 This afternoon we're in for a real treat. We're here in San Francisco at SOCAP, a conference dedicated to the intersection of money and meeting and I'm here with Ajeta from Frontier Markets and we're going to explore a conversation about how to actually reach customers in the base of the pyramid, customers living on maybe one to four dollars a day. But before we get into your work with Frontier Markets, I'd love just to start a little bit with your story. How you got into microfinance and then transitioned into distribution and just what your path has been. So while in college and in grad school I started exploring different types of sectors or verticals in the non-profit and development space. Was always very frustrated because I felt like the non-profit sector was doing such great things but if the grants cut off suddenly the program shut down. And so that kind of led me into starting to explore other verticals like microfinance. Microfinance is a very interesting area because you saw you were working in slums and you're working in poor villages, you're providing access to finance which was something that's very important at the time but you were also doing it with a service mission. I saw a very interesting turn that happened with microfinance which was manufacturers that were not financial companies suddenly were like well you know what, this is a great channel. Tried the model didn't really work for a lot of different operational reasons so that's why I decided to then you know kind of go in my own direction, take my lessons learned from microfinance and other models and then apply that to Frontier Markets. So with Frontier Markets you're trying to do something that I think most of the world thinks is impossible. You have a wildly audacious goal although realistic at the same time of reaching 30 million households, getting products that are going to socially benefit them into the hands of customers who are living on one to four dollars a day and to do that in the next four years. So how do we get to all of them and why do we know them? It's really becoming one with the locals, it's really about localizing things, it's about recruiting people that are from those villages themselves that are motivated because they want jobs, they want opportunities, they want to give back. We look at those people as kind of being our route to market and before I can come to you and sell your product they need to know if I'm here to stay because a lot of people have tried this and a lot of people have sold something and then left so they need to know what are my guarantees that I can trust you. So it's building that trust and then it's word of mouth. So it's about balancing that need, understanding those households and then at the same time making sure you have infrastructure that's there. And are you introducing products that are inconceivable in the minds of your customers and if you are how are you getting them excited to dish out their hard earned cash and make that investment? You have to start with something that they know, understand and want. You're going from taking products that are obvious to very in-obvious or un-obvious but they trust you more because they realize that you do know them. So it's about you understanding how they think and why they think and when they think and how they prioritize and what they prioritize. The more you get to know your local household the better you can serve them with innovative and interesting products. And how do you balance or do you balance between impact and profit? A lot of the words you're using this sounds like this is standard business but how are you looking at it? We are very socially conscious. We have a very clear social mission. We are going to reach poor households. We are going to try to bring the right kind of products or the right kind of households that are affordable. And we want to make sure that our products are socially motivated. We think that there's a better way to educate a better way to reach out to households and actually take that consumerism that's there. Not increase it but actually adapt it to smarter thinking and give them exposure for more information. But you're right I do talk a lot as if it's just it's a business. But it is every social enterprise is a very interesting smart business because at the end of the day when you're talking about social responsibility when you're talking about getting to know that household when you're talking about wanting to really serve them for what they need that's just smart business practices. Responsibility is a huge part of what we're looking at. We really are talking about making an impact and we really do care about measuring that impact. But at the same time we want to show the world that you can be successful you can be scalable you can be profitable you can really build a large business out of your social responsibility that you've started. I can hang out with you for a couple more hours but I think we went over time. Right right no fair enough. So I just wanted to say thank you so much for joining us and we should be hanging out after this though too. Yeah absolutely absolutely.