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Three Ways to Optimize the Smartphone Experience for the Next Billion Users
Across emerging markets, smartphone adoption is predicted to outpace bank accounts by the end of the year, opening up an increasingly clear opportunity for more multifaceted financial services. However, a range of technical constraints still hold some users back. Here are three ways to optimize for a more inclusive future.
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- Technology
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Inclusive Business Partnerships: Distracting Dead End or Sustainable Solution?
If anything has been proven in the past decade of inclusive business, it's that “go it alone” doesn't work. The enterprises that are going to scale have partners. The other inescapable facts are that partnering is hard and some partnerships don't work. The problem is perhaps that partnering is assumed to be something that just happens and anyone can do it.
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- Uncategorized
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Opportunity International’s Evolving Microfinance Strategy: A Podcast Q&A with CEO Vicki Escarra
Opportunity International, a pioneer in the microfinance space, operates 39 microfinance institutions in Africa, Eastern Europe, Central and East Asia and Latin America. But recently, the organization has been undergoing a strategic shift, announcing the sale of several MFIs in sub-Saharan Africa. We spoke with Opportunity's CEO, Vicki Escarra, about these moves – and many other topics – in this Q&A, NextBillion's second podcast.
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- Technology
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- microfinance, philanthropy
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Weekly Roundup: It’s a New World in Global Health … If You Act On the Old Study
That 25-year, quarter-billion-dollar, 1,000-scientist effort to catalog death and disability in nearly 200 countries – the Global Burden of Disease study – is still out there and relevant, even though not every country’s bought in. The countries that are buying in, however, have reaped rewards.
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- Health Care
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Letter from Mindanao, Part 2: Rural banking and the promise of cacao
In part two of his exploration of the effects of ASEAN integration on banking in the Philippines, Bruce MacDonald discusses the value of targeting hard-to-reach rural clients with microfinance, SME and agricultural loans. Of particular importance: loans for cacao production, as the country is ideally placed to help address a global cacao shortage that could reach a million metric tons by 2020.
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- Uncategorized
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Behind the Most Successful Microfinance IPO in India’s History: What does gender lens investing have to do with it?
The recent domestic IPO for the Indian microfinance firm Ujjivan far exceeded the domestic-only IPO record set by another microfinance firm just days earlier. As a $50 million inclusive finance company focused on women in the lowest economic strata, Ujjivan's success is a powerful statement about the value of serving low-income women with financial services, and the ability of mission-aligned investors to help them achieve impressive returns, both social and financial.
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- Investing
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Letter from Mindanao, Part 1: The impact of ASEAN integration on banking in the Philippines
On January 1st, the Association of Southeast Asian Nations' 10 member countries inaugurated the ASEAN Economic Community, a common market whose goal is to forge a prominent regional bloc and bring economic well-being to its 625 million citizens. How will the integration affect banks in the region? In a recent trip to the Philippines, Bruce MacDonald sought the perspectives of government and central bank officials and private bankers.
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- Uncategorized
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Get Ready for SOCAP16: Apply for SOCAP Open and Entrepreneur Scholarship Program
SOCAP, the world’s largest conference on social enterprise and impact investing, is already gearing up for its fall 2016 event. The conference will take place Sept. 13-16 at the Fort Mason Center in San Francisco, CA. In the meantime, SOCAP is accepting applications for two important elements of the event: SOCAP Open and the Entrepreneur Scholarship Program.
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- Social Enterprise
