Hub and spoke model for new product introductions
Nairobi’s Central Business District – Luthuli Avenue is the heart of the electronics and consumer appliance trade for Kenya. Chinese businessmen can be seen mingling with Somali traders and wholesalers come from all over the country to see “what’s new”. I saw recently introduced solar powered refrigerators (just 60W) on display, direct from China but […]
Flexibility is the key to affordability
What makes a product unaffordable to those who manage on irregular income streams from a variety of sources? Is it the absolute price that must be paid or is it the requirement that the entire amount be available upfront? Increasingly, I am reaching the conclusion that there is a link between affordability and flexibility. What […]
“Kadogo” kerosene vs “Lumpsum” LPG: Trade-offs and cost/benefit analysis
Following a fascinating conversation with @bankelele and @majiwater on Twitter regarding the cost of kerosene, pay as you go models and relative benefits of each, I’ve been inspired to write this post exploring the topic further. Before I proceed, I’d like to take a moment to clarify what the “Prepaid” in the title of this […]
Grassroots innovators and the “build-test-learn” loop
Afrigadgeteers exemplify the customer centric principles of such high tech processes as the Lean Startup (r) method, or so it emerged from an insightful conversation with my Tallinn based friend Siim Esko recently, on Skype of course. He made the connection between the need to experiment and test prototypes for market viability – rapidly and […]
Mapping global seasonality: national times of abundance and scarcity?
Connecting some dots made me think of this exercise. If national governments are increasingly looking at ways to bridge the informal economy with the formal, in order to provide more inclusive benefits to their citizens and at the same time there’s an increasing focus on providing inclusive financial services to those outside of the formal […]
Seasonality in incomes still underrated as influence on purchasing patterns
While the BBC has begun questioning the oft quoted “$1 a day” statistic used most often to demonstrate the bottom billion below the global poverty line, they barely touch upon the impact of seasonality on the population segment’s cash flow, and thus, their bottom line. And surprisingly perhaps, people who live on $1 a day […]
Cookstoves matter less than the ladies who must use them
Photo credit: Goverdhan Meena, village Rawal, India Jan 2009 The Wonkblog covers findings from a randomized control trial on the impact of cookstoves in a blogpost titled “What cookstoves tell us about the limits of technology” where they share such insights as: So what went wrong? Basically, none of the earlier evaluations of the clean […]
Cracking the code for sustainable “BoP” business models
Unlearn the past to create the future ~ C K Prahalad In the half decade or more since I increasingly began to focus on the challenge of the emerging consumer opportunities among the lower income demographic of the developing world, I’ve yet to hear of an unconditionally successful business model specifically designed for this segment […]
Fresh look at India’s consumer market
This report (PDF) by Yoshihiko Iwadare of Nomura Research Institute is only 15 pages long but manages to overturn conventional business strategy on its head in its framing and approach to new market entry for India’s emerging consumer markets. For more on the Indian consumer market today. This post was written by niti bhan and […]
The underlying principle of flexibility
The Economist writes about the proliferation of mobile money across the African continent, high lighting some aspects of its rapid adoption by the local population – 96% of whom are on prepaid or pay as you go mobile subscriptions. A new survey of global financial habits by the Gates Foundation, the World Bank and Gallup […]
