold ourselves accountable until we started treating our ‘beneficiaries’ as customers. No investor took us seriously until we dropped the ‘social enterprise’ label. ~ Ben Lyon, Founder, KopoKopo, Nairobi, Kenya When I wrote “Why so much ‘BoP’ marketing fails […]
Informal payment plans offer flexibility and convenience
Rural electronics shops in the North Meru region of Kenya are full of colour television sets, home stereos and DVD players as increasing electrification of smaller and smaller market towns takes place. How do aspiring customers pay for these high value items on their variable income streams? Since shop owners tend to know the great […]
Some concerns about ‘pay as you go’ lighting solutions in rural markets
Having just got back yesterday after immersion in an arid part of rural Kenya, it struck me after coming across yet another solar lighting solution with a pay as you go or prepaid business model that this may become a barrier for many subsistence farmers, most of whom are off the grid and so, are […]
Convenience as a service
Convenience can mean different things to the household consumer, depending on their location. In urban Chicago, its stocking up the freezer and pantry with a trip to a megastore like Costco while in Singapore it might be the ubiquitous neighbourhood hawker stand where rice, meat, two veg can be had for as little as $2.50 […]
Immersion in rural Kenya
We start the immersion phase of our project tomorrow and leave for our first location in rural Kenya today. Our focus is to better understand household consumer behaviour and our methodology is inspired by the early stage of the human centered design process. Ukambani has been the traditional homeland of the Kamba people for at […]
Brazilian machinery taking the lead in East Africa
Dominic Wanjihia showed us this chaff cutter made in Brazil he’d picked up for 35,000 Kenyan Shillings (around USD400 or thereabouts). He’s using it to test and run his biogas generators at his workshop. Brazil? Not Indian or Chinese? What about the jua kali makers, don’t they make one far cheaper? Brazil, he said. They’ve […]
