IXL Social Enterprise Case Studies Chronic Diseases October, 2013 | Page 20
Improving Chronic Disease Care in Slums by 2019
Make offerings affordable and accessible
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Right-size solutions
Hold people and organizations accountable
Focus on human-centered design
What you should ask:
• How can you build your offering in pieces? Low-income families can pay for things bit by bit
more easily than all at once.
• What can you do to ensure accountability? Audits and monitoring should be embedded to
keep business trustworthy.
• Who are you designing for? Your customers are more likely to pay for things that were designed
with them in mind.
Build with local parts and knowledge
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Use parts that are available where you are delivering
Apply insight and knowledge of the community
Build with assets of value
What you should ask:
• What do you need to replace parts of your offering with locally available supplies? You can
save money and time by building closer to home.
• Who has knowledge that can help you be more successful on the ground? Navigating
communities often requires local support and engagement.
• What assets will make your enterprise more valuable by itself? Just because something is free,
does not mean it is valuable to your operations.
A new kind of business model
Aravind Eye Care System is trying to
solve the problem of avoidable blindness
in India. Aravind’s non-profit network
of hospitals, research centers and eye
banks is not dependent on donors, and
its efficiency allows paying patients to
subsidize patients who are unable to pay
with a sliding scale. Every doctor works
at all of the various clinics to ensure that
the quality of care is consistent. Since its
founding in 1976, Aravind has performed
about 4 million eye surgeries and treated
nearly 30 million patients. With a net
profit of nearly 8 million USD in 2010,
Aravind is the world’s most productive
and largest eye care service group.
Source: http://www.aravind.org/
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Go beyond traditional business models
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Provide value exchanges and microfranchises
Create intangible value
Create a business model with flexibility
What you should ask:
• How does your solution capture the value you create? Capturing value is a critical step to
making your social enterprise economically self-sustainable.
• What do you offer people that is difficult to put a price on? Your offering will be more interesting
if you free up people’s time, or increase self-esteem, dignity, security or happiness.
• What are the different stages of your business model? You may need to finance operations
differently during the pilot and early stages than you do at scale.
Companies who are able to think broadly and holistically about the entire business innovation value
chain are more likely to be able to capture value. Social enterprises developed for the Hult Prize,
like Aspire, Reel Gardening, Pulse, Poshnam, Origin and Sokotext, have worked across these
segments to scale offerings that will help end food insecurity in urban slums. They are working on
the ground, today, to produce at lower cost, find offerings that delight consumers, deliver quickly
and effectively, build brands that inspire trust, and use partners and networks to help capture new
value in new ways. How can you do the same for people’s well-being and health?
Version 2.0, January 2014
Hult International Business School Publishing 20