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India’s Startup Focus Needs to Include Social Enterprises: How the 2014 budget can improve the ecosystem
The initial Indian budget, recently tabled by Finance Minister Arun Jaitley, has focused on startups and entrepreneurs by setting aside INR 10,000 Crores (USD $1.6 billion) in various initiatives. But it’s also essential that social enterprises and their specific funding requirements are considered.
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- Social Enterprise
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‘Sustainability’ Remains the Holy Grail: But the road to achieving it is paved with divergent visions
When global health leaders gathered in Johannesburg, South Africa, for the Partners’ Forum to shape the post-2015 agenda for maternal and child health, sustainability was much discussed as a chief element in ending preventable deaths. But just below the surface lay a truth even more profound: Sustainability manifests differently for just about everyone.
- Categories
- Environment, Health Care
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NexThought Monday: Expanding the Universe of Impact Investing: How international NGOs can access investor capital to increase their impact on a large scale
Impact investments started out as mostly start-up or early-stage investments in small but promising companies that aim for a measurable social impact. But what’s next? Zurich Insurance Group and Population Services International explore how impact investing could work for a larger universe of private investors and international NGOs.
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- Impact Assessment
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Weekly Roundup 7-11-14: ‘Going Off Grid’ is going mainstream
If the U.S. Congress and the president can agree on that investment in off-grid energy technology across the developing world that must mean it has broad appeal. Indeed, public/private investing in off-grid energy has caught on in a major way. This week we hosted a five-part series, Going Off Grid, which explored new technologies, new business models, and new forms of investing and participation in the developing market of energy infrastructure.
- Categories
- Energy
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- off-grid energy, solar
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Rebuilding Haiti with Mobile Phones: How mobile data collection and management is facilitating relief efforts
Grameen Foundation originally designed TaroWorks to facilitate analysis of data gathered on mobile phones to help track poverty levels. But as Alex Counts describes it, it has evolved into a mobile-based field-force management tool used by a growing number of humanitarian groups and social enterprises - including an organization that’s using it to facilitate relief efforts in Haiti.
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- Technology, Telecommunications
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Selling Entrepreneurship, Not Solar Lamps: Going Off Grid Series (Part 5)
In the same way that mobile phones took the lead over capital-intensive land lines to revolutionize communication in the developing world, Meaghan Cassidy at at KARIBU Solar Power believes that pay-as-you-go will revolutionize energy.
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- Energy
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- off-grid energy, solar
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From Vision to Reality: RBI ruling brings India one step closer to true financial inclusion
In a recent landmark ruling, the Reserve Bank of India has allowed non-banking financial companies to provide basic services such as bank accounts and transaction services. This paves the way for microfinance institutions to jump into the fray, and could drive true financial inclusion in a country where 720 million people still do not have a bank account.
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- Uncategorized
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The Long Road to Scale: Deciphering the mHealth value chain for family planning
CycleTel helps women access family planning on their phones. But before its developers at Georgetown University could begin with product development, they had to understand the nuances of delivering personal information on a mobile phone.
- Categories
- Health Care, Technology
