Why Hapinoy is Like the iPhone

You’re probably wondering how in the world I came up with the following equation :

Well, the truth of the matter is that lately, I’ve begun to become more comfortable explaining Hapinoy’s Business Model in this way. Most especially now that we’re in a stage wherein we can more tangibly share the next phase of our evolution.

You see, a lot of people look at Hapinoy and mistakenly think that the whole plan is simply to organize, aggregate, and makeover a chain of sari-sari stores.

That’s actually an intuitive observation, as aggregating thousands of sari-sari stores is indeed a significant chunk of the Hapinoy program.

But from the very beginning, we never really saw the Hapinoy Stores to remain as ordinary sari-sari stores. Since a major thrust of Hapinoy is to grow the business of our micro-entrepreneur storeowners – captured in our Path to Prosperity Program – then we have to go beyond traditional business thinking in order to realize new revenue streams. And in a situation wherein commodity goods provide only commodity margins, then innovation and evolution will play a key part in our Hapinoy Stores’ growth.

And so, while one whole path of growth for the Hapinoy community is growth through backward-integration and creating an “inclusive supply chain” for community-based producers (a whole separate blog entry in itself) …

… another big area of growth is really the evolution of Hapinoy Stores into what we call Hapinoy+ (Hapinoy-Plus):

Simply put, Hapinoy+ Stores are those stores that go beyond the traditional sari-sari store model – beyond the basic assortment of commodity products.

A few quick examples :

- Due to our partnership with Smart, we’ve converted Hapinoy Stores into a cellphone-loading platform. In fact, our top stores have been computerized and wired – paving the way for Hapinoy Internet Cafe’s. After thinking through on how to maximize the very same PC’s, we partnered with Intel and have an ongoing experiment on a simple photo-printing solution called HapiPrints.

- With Ateneo School of Government’s iBop-Asia project, we’re actively researching the Hapinoy Healthcare Hub, our exploration into medicine distribution and marketing.

- Just recently, we met with a large beauty-care company’s CEO, and will now explore a new category pillar of products for the BoP,  thus reimagining the Sari-Sari Store are as a center for beauty care.

And the list goes on and on : agriculture, simple technologies for the BoP, food and nutrition, et cetera. The possibilities are almost limitless.

And as these limitless possibilities emerge, this is where the iPhone metaphor begins to rear its head.

Because Hapinoy’s strategy and Business Model is NOT retailing. The truth is that – much like the iPhone – our business model is to be a platform.

To the non-geeks, let me explain that most of the functionalities of the iPhone are unleashed through the applications installed on it. It’s what has allowed the iPhone to go beyond being just a normal phone. Literally, it has simultaneously become a GPS device, a gaming machine, an ebook/comicbook reader, a location-sensitive information tool, a PDA/organizer, and so on and so forth and so on and so forth (all the way up to 100,000+ apps)

But here’s the beauty of the platform business model :

Apple manufactured the iPhone and got it into the hands of millions of people; And yet equally as important, Apple also developed the distribution mechanism to bring the Apps to the iPhone – the much-venerated iTunes Store.

But if you dig down to it, all the applications that you can buy and install on the iPhone – all of these were developed by independent third party software developers. Which then points to the fact that Apple didn’t have to invest in huge resources and manpower in order to develop all those applications from scratch; It just had to open itself up as a platform, and then relied on an ecosystem of these companies who then developed apps for their device.

The beauty is that it’s a win-win-win situation. iPhone users get more functionality, App developers gain sales from selling their Apps, and Apple derives revenue from every transaction.

And so, applying the same thinking to Hapinoy – in order for the Hapinoy Store to unleash the true potential of the network, then the ecosytem must be opened up as a platform to independent entrepreneurs who want to develop “applications” for sari-sari stores. And these apps can take so many various forms — whether it be new products for the BoP, new services even (such as the Hapinoy+ examples mentioned above), most especially new livelihood opportunities for the BoP.

And it will also be win-win-win : you’ll make money, the Hapinoy Store will realize higher revenues, and MicroVentures also benefits from the transaction.

So if you’re an entrepreneur out there who wants to start a social business enterprise, we enjoin you to start with Hapinoy. You won’t have to start from scratch in trying to make an impact; We’ve already got a large network, an ecosystem, a platform, upon which you can build your big idea. Email me : mark@hapinoy.com

This entry was posted on Monday, February 1st, 2010 at 12:00 pm and is filed under A Better World, Entrepreneurship, Hapinoy, Innovation+, Social Business Enterprise. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.