Tupperware Party around the Village Pond

Avon and Mary Kay developed the model of home-based product representatives for their cosmetics. Then there were the Tupperware parties. The village women are also target markets for detergents, hair oil, and myriad of other products that MNCs want to sell.

At the time of the 2001 census, there were 638,000 villages in India, and 5,161 towns. At 1 rep per village, and 10 per town, a company like Proctor & Gamble could add close to 700,000 micro-entrepreneurs, a program that would probably only cost $70 Million, but would return revenues and profits, and a sustainable long term channel that would pay back that investment within a relatively short period of time.

Imagine, the women who assemble by the pond to wash their clothes, discuss, each day, the virtues of the new detergent, and one of them is the spokesperson and sales woman.

There’s a Tupperware party variant, albeit no less successful.