Slum-dwellers of Santosh Nagar, Goregaon (Mumbai), will soon be business partners with a Fortune 500 American company (name yet to be disclosed) that plans to invest money to set up a nutrition unit at the slum as a pilot project.
Eventually, the company plans to expand this model and even set up a factory on a national scale where other slum communities too could partner with it.
The model came to life with a business plan that was jointly devised by management students of S P Jain Institute of Management and Research and BoP (Base of the Pyramid) Protocol Project consultants, Cornell University, U.S. named the BoP Protocol, the plan aimed at providing a business development approach that facilitates commercial
partnerships between multinational corporations and BoP.
Companies too benefit from such models since they spend a fraction of what they would otherwise be spending on research and development.
The methodology involves the use of local knowledge, resources, and creative enterprise that is present in low-income communities such as slums. Five first-year MBA students of SPJIMR formed a team and implemented the programme.
They approached the NGO, which was working in the slum and through its help managed to arrange a stay with the community for four days. The project was carried out in three phases.
The first phase called immersion/opening up involved establishing a rapport with the community. Once the team acquired the community's confidence, the second phase of actual need assessment