When designing a product, understanding the customers’ needs and preferences is essential. A case in point of the importance of tailoring product designs to customers is the “sachet revolution” in India. In the 1970s and 80s, some brands that sold daily essential products such as shampoos sought to target a large customer base who, at the time, could not afford these products: lower-income households and the rural market. To cater to the needs of low-income and rural households, these brands revolutionized the design of their products by introducing smaller “sachets” or packets instead of large containers, reducing the price and making the products more accessible to all. Now, single serve shampoo sachets in India make up 95% of industry sales in units and 60% of sales value. Social insurance products offered through traditional social security systems often fail to target the needs of self-employed and/or gig workers. The sachet revolution example shows the importance of catering product design to customer needs. However, social insurance product designs have often done the opposite, neglecting the needs of a large share of workers. The International Labour Organization (ILO) estimates that about 70% of the world’s population lacks social insurance coverage. In some regions, such as Sub-Saharan Africa, this share is even higher. Self-employed workers, or workers who work on their own account without a stable employer, often lack social insurance coverage and are a particularly untapped market as they constitute almost half of total employment worldwide. In Latin America, approximately 77% of self-employed workers are considered informal (meaning they do not contribute to any social insurance scheme) compared to only 36% of salaried workers.

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