Aparajita Agarwal, PhD Candidate at the Wharton School
Abstract: In contexts with high poverty, impact-driven for-profit firms often take market-based approaches to drive inclusive growth while being financially sustainable. Even with the alignment between “doing well” and “doing good” that these firms supposedly seek to achieve, successful business strategies in these contexts have been associated with breadth of reach (reaching maximum number of beneficiaries) with little or no attention to depth of reach (repeated engagement with each beneficiary). However a focus on breadth alone may lead to tunnel vision when it comes to social impact. This paper draws the distinction between the two approaches and examines their implications for the outcomes for the different actors involved in BoP markets– the organization, its agents and the end beneficiaries.