IDEAS Business Development Initiative (BDI)

IDEAS Business Development Initiative (BDI) is an innovative plan to provide life-giving change for the poorest of the poor in India, China and Central Asia through sustainable macro-job creation.  

Background

"The answer to poverty is business development, not charity...trade not aid" so cries Pastor Rick Warren. Africa offers a good example of how aid is actually hurting its people. With $50 billion annual aid going to African countries; the poor are getting poorer, economic growth gets slower, countries get more debt laden and civil conflict is rampant. Charity aid in Africa has been an unmitigated political, economic and humanitarian disaster. (WSJ, 3/23/09)

In countries such as India, where globalization has provided enormous economic gains to the higher educated classes, these economic gains completely miss the poor at the bottom of the pyramid. As Kofi Anan states, "The main losers in today's very unequal world are not those who are too much exposed to globalization, they are those who have been left out."

For globalization to succeed it must lead to economic development which provides opportunities to the poor as well as the rich. IDEAS' belief is that charitable aid cannot be the platform for long-term sustainable growth and that new models of Business Development have to be delivered through private enterprise. We also believe that these models have to be directed primarily and deliberately to the bottom of the pyramid. These models must provide for:

• Scalability - They have to be able to scale up to significant size.

• Sustainability ­­_­- They have to be market driven and have attractive markets to grow.

• Provide skills growth - They must continuously improve worker skills to be able to enter new markets competitively.

• Provide holistic transformation - The poor and their families must be mentored and have their lives transformed so they can break free from the cycles of dysfunction that poverty and oppression impose.

Through the IDEAS BDI, a new private business will be created in 2011-2012. This company will meet the above attributes. It will be a Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) Company focused on providing BPO services to small-to-medium size businesses in the US. The work done in providing these services will be performed primarily by those at the bottom of the pyramid, such as the Dalits of India (the Untouchables).

This paper will review the elements of IDEAS Business Development Initiative initially directed at India's Dalits. Please contact for more information about BDI and ways you can be involved.