“Emerging Markets, Emerging Models,” from Monitor Group is a first-of-its-kind report analyzing the actual behaviors, economics, and business models of successful “market-based solutions”--financially-sustainable enterprises that address challenges of global poverty.  Compiled in an effort to use fact-based research to move beyond stereotypes, anecdotes, and common assumptions about the potential of market-based solutions, Monitor’s findings highlight actual data from global working models.

The report provides strong evidence that engaging the poor as customers and suppliers presents an exciting--and significant--opportunity to establish new paradigms to bring genuine social change in economically sustainable ways. During the course of its research, Monitor conducted more than 35 field investigations, primarily in India and supplemented with research covering 19 countries across the world, but focused the research on India, which offers an advanced laboratory of social enterprise approaches and proved to be an especially fertile source on model effectiveness. Conclusions were based on more than 600 in-person interviews with low-income customers and small suppliers, and detailed interviews with--and research on--over 270 social enterprises in India.

This report is based on a multi-year research project funded by eleven sponsors interested in new approaches to economic development and social change. We are grateful to ICICI Bank, IDFC Private Equity, IFC, Omidyar Network, Orient Global, the David and Lucile Packard Foundation, PATH, the Rockefeller Foundation, Sir Dorabji Tata Trust, Swiss Agency for Development and Co-operation, and TPI for their support. The original project involved a year-long analysis carried out by Monitor’s Inclusive Markets practice based in Mumbai, India. The starting point was the belief that the “next microfi nance” is out there, and that other market-based approaches may help address pressing issues of poverty and development in a commercially sustainable fashion.