-
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.
- Categories
- Investing
-
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.
- Categories
- Uncategorized
-
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.
- Categories
- Social Enterprise
-
Healthy Markets: Essential to Improving Health and Saving Lives
PATH, which for nearly 40 years has been working to understand and address market-based issues for medicines, vaccines, diagnostics and medical devices, recently compiled a diverse collection of blogs with the hope of elevating the role well-functioning markets play in supporting access to health products. We've featured one of these blogs here.
- Categories
- Health Care
- Tags
- public health
-
Innovations in Financial Capability: Four Lessons For Providers
Building successful financial capability requires moving beyond traditional modes of product delivery and financial education. Accion identified several best practices from organizations that habitually learn from their clients’ needs and behaviors, and tailor their products to meet those needs and build capability. Here are four lessons from their new report on the topic.
- Categories
- Uncategorized
-
Commercializing Health Tech in India
Preventing hypothermia is recognized as an essential part of care for all newborns by the World Health Organization and the Indian government, but it is often missed, especially in resource-poor settings. The Bempu bracelet is designed to overcome that problem by empowering nurses and parents to detect and prevent hypothermia in babies.
- Categories
- Health Care, Social Enterprise
-
NexThought Monday: Our inaugural podcast – a conversation with the MasterCard Foundation’s Ann Miles
In April, the MasterCard Foundation Fund for Rural Prosperity awarded over $10 million to five innovative companies working to increase financial access in rural Africa. In NextBillion's inaugural podcast, we spoke to Ann Miles, Director of Financial Inclusion & Youth Livelihoods at the MasterCard Foundation, about the competition's winners and the broader digital financial inclusion space in Africa.
- Categories
- Agriculture, Technology
-
Finding a Sanitation Destiny: ‘I Am Supposed to Design Toilets’
Jasmine Burton of Wish for WASH: "Although we are still very much researching and iterating our design, (the) SafiChoo (toilet) is innovative because it seeks to incorporate human-centered design and community-driven solutions to best improve the user experience in all parts of the market (from manufacturing to shipping to distributing to customers to end users)."
- Categories
- Health Care, WASH
- Tags
- sanitation
