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Weekly Roundup: Will Narayana Health’s IPO Hearten Investors and Patients Alike?
The collective ears of the healthcare world pricked up this week on the news that Narayana Hrudayalaya is going public. Narayana has combined economies of scale and specialization to turn a profit while charging an average of only $2,000 for open-heart surgery. So it might be fair to ponder: Does an IPO mean the model so many have held up so high will stop working?
- Categories
- Health Care, Impact Assessment
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Measuring Environmental Performance in Microfinance
What responsibility does the microfinance industry have in reaching each of the Sustainable Development Goals? Of the 1,100 microfinance institutions reporting social performance information to MIX in 2014, 40 percent reported that they raised clients’ awareness of environment impacts. Additionally, 34 percent claimed to have some form of environmental risk management in place and 19 percent said they offer environmentally-friendly credit products. But the microfinance sector still lacks a set of established metrics to track their green performance management.
- Categories
- Environment, Impact Assessment
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Does Your Organization Actually Empower Women?
Although many organizations working in international development make grandiose claims of their programs’ ability to empower women, with few tools available to actually measure empowerment, it is hard to tell if these claims are based on fact. The Women’s Empowerment in Agriculture Index is one way to ensure that they are.
- Categories
- Agriculture, Impact Assessment
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The Challenges of Starting Your First Impact Fund
Starting an impact fund is HARD. New fund managers face a host of major challenges getting a fund off the ground. Dave Richards, managing partner and co-founder at impact fund accelerator Capria, shares three challenges and a few lessons on overcoming them.
- Categories
- Investing, Social Enterprise
- Tags
- impact investing
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How a Change in Perspective Helped Ignite Cookstove Sales
Envirofit is a social enterprise that since 2007 has produced and sold low-cost biomass cookstoves in developing nations. Along the way, it learned that good things happen when firms treat the BoP market as customers to be served, rather than beneficiaries.
- Categories
- Health Care, Social Enterprise
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Two Keys to Advancing Global Financial Inclusion
JP Morgan recently joined with the Gates Foundation, Bankable Frontier Associates, Accion International, Omidyar Network and others to create the Catalyst Fund. Catalyst will provide funding and mentorship to financial inclusion-focused social entrepreneurs in emerging markets that offer breakthrough technology innovations to promote financial health globally. Janis Bowdler discusses the new fund, and two key approaches to bringing financial services to the world's poorest.
- Categories
- Investing, Social Enterprise
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Smallholder Farmers and Big Business: 5 Insights from the Field
Modern agricultural practices and new technologies have transformed the productivity and lives of large farmers, but often fail to reach small and very small farmers for a variety of reasons. However, some pioneer companies and organizations across the world have sustainably increased the income and livelihoods of millions of smallholder farmers, by sourcing produce from them or selling products to them. What do these pioneers tell us?
- Categories
- Agriculture, Impact Assessment
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Mobile-izing Savings with Defaults in Afghanistan
The number of people with phones is far higher than the number of people who have easy access to traditional bank branches, especially among the rural poor. Until now, however, no one has tested whether mobile banking can facilitate default savings programs. This is exactly what a team led by Innovations for Poverty Action set out to do in Afghanistan.
- Categories
- Impact Assessment, Technology
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