Collecting reward points to redeem them for more goodies is a rage among upwardly mobile consumers. Now, a social entrepreneur has taken the concept to the lower echelons of the society, but with a difference.
Armed with the $1 million Hult Prize she won back in 2011, Akanksha Hazari will soon launch the beta version of the award winning concept m.Paani in Mumbai. Currently in the alpha stage, different iterations of its offerings are being tested in two underserved communities in Mumbai and the company is planning to do rural model sometime early 2014.
So what is m.Paani really all about? According to Akanksha Hazari, founder and CEO, m.Paani, the company designs and implements mobile-based loyalty programmes for underserved communities where they can earn more value for their spent.
"Like most people who are part of loyalty programmes they are able to earn points for certain types of spend and behaviour. They can collect and share these points with their families / communities and ultimately redeem them for a life-changing development rewards in multiple areas like education, healthcare, safe drinking water, nutrition, mobility, energy and financial inclusion," said Hazari who is also one of India's top 10 social entrepreneurs and an Echoing Green 2013 semi-finalist.
In simple terms, if someone who doesn't filter their water, and if they do something positive in that arena, m.Paani allows them to earn rewards points -- just like what a loyalty programme does. However, the rewards in this case are not materialistic or consumer rewards but are very impact focused that help people attain a better life.
The concept currently is at design lab stage, which is a 9-12 month pilot where alpha versions of the model are being tested. Different iterations of m.Paani's loyalty models are being tested to find out what works and what doesn't. "At the bottom of the pyramid - bastis and villages - people have never been offered anything like this. They have never interacted with the concept of loyalty points, they haven't even interacted with discounts etc in the same way middle- and high-income class does. That's what we want to change," said Hazari adding that a partnership with one of the biggest telco's in India will be inked son to help roll-out the offerings in India and Africa.
Based on the alpha phase the company will then design the beta service, which will be launched by the end of this summer. The beta pilot will be tested with a maximum of 1,000 users.
"We currently have two pilot communities in Mumbai - Parel and a corner of Dharavi. They are very different in nature and that's the reason why we picked them. We will run the beta service in these pilot communities and based on the beta service we will roll out first in Mumbai and the goal is by the beginning of 2014 to start a parallel rural pilot in Maharashtra," said Hazari. "The rural customer will be very different from the urban customer and so will the rewards be for these markets. Hence we will have a separate rural pilot as against extending the urban model into rural areas," she added.
The company is extensively leveraging technology and using a behavioral sciences approach to design and implement the model in the underserved communities.
"We are very much focused on helping this underserved segment in India, have a partner in their journey and attaining a better life. The reality is that this segment spends a lot of money and often pays a premium for things that not even the middle class has to pay for a premium or above," she said.
Based on her experience spending time with the underserved communities Hazari observed that people in the rural areas pay more for water, higher interest to the extent of 60% on loans (no access to banking system) and a whole lot of basic things.
"They are an extremely important customer at volume for big companies like telcos and FMCGs but they are not rewarded for it. In fact, the m.Paani model was born from this concept of why can't we connect business with impact leveraging technology and data. This customer is actually getting rewarded for being an important customer and that reward is something that's meaningful to them and can help them in their life journey with the things they are struggling with today," she said.
Hazari, a Princeton university graduate with an MBA from the Cambridge university, led the Cambridge team that won the Hult Prize. She was also honoured by former US President Bill Clinton and the Clinton Global Initiative.
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