The following are very generic comments for companies focused on rural market.
- Focus: The company/organization must focus on a single service unlike Drishtee or n-logue or Akshaya. However after achieving success with a product/service you may broaden your portfolio.
- Training: Training is essential for all the stakeholders in the company – employees, customers, vendors, etc. Why? Because in rural India, you have an abundance of raw talent that must be aligned to your requirements. In fact, sometimes you may have to start from creating the whole ecosystem before actually scaling up your operations.
- Adjusting to local needs: Rural India represents varied cultures, traditions, languages etc. So your model should be sufficiently flexible to adapt to local needs.
- Technology for masses: Use technology wherever is possible.
- Processes: Standardize operations in order to create scalable business processes. Actually, this paves the way for more technology adoption.
- Word of mouth advertising: In rural India, people love to be your brand ambassadors and talk about all good things about your product/service if they like it.
- End-to-end service delivery: You need to make sure that the consumer gets service-as-a-whole delivered. For example, if you just collect a resume and charge the customer rupees twenty for feeding into computer- this may not be scalable. However, if you collect a villagers’ resume, provide him a job earning him rupees 5000 a month and collect rupees 20000 for your efforts – this would definitely work with rural people.
- Emotional Attachment: Rural people place their trust in your product or service – so you must live up to it. It is not just a commercial transaction that you engage in with them but more an emotional agreement between you, the marketeer and your consumer.
- Communities: Rural people live as communities or extended families. You need to align with local communities following the trick, “trust is transferable”.
- Efficient distribution: Rural India is sparsely populated and so it is obvious that the distribution costs are high. Hence, you need to innovate to bring down these costs.
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hii
i think if u really want to have strategy for rural market start selling u r product at low price if it is manufactured in 4rs sale it in 5rs u might get less profit earning in first part as u become popular star charging high price because people becomes habitual of u r product.
or
first find out competitor and than charge same price of u r competitor and give best quality you will earn profit in long ran period and update u r technology as fast u can update it so quality service also u can provide
@ Raxit,
In broader sense, all of the points apply to urban as well. However, degree of severity varies.
For example, training of a vendor is not a serious issue. Many of the urban Indians live as micro families and so, word of mouth advertising is difficult to achieve. Trust on marketeer is not much here but on brand. Distribution costs are less.
@PRAVEEN,
Thanks for providing your insights from experience.
You are right. Training is necessary for even consumer or the employee in order to make them adapted to technical stuff used for providing services in Rural India. And they have to be very simple to use. This is evident from the mobile device sales in Rural India.
I do agree with all the points you have mentioned above but the msot important thing also to be kept in mind is
1. The technology used, :
This is a vital part as its difficult for most of them to understand it , as i deal in smart cards, biometric machines etc, it is sometime s very difficult to make them understand the vitalities oif the product and the technology, so we have to use other methods , like intecsive trainign , being wiht them for someitme, making them uinderstand thetechnology and the most important thing is the trust.
2. The environment:
3. The education standard
4. the adaptibility percentage: this determines how easily will they adapt to the technology ..
5. Also looking the availability of the proper brain’s who can handle it carefully, i know you have mentioned most of them but think about a place where there are no roads and no electricity, the first time they see one , it will take a long time adapting themselves to the new methods.
6. OVERLOAD: we should keep in mind , that the people of that area should not be overloaded woith technology, there shoudl be a proper dose defined and in the proper time frame it should be introduced.
Regards
Praveen Dwivedi
@Malapati,
Interesting thought, Let me know which point Do-Not apply to Non-Rural area. ?
@Shabbir
“Fortune at the bottom of the pyramid†Ummm.. Very few people watches this [for rural area] as it is More challenge, More risk , More panic and less chance of peace, success and money !!!
sorry for tooo much negative thoughts !
-Raxit
http://www.m4mum.com
for more comprehensive details and strategies from product design to distribution i believe the book – “Fortune at the bottom of the pyramid” would be a great read. cheers!