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Prahalad and
Hammond describe these markets as ‘the bottom of the pyramid’.
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That is, they
say that there are around 100M people on the planet—the entire planet!—that
have a purchasing power equivalent to $20K/year or more.
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Then there are
another 2B people who have a PPP between $2000 pa and $20K pa.
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And 4B people
today—the bottom of the pyramid—who have an annual purchasing power of $2K or
less.
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The ‘next 10%’
would be considered an adjacent market in this context, while we also see a
very large and emerging market that includes a significant component of the
‘bottom of the pyramid’—the poorest of the poor.
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What is
important to say at this point, is that in this research we are not
interested in charity or philanthropy—we believe, if we can do it right, we
can actually build large and sustainable businesses based on these markets.
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The top 100M
represents a relatively saturated market—the bottom of the pyramid—or even
the middle—is virtually a green field.
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Of course there
are enormous challenges, both in terms of technology and the broad issues of
effective business models—and that is the core of the research agenda.
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