Product and Service Innovations in Rural Markets of India

Abstract

This paper is about a real life case of a social entrepreneur Nadeem Jafri. It tries to explore the organisational determinants of retail-business network in chilea community. Nadeem is a cousin of Pir Syed Mujahid Hussain Jafri who is sect head of the Chilea community from North Gujarat which runs a network of around one hundred restaurants in and around Ahmedabad and various restaurants in the entire highway belt of Ahmedabad to Mumbai. In an earlier case (Alagh, Thenmouzi & Babu, 2008) we had described the setting up of the Super Market Hearty Mart at Vishala Circle area of Ahmedabad by Nadeem an advertising professional turned entrepreneur, we had described in that case how Nadeem satisfied the latent consumer demands of the middle class largely muslim community in the area of Vishala circle. In another case (Alagh and Christie, 2009) we further described how Nadeem by venturing into villages and setting up franchises of Hearty Mart provided Entrepreneurial opportunities to the youth in the rural areas. In this paper we propose now to further study the Hearty Mart model to specifically examine selected theories of Contemporary Organisational Economics to further understand this model of organization.