Social Enterprises with Direct Sales Models

[Joel Montgomery]

Dear BoPers:

I am doing some research for Acumen Fund and trying to identify a number of social enterprises with direct sales models to BoP customers. If you know of some, in any geographical area, please email me or post. Thanks so much.

Joel Montgomery
2009 Acumen Fund Fellow
[e-mail]

[Jenara Nerenberg]

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

[Mike Tyler]

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

[Vijay Sharma]

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

[Joel Montgomery]

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"

[Joel Montgomery]

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

[HZL]

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

[Sarabjeet Singh]

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.

[Joel Montgomery]

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.