Social Enterprises with Direct Sales Models

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Permalink Reply by Jenara Nerenberg on May 3, 2009 at 1:43pm

Hi Joel,
Can you elaborate on what you're looking for? Are you looking for models where the BOP sell to other BOP? Or MNCs selling to the BOP? Or NGOs going out and selling water treatment tablets, for example? There's a wide range of direct sales models, so let's see if we can help by better understanding what you're looking for.

Jenara

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Permalink Reply by Mike Tyler on June 13, 2009 at 4:37pm

Hi, have you looked at Mamasante in Ghana setup by Freedom from Hunger. They seem to have quite a good model

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Permalink Reply by Vijay Sharma on June 13, 2009 at 7:29pm

Hi Joel,

You may want to look at the Shakti model in India - set up by Unilever. The model is a successful one where around 50,000 shakti entrepreneurs are servicing around a hundred thousand villages.

if you need more information on this, let me know. I was fortunate to set up and lead that business.

best
vijay

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Permalink Reply by Joel Montgomery on June 15, 2009 at 3:08pm

Hello all, thanks so much for the information. Jenara, to your point, we are basically looking at any model that tries to target BoP customers using a direct sales model. We have put together a survey and will be sending it out to all the organizations that we have identified to find trends. The title of our research is "Sales at the BoP: Barriers & Breakthroughs"

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Permalink Reply by Joel Montgomery on July 7, 2009 at 10:03am

Vijay:

Would love to touch base with you about your experience. If you can accept my Friend request, then we can continue the discussion over email. Thanks!

Joel

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Permalink Reply by HZL on June 18, 2009 at 10:37pm

You probably already know about this, but PATH is working in this area as it relates to household water treatment and storage devices. See their website for details: www.path.org/projects/safe_water.php

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Permalink Reply by Sarabjeet Singh on July 24, 2009 at 10:19am

I am not clear who are you looking for - whether it is someone like UTMT (http://www.utmt.in/) which is providing support network for rural producers or SIDF (http://www.s3idf.org/) which is a social merchant bank for rural entrepreneurs or Richskaw Bank (http://www.nextbillion.net/news/rickshaw-bank-turns-employees-into-...) which directly serves the BoP. I think its someone like Rickshaw Bank. Will be glad to help and use my knowledge sources to identify these for you.

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Permalink Reply by Joel Montgomery on July 24, 2009 at 10:37am

Sarabjeet:

Thanks so much for the suggestions. We actually just completed the survey with over 40 organizations from around the world participating. We're working on analyzing the data right now and will have a report up on NextBillion in the fall.

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