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

Karoo fish farm set to freeze poverty

IN A massive swing from agriculture to aquaculture, the dusty Karoo will become the centre of a commercial fish-breeding initiative that is set to haul about 250 women out of unemployment and poverty. The Camdeboo Satellite Aquaculture Project in Graaff- Reinet is the brainchild of a local company called Camdeboo Bream, and it is aimed at boosting the local economy and creating employment. The Graaff-Reinet firm?s objective is to become a leader in the breeding and suppl...

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The Herald Online (link opens in a new window)

Yoghurt maker’s recipe for funding social businesses

When it launched a nutrient-rich yoghurt for poor consumers in Bangladesh, Groupe Danone (NYSE:DA) , the French food company, hit an unexpected obstacle. It had trained a large sales and distribution team of women, but only a handful were still working after a week. The problem, Danone found after talking to a local charity, was that people there did not like women conducting door-to-door sales. With its partner Grameen, the microfinance institution, Danone decided to talk ...

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Financial Times (link opens in a new window)

Mexican microfinance institution Compartamos breaks silence since IPO

Breaking their silence since their April 2007 IPO, Carlos Danel and Carlos Labarthe, co-founders of Compartamos, the leading Mexican microfinance bank, publish an excerpt of their newly released Letter to Our Peers in the latest issue of the magazine Microfinance Insights. The authors, who have been criticized by members of the microfinance community since their IPO brought in extraordinary returns, acknowledge in the letter that social and economic goals can reinforce each other,...

Source

Financial Express (link opens in a new window)

Region

Latin America

Widow entrepreneurs of Gujarat working to earn a decent living

Around 2,000 women meeting on the city’s outskirts had something in common: poverty, business plans, widowhood. And an unfounded fear of earning big. When Hina Shah, director of the International Centre for Entrepreneurship and Career Development, or ICECD, asked how many wanted to earn more than Rs25,000 a month, none raised a hand. My first priority is to make a decent living, says Ameenaben. We are poor people. How can we hope to make so much money? Tha...

Source

Livemint.com (link opens in a new window)

Inclusive business model could serve the poor

Doing business with the poor need not be about philanthropy. Nor does it necessarily mean wafer thin margins. When the bottom of the pyramid is represented by 4 billion people with combined income of about $5 trillion, can companies choose to completely ignore them? Individually, they may be living on less than $8 a day, but as a group their income is equivalent to the gross national income of Japan, the world?s second largest economy. Importantly, the poor are willing to pay for good...

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Economic Times (link opens in a new window)

Rockefeller 2.0: Gates relaunches philanthropy

There’s a story about Bill Gates that his wife, Melinda, likes to tell. Shortly before the couple established their philanthropic foundation in 1997, Bill carried around in his briefcase for a month an emotional letter from an American family asking him to help a sick child who needed a kidney. Bill agonized over it, Melinda recalled at a digital industry conference last month in California. Do you spend $20,000 on a single transplant or buy vaccines for many children in...

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MSNBC (link opens in a new window)

Defying Convention

If one believes in the story of a relentless, meteoric rise, Bangalore-based Affordable Business Solutions or ABS as it is well-known, is just the right case in point. The quintessential trail blazer, true to its name, has achieved steady success in just a matter of four years since its inception, and strictly on its own terms. Co-founders, Srikant Rao and Ravindra Kini, recount their story, which abounds in interesting facets of the company’s continued tryst with the SME.

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Channelworld India (link opens in a new window)

Auditioning for Entrepreneur TV series moves to Aba

AUDITIONING of participants for the Entrepreneur TV Series sponsored by ECOBANK and Vitamalt has moved to Aba, Abia State. The Aba auditioning is coming barely two days after the Kano show, which had participants from most of the northern states scuttling for place in the TV reality series. Producer of the TV series, Inspire Media Production Company says the Aba auditioning is meant to take care of interested participants from the South East and South South part of the country. Ex...

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Guardian Newspaper (link opens in a new window)