Articles by Saurabh Lall
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Friday
May 6
2011’The Price is Wrong’ (For Some Things) at the BoP
The Jameel Poverty Action Lab’s latest bulletin, "The Price Is Wrong," suggests charging small fees to balance access can dramatically reduce uptake, while raising little revenue. While this seems to contradict the entire development through enterprise agenda, a closer look suggests this view isn’t far from what we already know about BoP markets.
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Wednesday
April 13
2011Bridging the Last Mile(s) – Building Value Chains for Energy Access
Many companies and foundations have spent considerable resources perfecting new designs and innovative models of products for the BoP. But recently, many have started tackling the other side of the challenge: taking the products to market. Tallberg Foundation is partnering with a women’s self-help group to build a large scale distribution network.
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Monday
October 11
2010Power to the People Part II: Assessing Clean Energy Customers
Dirty cookstoves, used by as many as 3 billion people globally, are responsible for the deaths of 1.6 to 1.9 million each year, with women and children most affected. These are big numbers ? and the Global Alliance for Clean Cookstoves has set out to address a big problem.
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Thursday
September 2
2010Expanding the Market for Clean Energy in Rural India
As India struggles to provide cleaner and more reliable sources of energy to its rural poor, a growing number of innovative small companies, like SBA Hydro, are selling clean energy products and services directly to India’s rural ’Base of the Pyramid’ (BoP) population. This series introduces a new report that looks at this market in depth.
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Thursday
April 8
2010Multiple Facets of the Pyramid: Defining the BoP
Of the many themes that emerged from the OIKOS UNDP academy, one in particular stands out - the growing recognition that the BoP phenomenon is multi-layered and complex, and any study of low income groups is inherently inter-disciplinary...
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Tuesday
January 5
2010A Question of Causality
There is no shortage of evaluation frameworks/impact assessment tools out there for the BoP space and no shortage of discussion around metrics. Last year, I asked the question ’Why should we evaluate social enterprises?’ In this post, I ask the question ’What should we try to measure?’
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Thursday
October 1
2009Why Should We Evaluate Social Enterprises?
Recent readings and discussions made me think about the question "Why should we evaluate social enterprise?" Some macro level answers may be - ’To be able to generalize. To make comparisons across companies and across sectors. To demonstrate the social and environmental impact of these enterprises in an objective way.’ What’s in it for the company?
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Monday
September 21
2009Anecdotes and Analysis: The Microfinance ?Bubble?
An article in The Economist brought to my attention an interesting debate about the possibility of an emerging ’bubble’ in microfinance. While news of a bubble is in itself extremely interesting, the argument also highlights a fundamental weakness we currently face in analyzing the BoP space: The lack of quantitative data to back our arguments.
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