Consumer product makers such as GlaxoSmithKline, Nestlé, Coca-Cola, PepsiCo, Hindustan Unilever, Marico, Godrej and Dabur are rushing to the bottom-of-the-pyramid market with custom-made products six years after management guru CK Prahalad said consumers with incomes less than $2 a day can be a profitable segment for marketers.

Estimated at close to 350 million, the bottom-of-pyramid (BOP) consumer segment is the biggest and perhaps the fastest growing in the country with about 40 million families making the jump from poverty to the BOP club every year. Marketers are no longer only betting on smaller packs of existing products to tap the fortune at the bottom of the pyramid; they are also looking to roll out products specially made for the poor.