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Friday, November 30, 2007 — No Region Specified

Goodwill corp.s

Source: The Hindu Business Line
Aravind Eye Hospital , founded by Dr Govindappa Venkataswamy and Thulasiraj D. Ravilla in 1976, has treated over 2.3 million outpatients and performed over 2.7 lakh surgeries in 2006-07, almost two-thirds of them for free. Bunker Roy?s Barefoot College , which began in 1972, has turned thousands of school dropouts in rural areas into barefo...
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Thursday, November 29, 2007 — No Region Specified

GOOD Q&A: Bill Drayton

Source: Good Magazine
What does a $20 donation do for Ashoka ? A $20 donation represents much more to us than just the money. It means that the investor, begins to explore the field of social entrepreneurship. It means one more person becomes aware of the powerful work of social entrepreneurs around the world and it means one more person will hopefully be inspired to create social change. And of course, it also helps provide support to...
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Thursday, November 29, 2007 — No Region Specified

Low-Tech Laboratory

Source: Good Magazine
To view this article with product design diagrams and graphics, click here . MIT?s D-Lab can turn a plastic baby bottle into lab equipment and refashion a toilet as a chlorination system. Here?s how its low-cost, low-tech solutions are saving lives around the world. MI...
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Thursday, November 29, 2007 — No Region Specified

Social development v2.0?

Source: Economic Times
Bill Gates? address at Harvard?s commencement ceremony this year brought much-needed attention to the idea of ?creative capitalism?. Talking about the world?s sharpest inequities, Gates convinced his audience that the answer to them lies in making markets work better for the poor. In his words, creative capitalism is about stretching the reach of market forces so that more people can make a profit, o...
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Thursday, November 29, 2007 — Sub-Saharan Africa

African Aid Projects That Work: Partnerships on the Ground, Not Donations from a Distance

Source: Knowledge@Wharton
Not long ago, an unnamed global corporation decided that it wanted to help children in the southern African nation of Namibia -- and so it spent millions to donate scores of new computers and television sets for the classrooms in a particular region of this poverty-plagued, mostly rural nation. They should have talked to someone like Jonathan Johnnidis first. Currently pursuing his doctoral studies at the University of Pennsylvania w...
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Wednesday, November 28, 2007 — No Region Specified

Report Studies How Mobile Phones Affect Poverty

Source: celluar-news
DIRSI (Regional Dialogue on the Information Society) has released the final draft on its report about mobile phones and poverty in Latin America and The Caribbean . The report abstract notes that access to telephony for low-income groups is largely based on different strategies of use around mobile telephony. The main goal of this research project was ...
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Wednesday, November 28, 2007 — No Region Specified

Barclays strategy to tap bottom of pyramid unlike peers

Source: Economic Times
Sensing a huge potential in the mass segment, foreign banking major Barclays Bank will soon launch a banking product aimed at the unbanked and under-banked segment in the country. Unlike its other foreign peers which entered the Indian market by tapping high networth clients, Barclays, a lat...
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Tuesday, November 27, 2007 — No Region Specified

A Little Laptop With Big Ambitions

Source: Wall Street Journal
...But nearly three years later, only about 2,000 students in pilot programs have received computers from the One Laptop project. An order from Uruguay for 100,000 machines appears to be the only solid deal to date with a country, although Mr. Negroponte says he's on the verge of sealing an order from Peru for 250,000. The first mass-production run, which began this month in China, is for 300,000 laptops, tens of thousands of which are slated to go to U.S. consumers. Mr. Negroponte's goa...
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Monday, November 26, 2007 — Latin America

En el Punto de Mira: Somos Pobres, Pero Somos Muchos

Source: Compromiso Empresarial
Spanish language magazine Compromiso Empresarial (Oct. 2007) has two pieces specifically focused on the importance and growth of BOP markets worldwide: En el Punto de Mira: Somos Pobres, Pero Somos Muchos (Spanish only) Entrevista con Rob Katz (Spanish only) See the attached files, or sign up to ...
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Monday, November 26, 2007 — No Region Specified

Race to the bottom

Source: Economist.com
Business Strategy Review Autumn 2007 Value at the Bottom of the Pyramid By Juan Luis Martinez and Mar?a Carbonell C.K. Pralahad's book, The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid?about those with an annual income of $2,000 or less?is the inspiration behind the first of two articles from London Business Sch...
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Monday, November 26, 2007 — Latin America

The Base of the Latin American Pyramid

Source: RGE Monitor
By Otaviano Canuto Thomas Trebat was right when he remarked here yesterday an enormous share of the Latin American wealth generated in recent years has piled up in the hands of a privileged few that may or may not be playing a useful role in turning the present boom into self-sustained econ...
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Monday, November 26, 2007 — No Region Specified

William James Foundation to Provide $40,000 in Cash and Prizes to Socially Responsible Business Plan

Source: CSRwire
The William James Foundation announces its 5th Annual Socially Responsible Business Plan Competition. This competition supports entrepreneurs who are committed to multiple-bottom line businesses (people, planet, profit) by providing entrants with expert feedback and over $40,000 in cash and in-kind prizes to the top plans. Past winners have included business ventures in a wide array of fields ranging from an environmentally sustainable low-income housing developer; portable vaccine p...
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Monday, November 26, 2007 — No Region Specified

Professors rewarded for social and environmental work

Source: Financial Times
In what can only be described as the Oscars of the business school world, eight of the world?s most socially-aware academics are to receive awards from the Aspen Institute Center for Business Education in New York on November 16. This annual awards ceremony, now in its sixth year, rewards MBA faculty who have integrated social and environmental issues into academic research, educational programmes, and business practice.
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Thursday, November 22, 2007 — No Region Specified

Andrew Rugasira: 'Good African' banks on the feel-good factor

Source: Financial Times
Good African Coffee, available in Waitrose supermarkets across the UK, has not taken off as quickly as founder Andrew Rugasira would like. But, among coffee farmers in Uganda?s remote Rwenzori Mountains, it is an easy sell. The mountains? farmers have spent generations at the grubby first stage of the coffee production chain, lacking education, market knowledge, and electricity in their small farms at the base of the clouds. One farmer, Charles Kahitson, had never tasted brewed coffee...
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Wednesday, November 21, 2007 — No Region Specified

SME Toolkit Creates Opportunities for Small Businesses

Source: IFC News
This week, IFC and key stakeholders are meeting in Mumbai, India, to discuss the latest version of the IFC SME Toolkit ( www.smetoolkit.org ), an online program that provides support to small and medium business entrepreneurs worldwide. Sponsored jointly by ...
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Wednesday, November 21, 2007 — No Region Specified

A bank in every pocket?

Source: The Economist
Banking on mobile phones holds promise, provided regulators are willing to be flexible The idea that mobile phones bring economic benefits is now widely accepted. In places with bad roads, few trains and parlous land lines, they substitute for travel, allow price data to be distributed more quickly and easily, enable traders to reach wider markets and generally ease the business of doing business. Leonard Waverman of the London B...
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Tuesday, November 20, 2007 — No Region Specified

Microfinance lenders are getting the message

Source: Financial Times
Running a small bank that is big on microfinance can be tedious work. Take it from Omar Andaya, whose family owns Greenbank, a rural bank based in Butuan city in the southern Philippine island of Mindanao. Each week, Mr Andaya has to send out credit officers to collect loan payments of 500-1,000 pesos ($11.5-$23) from 32,000 micro-borrowers. But thanks to mobile phone banking, at least a thousand or so of Mr Andaya?s borrowers have began to simply ?text? the money to the ba...
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Tuesday, November 20, 2007 — No Region Specified

JPMorgan enters micro-finance field

Source: Financial Times
JPMorgan has launched a micro-finance unit as part of its emerging markets strategy, becoming the latest investment bank to enter the fast-growing sector. Rapid expansion of the industry and the impressive profitability of many micro-finance organisations have stimulated investor interest in a sector that was largely the preserve of non-profit bodies or governments until a few years ago. ?This is a global initiative, and part and parcel of the investment bank?s growing reach in eme...
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Tuesday, November 20, 2007 — No Region Specified

Microentrepreneurship Award help financing dreams

Source: Business Daily Update, Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge
Giving a man fish will feed him today, yet teaching him how to fish will provide food for a lifetime. The old Chinese axiom characterizes the philosophy of the Microentrepreneurship Award in China sponsored by Citigroup Foundation and hosted by the China Bank...
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Tuesday, November 20, 2007 — No Region Specified

U.S. plans $250 mln for African investment funds

Source: Reuters
The United States pledged on Monday to provide up to $250 million to jump-start three new African investment funds aimed at developing the continent's capital markets so African businesses can more easily raise money. The announcement came on the final day of a five-day African visit by Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson , who said Africa needs all the investment it can get from anywhere in the wor...
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Tuesday, November 20, 2007 — No Region Specified

Doing business in a world divided. Where to from here?

Source: The Jakarta Post, Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge
Last week, a group of political consultants from all over the world gathered in Bali to discuss, promote and celebrate democracy. The 3-day annual conference was opened by the President, with substantive speeches reaffirming Indonesia's commitment to the democratic way of life. The views of the leaders from the world's single-largest Moslem population had significant impact on the attending delega...
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Monday, November 19, 2007 — No Region Specified

Food for thought for financiers

Source: Financial Times
When executive education students go on field trips to India, they usually head to big corporate headquarters in cities such as Bangalore, where they can see the country?s high-tech industry at work. They do not often find themselves walking the streets of Mumbai, following a group of delivery men dressed in white cotton kurtas and Gandhi caps and carrying tins of curry, rice and chapattis. But this is what a group of financiers found themselves doing as part of an executive educat...
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Friday, November 16, 2007 — Sub-Saharan Africa

Unilever looks to clean up in Africa

Source: Financial Times
The residents of Muko stand transfixed yet suspicious, arms crossed and frowning, as the strangers who arrived that morning dance on a stage they have erected from the back of a truck. With the aid of a sound system - rare enough in south-west Uganda to draw a crowd of 150 - three easygoing young visitors pump out music and try to strike up casual conversations with the villagers. How many people ate breakfast this morning? one asks the audience, composed of women in kaleidos...
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Thursday, November 15, 2007 — No Region Specified

Sustainable Development for the Base of the Pyramid?

Source: The Why Files
Could the pitch-black villages and shantytowns of the developing world present an opportunity to alleviate poverty, improve education, goose green technology, save some energy, and create jobs -- all in one package? Count us as skeptics: We aren't buying pie-in-the-sky this week. Yet consider the Light Up the World Foundation, a Canadian non-profit that has wedded cutting-edge electronics to solar electric Smiling children raise their hands in the air behind small woode...
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Thursday, November 15, 2007 — No Region Specified

Rickshaws Drive Entrepreneurship

Source: Wall Street Journal
By the moment I got down [out of the rickshaw], I forgot about it, but when I got home and had dinner and went to go to sleep, his words came back to me, he says. So I got up and went to my calculator. A few sums indicated that the driver paid nearly half his earnings in rent -- and many times over had covered the approximate 6,500-rupee cost of a rickshaw. Mr. Sarmah decided to learn more, and the next day he prepared a questionnaire. He quickly learned that f...
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Thursday, November 15, 2007 — No Region Specified

IFC and FT Launch 2008 Sustainable Banking Awards

Source: IFC News
IFC and the Financial Times have launched the 2008 FT Sustainable Banking Awards, the leading awards for triple bottom line banking. Two new categories?Banking at the Bottom of the Pyramid, and Sustainable Investor of the Year ? have been added to the groundbreaking program. Now in their third year, the awards were created by IFC and the FT to recognize banks that have shown leadership and innovation in integrating social, environmental, and corporate governance obj...
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Wednesday, November 14, 2007 — No Region Specified

Public solutions or private enterprise?

Source: Marketplace
Can the profit motive solve our energy problems? Management professor Stuart Hart of Cornell University, and physics professor emeritus Marty Hoffert of New York University consider that question with host Kai Ryssdal. ( Click here to listen to the broadcast ) TEXT OF DISCUSSION KAI RYSSDAL: If it's tough for a small town li...
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Wednesday, November 14, 2007 — No Region Specified

Oil PSUs board rickshaws to keep losses under check

Source: Economic Times
This could turn out to be a unique protest against government?s populist decision to keep retail prices of petrol and diesel insulated from global crude prices, forcing public sector oil companies to sell at a loss. Soon you will find oil marketing companies (OMCs) like IOC , BPCL and HPCL promoting ...
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Wednesday, November 14, 2007 — No Region Specified

Potential global market of 70 mln consumers for mobile broadband PCs - survey

Source: Interfax China
A worldwide survey jointly conducted by the GSM Association and Microsoft indicates that there is an untapped potential market of 70 million consumers interested in notebook PCs with built-in mobile broadband , the two companies announced yesterday in Macao. Notebook manufac...
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Tuesday, November 13, 2007 — No Region Specified

NVI facilitates investment of Rs 165 mn for green entrepreneurs

Source: Indiantelevision.com
New Ventures India (NVI) which facilitates sustainable enterprise growth through investment opportunities to emerging 'Green' entrepreneurs since 2005, has announced investments worth Rs 164.9 million over the last one year in three companies. The project is an initiative of CII-Sohrabji Godrej Green Business Centre and ...
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Tuesday, November 13, 2007 — No Region Specified

Kiva.org Gift Certificates Pay It Forward... and Back Again

Source: EarthTimes.org
This year, give someone the opportunity to truly change the life of a person living in poverty in the developing world. Kiva.org , the world's first microlending website, lets individuals purchase gift certificates for friends and family, allowing them to make a loan directly to a developing world entrepreneur. A Kiva.org gift certificate is much more than a gift -- it's the start of a very positive cycle of loaning to a ...
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Tuesday, November 13, 2007 — No Region Specified

Dia de los bancos: Mexican in-store banks reaching out to new clients

Source: CGAP
The many in-store Mexican banks have only begun to scratch the surface of the unfulfilled demand for financial services among low-income Mexicans. Or so hope Banamex , Soriana , and Wal-Mart Mexico , the latest entrants into the consumer credit bonanza in Mexico. The success of ...
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Monday, November 12, 2007 — No Region Specified

Government intervention in microfinance: Threat or Opportunity?

Source: Microenterprise Americas Magazine (Fall 2007)
(via IADB news) Government intervention in microfinance could bring funds and services to millions of poor people and improve the institutional framework of the industry?at the same time, it could deliver a knockout punch to private MFIs. By Peter Bate It would appear that the rosy wave that swept several Latin American countries in the 2006 elections is about to hit microfinance in the regi...
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Monday, November 12, 2007 — No Region Specified

Villagers forgo quick yuan for true riches

Source: theage.com.au
When Hamagu, a Tibetan village north of Shangri La , refused Government offers to replace their rutted yak track with a paved road to increase tourism, neighbours thought they were naive. But for village leader Liu Tang, making it easier for coach-loads of tourists to trample on his ancestral pastures and sacred hills was exactly what he wanted to avoid. When Beijing rebranded the nearby Tibetan tow...
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Friday, November 09, 2007 — No Region Specified

PE groups ready clean tech funds

Source: livemint.com - The Wall Street Journal
Several private equity (PE) groups are creating funds exclusively for investing in clean technology in India, adding momentum to a sector where no funds currently exist. These groups include the Nevada-based Arvco Capital Research Llc. , Washington, DC-based ...
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Thursday, November 08, 2007 — No Region Specified

Business on the brain

Source: TimesOnline
Indian-born management guru tops The Thinkers 50 biennial poll of the most influential living business people The most influential living management guru in the world is C. K. Prahalad , according to The Thinkers 50 biennial poll of business thinkers. Prahalad is the first Indian-born thinker to claim the title. Best known for his wo...
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Wednesday, November 07, 2007 — No Region Specified

Dung, Sewage Fuel Inventors' Imaginations

Source: Wall Street Journal
By JEREMY WAGSTAFF Individuals' Projects Range From Electricity To Clean Irrigation Mr. Morgan realized that there was a need for improved helmets when he witnessed the aftermath of road accidents in his native Brisbane, Australia, 20-odd years ago. A traffic-investigation squad would alert him to wrecks, and he would rush to the scene to recover helmets for study at a local university. He vividly recalls his first crash scene: A biker on a high-powered Ducati...
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Monday, November 05, 2007 — No Region Specified

Financial Times and IFC Launch 2008 Sustainable Banking Awards

Source: IFC
The Financial Times , in partnership with IFC, the private sector arm of the World Bank Group , today launched the 2008 edition of the FT Sustainable Banking Awards , the leading awards for triple bottom line banking. Two new categories - Banking at the Bottom of the Pyramid, and Sust...
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Monday, November 05, 2007 — No Region Specified

Yunus calls for major reforms in World Bank

Source: Daily Star - Bangladesh
Nobel laureate Prof Muhammad Yunus has asked for major reforms in the World Bank saying the multilateral development bank has not been successful in achieving its main goal of poverty alleviation. The world has gone through so many changes over the last few decades, but the World Bank remains static since its establishment about 60 years ago. It needs reforms and...
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Monday, November 05, 2007 — No Region Specified

No, No, No, Don?t Follow Us

Source: New York Times
India is in serious danger ? no, not from Pakistan or internal strife. India is in danger from an Indian-made vehicle: a $2,500 passenger car, the world?s cheapest. India?s Tata Motors recently announced that it plans to begin turning out a four-door, four-seat, rear-engine car for $2,500 next year and hopes to sell one million of them annually, primarily to those living at the bottom of the pyramid in India and the ...
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Monday, November 05, 2007 — No Region Specified

Microfinance is the big idea that can help to end poverty

Source: TimesOnline
By Mervyn Davies, CEO of Standard Chartered Small credit projects in the developing world are not new ? but they are the best route to sustainable growth. The world should be pro-growth. The answer to the future is economic growth; it is not protectionism, or putting in place barriers so that the world shrinks. Each company should focus on sustainable development and growth. At the end of the day the world should focus on getting individuals and co...
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Friday, November 02, 2007 — No Region Specified

Health and care for all

Source: Economic Times
That India?s primary healthcare is in dire straits is well known. While the affluent sections are being overwhelmed with the choice of superspeciality service, there is a widely held belief that there is no money to be made in providing healthcare to the bottom of the pyramid. Some entrepreneurs are challenging this as a myth and trying to improve the health of healthcare in India. Ziqitza Health Care Services, the company behind the 1298...
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Friday, November 02, 2007 — No Region Specified

Unitus Convenes Microfinance, Business and Philanthropic Leaders to Scale the Effort to Reduce Globa

Source: PRWeb
Global leaders in microfinance, business and philanthropy concluded a three-day Summit focused on charting the next chapter of poverty alleviation through social entrepreneurship. Unitus, Inc. , a worldwide leader in scaling innovative solutions to global poverty, invited Pierre Omidyar, eBay founder and co-founder and founding partner of ...
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Thursday, November 01, 2007 — No Region Specified

In Global Entrepreneurship, One Small Initiative Can Make One Huge Difference

Source: Knowledge@Wharton
Entrepreneurs love to grumble about the roadblocks and delays created by bureaucrats. Government officials, they say, are slow, bumbling and concerned only about hewing to their rules and clocking out at 4:55 p.m. But in a study of global entrepreneurship, Raffi Amit and Mauro Guillen , both ...
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