The Clarion: A Social Enterprise Disrupting School Stationary Industry for Sustainability

Abstract

Clarion Education and Skills Private Limited Patna, is a start-up promoted to address the school stationery demand–supply gap in the rural elementary education delivery system and cater to the needs of the rural school children in the states of Bihar, Jharkhand and West Bengal. This case documents the way Clarion pursued disrupting the school notebooks market, with a goal of making a notebook affordable at one-sixth the existing cost of a notebook in the marketplace in 2016. Clarion was promoted by The Better World Foundation (BWF), Patna, a social enterprise working in the area of rural elementary education in Bihar. BWF was of the view that the challenges of school stationery supply chain need to be addressed through a commercial enterprise only, so as to drive changes in the sector, so that BWF could focus on its core objective of creating and developing meaningful elementary educational institutions in the remote rural villages in Bihar, India. This case study details the strategy of Clarion in developing a business model to break the shackles of high-priced branded notebooks by linking the advertising of social marketing campaigns with insertions in the notebook covers, and thus converting the notebook into an advertising medium, and meticulously campaigning for supply of affordable notebooks through various governmental and non-governmental institutions. Clarion challenged the competitive forces on one side and pursued building a cost leadership position for itself through cost-value trade-off initiatives on the other.