FSG brings companies, investors, funders, and governments together to develop strategies to scale inclusive business models, and conducts and publishes research to make these enterprises more effective.

Inclusive Markets Projects

• The Program to Improve Private Early Education (PIPE)
  Improving the quality of affordable private early childhood education in urban India.
• PSI
  Strengthening the family planning market in India.

Expertise

Since 2006, our Inclusive Markets practitioners have been working to help enterprises, donors, investors, and governments advance the field from promise to reality, particularly in India. Notable successes include the growth of a new low-income housing industry and the development of decentralized water plants in urban slums. The team is now actively exploring a range of other sectors, including sanitation and healthcare.

Key aspects of our approach include the following:

• Starting with a deep understanding of low-income customers/producers.
• Designing and validating new business models that work for low-income segments.
• Addressing barriers to scaling at both firm and ecosystem levels, as an industry facilitator.
• Tracking impact and feeding learning back into the industry.

What happens when our partnerships are successful?

• The growth of a new low-income housing industry in India with more than 80,000 units sold to date across the country:
  • Incubated a new housing finance company that has provided more than $28 million in micro-mortgages; and
  • Engaged with state governments throughout  India to help shape the development of conducive policies for low-income housing developers and housing finance companies.
• Decentralized water plants now serve more than 20,000 households in urban slums.

Tools and Resources

• Shaping Inclusive Markets
  How funders and intermediaries can help markets move toward greater economic inclusion.
• Informal Housing, Inadequate Property Rights
  Understanding the needs of India's informal housing dwellers.
• Hardware Pioneers: Harnessing the Impact Potential of Technology Entrepreneurs
  Explores the barriers unique to entrepreneurs seeking to spread innovative hardware technology to those living in poverty in developing countries and provides recommendations for cross-sector assistance.
• Beyond the Pioneer: Getting Inclusive Industries to Scale
  Explores the barriers to scaling for market-based solutions and highlights case studies of market-based solutions that have achieved scale.
• From Blueprint to Scale: The Case for Philanthropy in Impact Investing
  Philanthropic support can help inclusive business models succeed by providing needed funding at early stages.
• “Closing the Pioneer Gap,” Stanford Social Innovation Review
  Many entrepreneurs creating companies that serve the poor find it difficult to raise capital, particularly at the early stages of their company’s growth.
• “Is the Bottom of the Pyramid Really for You?” Harvard Business Review
  Learn how smart companies have managed to surmount the barriers to success and how innovative thinking has opened new markets.

• See all inclusive markets resources >

• Inclusive markets blog >