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Vodafone, Western Union Offer Transfers Via Cell
By AMOL SHARMA Vodafone Group PLC plans to announce a partnership Monday with Western Union Co. to allow international money transfers via mobile phones, as the wireless carrier seeks to tap into the increasing flow of cross-border remittances. The companies are initially launching a pilot program that will allow residents of Reading in the United Kingdom to send money to family members and friends in Kenya, where Vodafone is the 40% owner of local wireless operator Safaric...
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Now VCs to Invest in Rural Tech
Venture capitals in India, which traditionally invested in urban segments or technology sector, have begun investing in rural-centric technology firms. Avishkaar India Micro Venture Capital Fund, Acumen Fund, and Rural Innovations Network are showing increased focus on rural markets. A non-profit investment firm E+Co, with investments in 28 countries, plans to begin operations in India. The firm with $183 million capital mobilised and $24.6 million investment portfolio will focus on c...
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McCann Offers Peek at Lives of Latin America’s Poor
By Antonio Regalado During presentations at McCann Worldgroup’s office in Bogot?, Colombia, staffers have taken to letting a chicken loose to hunt and peck around clients’ feet. In Mexico City, the big advertising agency hired a local merchant to install racks of potato chips and otherwise transform its conference room into a bodega, or corner grocery store. Clients lunch on tacos served on a plastic table mat. The point of these exercises: to give big ma...
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Social Entrepreneurs Turn Business Sense to Good
By Steve Hamm As chief executive of Mercy Corps since 1994, Neal Keny-Guyer helped turn the Portland (Ore.) relief organization into a global powerhouse with 3,500 employees and a budget of nearly $300 million. But he was taken aback last year when one of his lieutenants proposed the radical step of buying a bank in Indonesia. Why would a not-for-profit disaster relief agency go the capitalist route and buy a bank? Gradually, though, he warmed to the idea. He saw that, if M...
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Power to the People
In rural areas of India, local midwives have a new device to help them deliver babies: a headlamp. The headlamp, which is solar charged, not only makes their work easier but also replaces kerosene lamps, which provide poor light quality and run on costly fuel that emits heat and pollutes the air. To pay for the lamps, midwives can turn to microfinance institutions for small loans. The matching of the headlamps and micro-loans was the brainchild of Harish Hande, an entrepreneur who is ...
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A For-Profit Brings Clean Water to the Poor
Tralance Addy knows all too well what can happen to people if they run afoul of dirty water. When his company, WaterHealth International, was shooting a video to promote its water purification systems for rural villages, he posed beside a lake near Hyderabad, India, that was none too clean. The video producers suggested he reach down into the lake and let the water run through his fingers. Which he did. Unfortunately, he forgot to wash his hands immediately afterward. A few hours later, he becam...
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From Microfinance to Microinsurance
By Andrew Kuper The financial services industry is facing unprecedented challenges worldwide due to excessive risk-taking. Complicated investment vehicles, insufficient transparency and excessive swapping of credit default risk have had a severe and pervasive impact on confidence. The world’s most advanced markets for financial services are reeling in uncertainty. Standing in stark contrast to these perilous markets is the largest, most underserved market per capita in ...
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Bottom View
If estimates by the National Council for Applied Economic Research (NCAER) stand true, the rural housing stock in India will rise by 42-44 million by 2025. A study, ?Rural Housing in India: Challenges and Opportunities?, collected data from 3,000 households in 150 villages. Results reveal that most households reported increase in income over the past decade, with land owning households reporting about 25% increase in their income. ?A lot needs to be done to improve availability of adequate housi...
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