In 1888, when Queen Victoria ruled India, the company that would become Unilever (UNA) decided the country was the future. More than a century on, it’s staking $5.4 billion that it still is. The Anglo-Dutch maker of Dove shampoo and Lipton tea, successor to one of the first multinationals in India, plans to spend as much as 292 billion rupees ($5.4 billion) to increase its control over Indian unit Hindustan Unilever Ltd. (HUVR)

Coca-Cola has turned to solar energy to consolidate its market share and boost sales through provision of subsidised solar kits to soda kiosks in order to extend their operating hours. Speaking Wednesday during the launch of a partnership with energy solutions provider, One Degree Solar, Managing Director Nairobi Bottlers Patrick Pech said the project will go a long way in helping retailers and kiosk owners extend their operating hours, reduce operating costs and enable them record higher sales.

GlaxoSmithKline Plc (GSK) agreed to form a joint venture in India to produce a six-in-one vaccine that will immunize children in developing countries against infectious diseases including polio.

When it comes to making the case for empowering women entrepreneurs, it’s “mission accomplished,” according to Isobel Coleman, director of the Council on Foreign Relations’ Women and Foreign Policy Program, who has researched the issue for many years. Speaking at a December 2012 panel on supply chains, she said most development experts now agree that including women entrepreneurs in global supply chains is “one of the great levers of change” and that “putting more money in the hands of women entrepreneurs” leads to positive outcomes for families, communities and nations. The only question now, she said, is how to accomplish the task.

Osaka, Dec 10 (bdnews24.com) – Electronics giant Panasonic will launch solar lanterns for un-electrified areas in developing countries by early next year as it shifts its businesses to eco-technologies to bring back the losing markets by 2018, its 100th anniversary.

London - October 4, 2012 – The African Development Bank (AfDB) Group, Citi and International Finance Corporation (IFC), a member of the World Bank Group, have agreed to provide a $175 million thre-year revolving credit facility covering short-term trades for exporters and importers in Africa. This agreement builds on the success of a previous similar program launched in 2010 to help boost economic growth in the region.

MUMBAI: During a 2009 India visit, Paul Polman, CEO of Anglo-Dutch consumer goods major Unilever, couldn't conceal his delight with the Indian subsidiary's strategy of offering brands with multiple price and packaging options, helping consumers trade down or up depending on the state of the economy.

It's easy to criticise business for expanding into developing countries. But if it helps poor and isolated women, is it all bad?

AFRICAN consumers are underserved and overcharged, reckons Frank Braeken, Unilever’s boss in Africa. Until recently, South Africans who craved shampoo made specially for African hair, or cosmetics for black skin, had little choice besides costly American imports. Unilever spotted an opportunity: its Motions range of shampoos and conditioners is now a hit.

Singapore-based DBS Bank and Tata Institute of Social Sciences (TISS) joined hands to launch a programme which will support social entrepreneurship.

NO ONE CAN ACCUSE MORGAN STANLEY OF MERELY flirting with sustainable investment products. The April launch of Morgan Stanley Smith Barney’s Investing with Impact Platform and a similarly named firmwide initiative make it one of a handful of banks to institutionalize socially responsible investing.

The U.S. Agency for International Development, tasked with the administration and distribution of international aid from the U.S. government, announced it is forming a new partnership with Citi. The partnership is aimed at providing financial inclusion for the world's un- and underbanked by encouraging "mobile money" technology in developing countries. It was announced at the USAID Frontiers in Development forum held at Georgetown University.

Entrepreneurship is the answer to almost every single problem we have in the world today. So says Daniel Epstein, founder of the Unreasonable Institute, as he spoke in front of the crowd of 200-plus gathered at the Moody Theater Tuesday night for the Dell Social Innovation Challenge awards.

By launching your Investing with Impact Platform, you can change the world — literally.

Morgan Stanley Smith Barney is launching a platform for its financial advisors to offer clients investments with positive social and environmental impact in what appears to be a major push to offer sustainable investing to mainstream investors. Although many broker-dealers allow their advisors to offer sustainable investments to retail clients, few have specific advisor platforms for that purpose. MSSB made an announcement today about the new platform at the U.S. State Department-sponsored Global Impact Economy Forum.

If you want to work in international development, go work for a big, bad multinational company.

Multinationals are beginning to take ideas developed in (and for) the emerging world and deploy them in the West.

About three years ago, PepsiCo drew up a new blueprint for long-term growth in India. It spoke of the need for significantly widening reach, aiming for the new consuming class across urban and rural India — and more importantly, creating a whole new set of locally developed products for the masses.

Intellectual property is crucial for pharmaceutical companies to survive; without it, their pricey blockbuster drugs can be replaced with cheap generics. And yet, big companies like AstraZeneca, Novartis, GlaxoSmithKline, Pfizer, Sanofi, and Merck are willingly putting some of their intellectual property information in a public database . The pharmaceutical industry hasn't gone crazy--it's just participating in an in...

An international effort to replace smoky, inefficient household stoves that people commonly use in lower and middle income countries with clean, affordable, fuel efficient stoves could save nearly 2 million lives each year, according to experts from the National Institutes of Health. In a commentary in Science , the NIH scientists noted that indoor air pollution from such inefficient stoves affects about 3 billion people -- nearly half the world's population. In addition to ...

All too often, corporate philanthropy involves dropping a wad of money on organizations that are doing work on an issue that the corporation "cares" about, and then saying goodbye. But sometimes, corporations actually bring their know-how and human capital to bear on a problem, in addition to just giving money. The global pharmaceutical company Abbott is taking the second path, focusing on long-lasting initiatives that can grow local economies in struggling areas. Case in point: Abbott's ...

People who live in the poorest and remotest parts of the developing world often have their lives cut short by disease -- preventable or curable disease. The first essential step to fighting these diseases is correctly identifying them. But in the developing world, disease detection is often prohibitively expensive. In a brilliant cross-pollination of engineering, physics and ...

Washington, DC - The likelihood that few African countries will meet any of the United Nations Millennium Development Goals, aimed at reducing severe poverty by 2015, has prompted a spate of studies, books and debates that examine development assistance. Many argue that aid, in general, has done more harm than good. Since leaving an operational role at Microsoft in 2008, Bill Gates has devoted full time to the premise that international assistance, sp...