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Mart With a Rural Heart
Previously the people of Illol village travelled to the nearest town of Himmatnagar, Gujarat, to buy a sachet of shampoo. But now they are able to buy it from the shop in the village,” says Nadeem Jafri, who has set up Hearty Mart — a chain of supermarkets in rural areas. Rewriting the rules of top-down retailing models, Jafri has chosen to target the ‘bottom of the pyramid’, as advocated by well-known consultant C.K. Prahalad. With a presence in little-know...
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Godrej Consumer Looking for Acquisitions Abroad
Godrej Consumer Products Ltd. is looking for acquisitions worth up to $1 billion abroad as the Indian soap and hair color maker wants to sell its products in countries like China, Brazil and Nigeria, Chairman Adi Godrej said. "We won’t go for anything very tiny, but if the acquisition is over $15 million, we would look at it," Mr. Godrej told Dow Jones Newswires in a recent interview. "On the upper side, we would look at something up to maybe a billion dollars." He s...
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Prahalad: We Need More Nanos, Amuls, Jaipur Rugs
When the corporate world is engaged in a debate over finding feasible solutions to come out of the current economic crisis, management guru Prof. C K Prahlad suggests innovative business models like Nano, Jaipur Rugs, Amul etc to move out from the crisis. While encouraging business leaders to adopt innovative ideas by referring to some of the success stories of top Indian companies, Prof. Prahlad said, “India has the ability to beco...
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Seva and Grameen Partner on Eye Hospitals for Bangladesh
Seva and Grameen Bank are launching an unprecedented initiative to build a network of eye hospitals in Bangladesh, one of the world’s poorest countries where more than 650,000 people suffer from preventable blindness. In 2006, Seva staff and our partners from Aravind Eye Care Systems in India met with Yunus at Grameen headquarters in Bangladesh to further develop plans for what will be the largest single undertaking of its kind. "Basically, we’ll be taking our proven model ...
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Nano Marks the Beginning of “Indian Century”
Even Tata Motors’ competitors are all praise for the nano. "It reflects India’s maturity in different fields," says P Balendran, vice-president, General Motors India. "Other countries and multinational corporations, who did not look at India seriously as an innovation destination, will view us in a different perspective." Advocates of the ’fortune at the bottom of the pyramid’ theory see it as a vindication of their views. "If you have a very large population which ...
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Unleasing the Spirit of Enterprise
A fundamental characteristic of entrepreneurship is its capacity to generate employment, offer the promise of more income, and increase wealth. By doing so, it plays a pivotal part in providing individuals a platform from where they can aspire to a life in which their potential is realised. Over time, much of the developed world has risen to the challenge of crafting just such a platform, and the business corporation as we know it today is a critical component of this idea of advancemen...
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Aravind Eye Care System among the World’s 50 Most Innovative Companies
In a 33-year quest to end blindness in India, Aravind has developed everything from cheaper intraocular lenses to a 20-minute cataract surgery that allows high volume at lower cost. ...
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A Bright Idea that Helped India’s Poor
Harish Hande’s first installation of solar-powered lights in a rural Indian home was a stealth operation. The founder of Selco India, then a 26-year-old engineer, believed passionately that millions of Indians living in darkness at night could have their lives transformed by solar technology. But he needed a customer who could afford to pay the high up-front costs of solar lights and testify to their merits. In September 1994 Mr Hande asked a wealthy betel nut farmer in the southern...
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