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Entrepreneurs Wanted : At next week’s SEEP Conference, exploring ‘push and pull’ approaches to Ag growth
Designing and sequencing push and pull approaches in the agriculture sector is challenging. While every context demands unique tactics and models, our experience suggests that local entrepreneurs play a central role in most cases, writes Sally Walkerman of the Aga Khan Foundation who is leading a discussion on the subject at the SEEP Annual Conference.
- Categories
- Agriculture
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Impact Data Goes Lean: Simple measurement tool lets company know if it’s meeting its social mission
Acumen and Grameen helped Ziqitza, an ambulance company in India, use a simple survey tool to determine if it was meeting its social mission. The project lends credence to the idea that impact measurement can be shifted from a burden to a benefit.
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- Education, Health Care, Impact Assessment
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Why Don’t Small and Medium Businesses Grow?: Innovations for Poverty Action Working Group tackles the question from several angles
SMEs are thought to be the backbone of many economies, leading governments and aid agencies to spend billions of dollars on SME assistance each year. However, little evidence exists on the actual barriers to growth and the most effective solutions to alleviate these constraints. IPA’s SME Initiative is working to address this knowledge gap, and they describe the findings of several studies in this post.
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- Uncategorized
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NexThought Monday – Between the CEO and the BoP: Root Capital report focuses on the often overlooked role of women as “middle managers”
Root Capital CEO Willy Foote says the impact investment firm realized that most approaches to women’s economic empowerment have focused on the opposite ends of the economic spectrum: business leaders and entrepreneurs on one side, and women workers at the BoP on the other. But what about women who are not CEOs or entrepreneurs but who hold positions critical to the success of the enterprise?
- Categories
- Agriculture
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Weekly Roundup 9-13-14: Movirtu’s Blackberry buyout and a $400M leap from LeapFrog
“Cloud phone” company Movirtu was best known, at least among the social enterprise crowd, for its BoP-focused applications. But it appears that flagging smartphone provider Blackberry found its top of the pyramid technology more enticing. Blackberry on Thursday announced it had purchased Movirtu for an undisclosed amount.
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- Uncategorized
- Tags
- impact investing
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More Than Just Smiles: Excellent customer service must be a top priority for any market-led financial institution, says MicroSave
In MicroSave’s research, “how I am treated by the staff (or agents) of the institution” consistently appears as a top driver of customer choice of service provider - as well as uptake and use of financial services. With the renewed interest in client-centricity, it’s important to recall the core role of customer service in serving the low income market.
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- Uncategorized
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Bringing IT Jobs to Rural India: Betting long on India’s youth
In many BoP markets, there is a gap between the talent requirements of employers and the skills of candidates in the job market. Half of India’s 1.2 billion people are under the age of 25, yet only a privileged few will complete advanced studies and be considered employable by the IT sector. Impact sourcing firm iMerit is turning that dynamic into a strength.
- Categories
- Technology
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Vittana to “cease to exist as a standalone organization”: The education-focused P2P microlender will wind down in its current form, its CEO says
“One of our founding beliefs was that once we reached scale, we could do our work sustainably, without shifting costs and risk onto the students,” wrote CEO Robin Wolander in announcing Vittana’s wind-down. “But after five years ... we haven’t found a robust business model to wean ourselves off that support.”
- Categories
- Education
- Tags
- lending, microfinance
