Prahalad cites Calera, a California firm in which venture capitalist Vinod Khosla is investing.

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K. Prahalad, an Indian-born author and professor of strategy at the University of Michigan's business school.

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"There were concerns that this would hurt the Taj image, its 100-year-old history of luxury, " says Prahalad.

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K. Prahalad, the Indian-born professor of corporate strategy at the University of Michigan's Ross School of Business.

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K. Prahalad and other management gurus trumpet examples like Aravind, but do the rich countries accept that they could learn from India?

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K. Krishna Kumar, who knew Prahalad from their undergraduate days in India, bought the idea and assigned half a dozen people to work with Prahalad.

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"We could do whatever we wanted inside this sandbox, " says Prahalad.

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Getting governments on board with regulation is important, says Prahalad, but not nearly as much as convincing businesses to stop fretting over the cost of environmental laws.

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"You won't find a big foyer nobody uses, " says Prahalad.

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Prahalad gained wide acclaim in business circles for his 2004 book The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid, which challenges large, established companies to come up with innovative business ideas to serve the rising classes in developing countries.

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Prahalad, who began his working life managing an Indian battery plant for Union Carbide, is best known as a highly influential thinker on corporate strategy, and has more recently turned his attention to ways to help poor people around the world.

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