Moving beyond sachets to products for rural masses

This post was triggered by the exchanges we had on twitter a few weeks back (@futurescape, @RGambhir) on the issue of whether rural marketing in the country has evolved to the stage where companies have started designing products exclusively for these markets. Till recently most popular approach most urban marketers had towards rural was do some cosmetic changes to the product, mostly the packing (smaller ones) and then push them in the rural markets. And to be fair to them even this sachetization lead to a boom in these markets. But then it was still giving a step-treatment to the markets which has 70% of our population.

In the recent past Nestle and GlaxoSmithkline Consumer Healthcare (GSK) have launched products that have been exclusively designed for rural. GSK's Horlicks Asha is — a low-cost variant (40 per cent cheaper than Horlicks) for rural markets only. Asha tastes slightly different and is priced at Rs 85 for a 500-gram pouch pack -– close to half the price of the original. And Nestle has launched Rs 2 and Rs 4 products — Maggi Masala-ae-Magic and Maggi Rasile Chow, meant for rural/semi urban markets to provide low-cost, light meal fortified with iron. There have been more attempts of these kind earlier , but they have been more part of a CSR initiatives, but companies like GSK and Nestle are looking at these products as profit making intitaives. More towards the BOP than the Social Business philosophy.....

A few more examples which would fit in would be 'Tata Swach' the low cost water purifier launched by Tata. For more refer the post @emergingfutures on swach . Even Tata Magic would fall into the same category...

Hopefully with this we can see many more similar initiatives in the future .