Whether Poverty Premium or Poverty Discount – Entrepreneurship and Innovation is the key
Recently Vijay Govindrajan, Professor of strategy at Dartmouth College, USA was asked – ‘ While Innovating, whom should companies target – local consumers or global ones? ’ His reply was: ‘The focus has to be Indian consumers, especially Indian non-consumers.’ He divided India into three categories, namely ‘Developed India’ (100 million people living in 15 major Indian cities), ‘ Developing India ’ (300 million people living in 6,000 small towns), and ‘Underdeveloped India’ (700 million living in the 600,000 villages). He combined developing and underdeveloped India into one group of customers as non-consumers. The needs of these non-consumers have to be addressed in order to capitalize on the opportunity that India provides and it is possible through developing innovative products and services which cater to their pockets. These non-consumers pose a greater challenge for the corporate houses to attract their attention. More than a decade ago, in 2002, CK Prahalad a