"With the publication of CK Prahalad's "The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid" (2005), the poor were suddenly viewed as a possible market in the eyes of multinational corporations (MNCs). The BOP is a big and growing market, although poor.
The development community tends to focus on satisfying the needs of the poorest of the poor (the 1 billion people who live on less than US$1 a day), however there's a bigger segment of the low-income population, constituted of 3.8 billion individuals with incomes between $2 and $5 a day that could be the focus of a market-oriented approach. They don't have any bank accounts, no accessibility to modern financial services, no phones, are dependent on informal or subsistence supports, and lack access to basic health care and amenities. Affected by Prahalad's work, the top management at Novartis decided that it was time to seriously think about the pursuit of commercial opportunities among the worldwide poor.
The case offers a description of the first steps to setting up the Arogya Parivar initiative by Novartis in India and raises strategic questions like the best way to improve its supply chain reliability, the way to deal with the fact that a lot of consumers were women and yet there were few female health teachers, how to make the treatment affordable, whether to establish new brands of medications for this segment, the best way to convince consumers to seek medical treatment and ensure conformity with the treatment protocol, etc., going forward.
PUBLICATION DATE: October 27, 2014 PRODUCT #: INS803-PDF-ENG
This is just an excerpt. This case is about STRATEGY & EXECUTION
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