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The Challenge of Keeping it Simple: India’s best start-ups focus on solving real customer problems
Too often, start-ups serving the BoP try to do too much, says Vikas Raj of Accion Venture Lab. Though there’s nothing wrong with wanting to change the world, in varied and complicated settings like India, no individual outfit can solve every problem. Instead, effective startups take local realities into account, focus on a basic customer pain point, and then work from there.
- Categories
- Technology
- Tags
- mobile finance
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Exploring Early Adopters of Mobile Money for Health: Database of innovators being compiled
The Health Finance and Governance project has identified 18 mobile money innovations that are being adopted by different types of programs across public, private and non-state sectors in health.
- Categories
- Health Care, Technology
- Tags
- product design
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The Best Buys in Global Health: Striking the Effective Balance
Innovation in both the development of new technologies and better delivery methods is critical. But here's where it gets more complex: An intervention must be designed from the perspective of the health consumer, and it must be affordable and have an effective delivery system.
- Categories
- Health Care, Technology
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Empowering People With Cooking Stoves
Imagine spending 30 percent of your income on cooking fuel, inhaling the equivalent of 20 cigarettes daily while preparing meals for your family, and having to send your daughter to collect fuel for hours every day. What sounds like a far-fetched scenario is the reality of millions of people around the world in countries like Nepal, Darfur and Haiti.
- Categories
- Energy, Environment, Health Care, Technology
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InVenture raises $1.2-million to help serve emerging markets’ underbanked
InVenture is a credit score for anyone with a mobile phone. In order to expand its phone-based personal finance software, InSight, which generates financial identities and credit scores for the underbanked in South Asia and Africa, the startup has recently raised US$1.2-million.
- Categories
- Technology
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Bottom Of The Pyramid Overspending On Mobile Services in Africa
Expert at a World Consumer Rights Day event in Nairobi said on Friday poor African’s are spending too much on mobile phone services to the extent of foregoing basic needs, ITWeb Africa reported.
- Categories
- Education, Health Care, Technology
- Region
- Sub-Saharan Africa
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Why Insurers are Partnering with Telcos to Bring Microinsurance to the BoP: CGAP report explores the status of this young industry
Recent growth in microinsurance has come mostly in Africa and mainly in low-income countries, according to a recent report from CGAP. These products are small-scale insurance policies reliant on mobile phones for some combination of sign-up, payment and administration. Providers have been experimenting to learn what works and why.
- Categories
- Technology
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Biocon Launches e-healthcare Programme in Odisha, India
Biotech major Biocon in partnership with Canara Bank and Odisha government has initiated an e-healthcare programme for the underprivileged and rural communities in the state.
- Categories
- Health Care, Technology
- Region
- South Asia
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