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India: IFC Turns Focus on Funding to Poorer States
Mumbai: The private sector lending arm of the World Bank group is sharpening its focus on the bottom of the pyramid. The International Finance Corporation (IFC) will increase lending to enterprises in seven north Indian states that lag the rest of the country in average incomes and has set up a separate unit that works in these poorer states, the lender’s top manager said on Monday. “We have shifted focus to areas where we can contribute,” said Lars Thunell, executive ...
- Region
- South Asia
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Businessweek: A Big Idea for Little Farms
In the countryside of Shanxi Province in north-central China, farmer Xie Xin has struggled for years with water shortages. The 47-year-old, who grows tomatoes and cucumbers, had to pay dearly to use the local well, since the region receives an average of only 16.5 inches of rainfall annually. But this year, Xie started participating in an experiment in which farmers use new irrigation equipment to conserve water. The equipment, similar to a garden hose with small holes every foot or so, is ex...
- Region
- Asia Pacific
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Philips Digs At Bottom of the Pyramid
Hyderabad: Philips Electronics India Ltd is resorting to innovative pricing and customer engagement models in India to gain market share and acceptance by ’bottom-of-the-pyramid’ segments and enterprise customers. Clean energy is the common pitch that Philips is making to log in higher customer numbers through such innovations. For instance, in one such initiative, the company has collaborated with Washington-based C Quest...
- Region
- South Asia
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Rural India Gets Chance at Piece of Jobs Boom
BAGEPALLI, India — Under harsh fluorescent lights, dozens of heads bend over keyboards, the clattering unison of earnest typing filling the room. Monitors flicker with insurance forms, time sheets and customer service e-mail messages, tasks from far away, sent to this corner of India to be processed on the cheap.
- Region
- South Asia
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Vietnam: Fund for Pro-Poor Businesses Debuts
The Vietnam Challenge Fund (VCF), a new financial instrument to support new business projects that directly benefit the poor was launched Tuesday in Hanoi. With an initial budget of US$3 million for 2009-2011, the fund is a major component of the "Making Markets Work Better for the Poor Phase 2" initiative. It is backed by the Ministry of Planning and Investment, the U.K.’s Department for International Development (DFID) and the Asian Development Bank (ADB), The Saigon Tim...
- Region
- Asia Pacific
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C.K. Prahalad: Sustainability Can Lead to Innovation
He’s going green. After core competence and the bottom of the pyramid, the world’s best-known management guru of Indian origin, CK Prahalad, is talking sustainable development. Why? Because, as he argued in a recent article in the Harvard Business Review, "Sustainability is the mother lode of innovations that yield both bottomline and topline returns". In an exclusive interview to ET Now , the Paul and Ruth McCracken professor of strategy at Stephen M Ross School of Business at the Un...
- Categories
- Education
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World Economic Forum India Summit to Ponder Over Social Issues
Social issues have never taken up so much corporate and CEO attention since the world wars. Income inequalities, public health, labour unrest, climate change, poverty, ethics, values, the role of business ... all that kind of thing. Suddenly, corporate social responsibility has come to acquire a brand new meaning. It’s not about the Gates Foundation any more, it’s about bankers bonuses. It’s about climate change, green technology, social justice. Developmental and beha...
- Region
- South Asia
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B-school is India Shining
Mann Deshi Udyogini is like no other business school. Its students don’t come to the class armed with laptops, the faculty does not moonlight by writing reports for big business groups, companies don’t fall over one another to give its students jobs with fat salaries. In fact, it does not even have campus recruitments. Yet, its strike rate in producing successful businessmen - no, make it businesswomen - is perhaps better than any other B-school. Since inception in 2006, it...
- Region
- South Asia
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