By Gitika Mohta
I started the GSE field experience with a fascination for Enable India’s (EI) concept of fostering inclusiveness amongst employers of People with Disabilities (PWDs). Post-GSE, I began to read C.K. Prahlad’s most acclaimed work “The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid,” and am now intrigued by C.K. Prahlad’s proposition ushering businesses to reorganize their strategic models in order to cater to those at the bottom of the pyramid (BOP). While reading the book, I found many parallels between Enable India’s business case and that of C.K. Prahlads. I found that the argument Prahlad makes for the BOP market similar to the argument EI makes for the disability market. I also try to draw a third parallel, by applying these concepts to the restaurant industry.
Prahlad’s underlying proposition is: To stop thinking of the poor as disadvantaged/marginalized, and as victims, and treat them as resilient and creative entrepreneurs and value-conscious customers (Prahlad, Ch.6). Prahlad views the bottom 4 million as a source for new innovations in technology, products and services, and business models. He suggests that market development at the BOP level creates millions of consumers and entrepreneurs at the grassroots level.
Enable India as well doesn’t make a charity case for the PWD candidates, nor do they try to invoke the sympathy of employers. Instead, they place high emphasis on the quality of work that PWD are capable of based on their qualifications through past trainings. Their business case is very compelling and takes on a creative approach, incorporating the concept of inclusivity to attract companies for the hiring of PWDs. This strategy is used to suggest that qualified PWD create an alternate pool of candidates in addition to the general candidate pool of potential employees. This alternate pool leads to a diverse workforce, creates a more inclusive work space, and enhances the morale and competitiveness of the organization.
Both frameworks provide an impetus for more active involvement of companies and businesses in the private sector towards building an ecosystem that involves PWDs (EI’s case) and the BOP (Prahlad’s case). Both their business cases urge looking at the disabled and BOP pools respectively as a viable market . EI’s case claims that hiring PWDs provides the opportunity for companies to gain significant profitable growth and organizational development through greater inclusive practices. Prahlad as well, promotes the BOP as a viable market for new products and services, that ultimately serves as a forum for newer innovations and practices. At the very end, both EI and Prahlad stress that including PWDs and BOP markets respectively, makes the company more socially responsible (CSR) and leads to greater customer appreciation. Table 1 summarizes that similarities between EI’s and Prahlad’s BOP business cases.
Table 1:
| Enable India | Prahlad’s “fortune at the BOP” |
| The disabled can work efficiently provided they have access to WorkPlace Solutions, and an enabling environment. | The BOP can gain from globalization through an active involvement within the private sector by gaining access to products and services that represent global quality standards. |
| The disability candidate pool represents itself as an alternate candidate pool | The BOP represents a viable market |
| PWDs provide a new growth opportunity to companies and employers to adopt inclusive practices, and build on organizational development. | The BOP market provides a new growth opportunity for the private sector and a forum for new innovations. |
Both hold the belief that the disability and BOP markets respectively, cannot be left merely to the CSR initiatives by companies, and should be incorporated as an integral part of the core business and organizational development practices of companies.
Both EI and Prahlad’s business cases urge companies and businesses to manage and profit from the disability and bottom of the pyramid dimensions respectively, that creates inclusivity and promotes the creation of innovative and enabling technology, products and services. The idea of inclusivity is already championed by Enable India, whose institutional ethos is unique and widely admired. Prahlad’s concepts are already being implemented by various players in the private sector in many developing countries around the world.
While drawing these parallels, I am reminded of inclusive and innovative business strategies used in the restaurant industry. I once had a conversation with Mihika Chatterjee, alum of the College of Wooster on her visit to Bangalore about a restaurant called Opague in San Francisco where people dined in the dark and were served by blind waiters. Through her experience there, she found that eating in the dark heightened her sense of taste and smell, thus making the dining experience more enjoyable. But more importantly, it was a way of showing solidarity to the staff and understanding their world better. This concept of dining in the dark in order to gain an extraordinary and sensual culinary experience was pioneered by Jorge Spielmann, a visually impaired clergyman from Zurich, who opened a restaurant called Blindekuh (blind cow) in 1999, staffed by visually impaired waiters. Since then, this theme has been exemplified by several others in the restaurant industry and has spread rapidly to various locations around the world. The combination of a non-luminous ambience and visually impaired staff both make up the restaurants’ unique selling points.
What Spielman introduced as a means to create inclusivity and bring employment to visually impaired people incorporates a for-profit business model with a social dimension, that is, to create employment for visually impaired people, and this has perhaps become a business case for all of the ‘Dark restaurants’ around the world. More than just dark restaurants, there are many around the world employing disabled staff, or even just being disabled-friendly. For example, there are about 26000 restaurants in UK alone that are accessible for various disability types and provide excellent customer service to their disabled clients. This is similar to the idea of inclusivity Enable India consults companies on as well as Prahlad’s concept of businesses adopting the new social compact.
Prahlad claims that looking at the BOP market in this way creates a socially entrepreneurial mindset among business leaders that incorporates the ability to innovate, to create new ideas and products and implement them within a new social-economic context. Attending to a new context often leads us to design and adopt innovative ways and methods. Both call for reconsideration and rethinking of long held beliefs, assumptions and practices.
What Prahlad and Enable India are trying to share is true for any industry and institution: To innovate and find new solutions for newer and changing contexts that involve and include more people. This seems to appear as a real solution to establishing a deeper and more inclusive democracy within India. However, for this, India’s political systems would also have to follow this route….for some reason Indian politicians think that they are never too old to retire and to a large extent, and this is the central dilemma responsible for Indian political institutions being mired in age-old and crumbling belief systems. I shall stop now as this is a story for another blog post.
