Found at the Fast Company Blog: IFC, a World Bank Group organisation, and World Resources Institute has an interesting report - The Next 4 Billion: Market Size and Business Opportunities at the Base of the Pyramid. Some facts from their Executive Summary:

Four billion people form the base of the economic pyramid (BOP) -- those with annual incomes below $3,000 (in local purchasing power).

The BOP makes up 72 percent of the 5,575 million people recorded by available national household surveys worldwide and an overwhelming majority of the population in the developing countries of Africa, Asia, Eastern Europe, and Latin America and the Caribbean -- home to nearly all the BOP.

This large segment of humanity faces significant unmet needs and lives in relative poverty: in current U.S. dollars their incomes are less than $3.35 a day in Brazil, $2.11 in China, $1.89 in Ghana, and $1.56 in India.

Yet together they have substantial purchasing power: the BOP constitutes a $5 trillion global consumer market.

"In its geographic analysis, The Next 4 Billion finds that the Asian BOP market (including the Middle East) is by far the largest, with 2.86 billion people and a total income of $3.47 trillion, constituting 83% of the region's total population and 42% of the its aggregate purchasing power."

BOP populations across countries:

More countries covered here.

Income vs expenditure for India in this BOP market:

This shows huge market potential .. probably larger than ever thought before, and really undeserved by businesses. C.K.Prahalad must feel vindicated!

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