Market Based Solutions

In the past year of exploring the landscape in India, we have come across numerous market-based solutions (MBSs)—which span a diverse range of sectors—that provide social benefit while being economically profitable. The magnitude of ideas, the number of people in the social and private sectors interested in them, and the potential inherent in such approaches is overwhelming. However, very few of these MBSs have achieved meaningful scale. Several India MFIs have clearly succeeded in reaching large number of borrowers, and other examples like ITC’s e-Choupal and Aravind Eye Care have also achieved significant scale. However, these are very much the exception, rather than the rule. While there is general consensus that market-based solutions can create significant social change, there are no clear answers for why so few solutions have successfully come to market. Our MBS work seeks to identify and understand how to overcome the barriers to scale for MBSs.