NextBillion - An Initiative of the William Davidson Institute at the University of Michigan

Lok Capital Invests $3 million in Rural BPO

Lok Capital venture fund on Thursday said it has invested $3 million (Rs.1.44 crore) in RuralShores Business Services Ltd, a rural business process outsourcing (BPO) firm. "RuralShores will use the second round of funding to expand its operations in the rural BPO space for business development," Lok Capital partner Ganesh Rengaswamy said in a statement here. With 10 back off...

Source

Economic Times (link opens in a new window)

Region

South Asia

Gates Foundation Taps Novartis Executive

A senior executive at the pharmaceutical company Novartis AG will join the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation as president of the philanthropy’s global health group, a position that can influence the health of millions of people worldwide. On Tuesday, the foundation said that Dr. Trevor Mundel, 51, will join the foundation in December as head of the group, which funds methods to combat inf...

Source

Wall Street Journal (link opens in a new window)

London to Deliver Prahalad Conference Keynote

WDI Senior Research Fellow Ted London will deliver the keynote address on Sept. 16 at a conference honoring C.K. Prahalad, one of the world’s top management thinkers and a distinguished University of Michigan professor. London, director of WDI’s Base of the Pyramid (BoP) Research initiative, will give the keynote at the conference, C.K. Prahalad’s Legacy: Business for Poverty Alleviation. It will be hosted by the University of San Diego’s Center for Peace and Commerce, a...

Source

William Davidson Institute (link opens in a new window)

From No Doctor to E-Doctors in Rural India

There aren’t too many doctors in the village of Hari Ke Kalan, in the Punjab region of northern India. But for $1, residents who bicycle to a new health clinic in town can get an appointment with a physician who appears on a large-screen television, beamed in over broadband Internet. The clinic, built by a startup called Healthpoint Services, is one of a network of eight "e-health points" that the for-profit company has built in India as part of a growing effort by entrepreneurs to ...

Source

MIT Technology Review (link opens in a new window)

Region

South Asia

Tags

Base of the Pyramid

Acumen Fund Announces Sixth Class of Global Fellows

Acumen Fund , a nonprofit venture firm addressing poverty in South Asia and East Africa, announced its 2012 class of Global Fellows today from a highly competitive pool of 550 applicants in 65 countries. The program addresses a talent gap in the social sector, cultivating the next generation of global leaders by fusing the operational and financial skills of its young professional recruits with moral imagination to create new solutions to global poverty...

Source

PRWeb (link opens in a new window)

Citi Increases its Microfinance Work Across the Region

While most banks across Asia seem to be focusing on the high-net-worth market in Asia, some are also concentrating on the promising mass market. Most view licences in China as an opportunity to capitalise on the China Dream; others see microfinance as a means to build long-standing relationships across the region. According to the India Development Foundation, nearly 9 million Indian households that had access to microfinance moved above the $1.25 a day consumption threshold between 199...

Source

FinanceAsia (link opens in a new window)

Region

Asia Pacific

Tags

supply chains

G20 Faces Obstacles in its Efforts to Spread Good Farming Practices

Spreading good ideas and practices in farming sounds like a simple enough goal, but can be immensely complicated not just on a global level but also locally. Ahead of the G20 meeting in Montpellier, France, on agricultural research and development , which begins on Monday, Mark Holderness gives a telling example from his time working in Bangladesh. He urged female farmers to plant cleaner rice ...

Source

Guardian.co.uk (link opens in a new window)

Region

South Asia

UN Helps Expand Tanzania’s Economic Growth, Poverty Reduction Plans

Tanzania expects to receive some $777 million from the United Nations as support for the implementation of two of the country’s economic growth and poverty reduction strategies. The funds will finance the second phases of Tanzania’s national strategy for growth and poverty reduction, or MKUKUTA II, and the Zanzibar strategy for growth and poverty reduction or MKUZA II, the East African Business Week rep...

Source

Devex (link opens in a new window)

Region

Sub-Saharan Africa