Strategy for Rural India:Create Entrepreneurs at the Bottom of pyramid!

We have to acknowledge this fact:“It’s a more than one India”. And its not an easy task of our chief ministers if we consider the individual state; as their population is ever more than the average population of the European country and my times of African Nation. Also we have such a huge cultural diversity!

It presents a huge opportunity to every type of business, because you anyway find market for you product/service. Important thing is to find out your target market.

Back to our focus on Rural segment. Again our target market is very diverse. Gap between urban and rural is there. It makes confuse to decide on which type of media should we use to communicate our brand! Statistics reveal that while the number of rural consumers earning about a dollar a day would come down from 400 million to 250 million by 2020, the number of consumers earning over \$5 a day would have catapulted from 50 million today to 150 million by then. This represents a huge opportunity for marketers to increase their rural presence.

Example HUL’s 40% revenue is coming from rural. Its total revenue is about Rs. 18,000 Cr. And these guys believes that in next 4-5 yrs it will be more than 50%. Anyway, only idiots want to miss-out such opportunity.

But question is how?

Traditional models are very costly. Example; Bank can’t open their branch in every village and Malls can’t be opened in every district!

Answer to this is problem is already given by C.K. Prahalad. His Idea was that “we have to create entrepreneurs at the bottom of pyramid!”

Every company should remind this line to every top executives in every meeting. Because it has to be on both side, company side is already there but other(Rural); are we really making them able to work, increasing their skills, and initiatives from their side to enter.

These initiatives like stores/franchisees  run by local employees(full ownership by locals/in partnership with company/financed with govt./ others). Then only innovations can be possible. And you should be open to listen them!

Innovations in Marketing mix must be there! Like products will be specially designed for rural market. Their promotion will be different than in Urban. For example Laptop/PC/Desktop manufactures have to go into the village and organize camps in district schools to increase awareness the importance of Computer education and teach elementary education of Computer to school children.

Anyway, sure we will see more and more innovative ideas in future!

• remember: “Create Entrepreneurs at the Bottom of pyramid”