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Singapore’s Social Enterprise Stock Exchange to Launch Soon
For impact investors and social enterprises looking for ways to link up, the ultimate dream is to have a stock exchange aimed solely at mission-driven companies. That’s a difficult feat to pull off, to put it mildly. You need a critical mass of investors and stock-exchange ready companies, not to mention the wherewithal to meet all manner of red tape and regulatory hurdles, as well as establish the technology capable of supporting the venture.But such an exchange is well underway in Singapore.
- Region
- South Asia
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Scaling Social Enterprises
At the Center for Science, Technology, and Society, we focus on helping social entrepreneurs build ventures that scale. My colleague and mentor Jim Koch, founder of the Center and one of the founders of both our signature Global Social Benefit Incubator (GSBI) and The Tech Awards, returned from the Unite for Sight's Global Health and Innovation Conference effusive about his airplane reading. Jim's praise was for the Monitor Group's recently released report, From Blueprint to Scale: The Case for Philanthropy in Impact Investing.
- Region
- Sub-Saharan Africa
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Forus Health Raises $5 Million From Accel Partners & IDG Ventures India
Bangalore-based affordable medical technology and solutions company Forus Health Pvt. Ltd. (Forus) has successfully raised Series A funding of $5 million from two leading venture capital funds, Accel Partners and IDG Ventures India.Forus's mission is to address the healthcare delivery issues in the developing world through innovative, inclusive product design and service deployment. Its flagship product 3nethra, a portable, low cost, non-mydriatic, non-invasive pre-screening ophthalmology solution, can detect Cataract, Glaucoma, Diabetic Retina, Refraction and Cornea problems. 3nethra can be operated by a minimally trained technician, and can be deployed in remote areas.
- Categories
- Health Care
- Region
- South Asia
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Morgan Stanley Offering Advisors Sustainable Investing Platform
Morgan Stanley Smith Barney is launching a platform for its financial advisors to offer clients investments with positive social and environmental impact in what appears to be a major push to offer sustainable investing to mainstream investors.Although many broker-dealers allow their advisors to offer sustainable investments to retail clients, few have specific advisor platforms for that purpose. MSSB made an announcement today about the new platform at the U.S. State Department-sponsored Global Impact Economy Forum.
- Categories
- Uncategorized
- Tags
- impact investing
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BCF Invests in Kenyan Sanitation and Renewable Energy Company
Beyond Capital Fund, a public foundation that employs a traditional investment approach to social investing, recently completed a debt investment in Sanergy, a sanitation company with a focus on Kenya slum dwellers. In total, Sanergy raised over $500,000 to pilot the company’s innovative model, which seeks to solve two critical issues facing urban slums – proper sanitation and affordable energy – by offering low-cost, high-quality sanitation services that turns the collected waste into renewable energy.
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- Press Release
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The Cookstove Conundrum
Cooking the family meal can be a dangerous business for poor people in developing countries. According to a study by the World Health Organization, indoor air pollution from “primitive household cooking fires” is the leading environmental cause of death in the world. In most rural homes, which lack electricity, a stove can be an open fire and the fuel as basic as wood, dried animal dung or agricultural residue, together known as “biomass” fuels. The result is nearly 2 million deaths a year, worldwide, almost as many as are caused by malaria and tuberculosis combined. What’s worse, cooking with biomass releases carbon dioxide and “black carbon” into the atmosphere and consequently is a significant contributor to climate change.
- Region
- South Asia
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In Rural India, Manufacturing Is Booming
When you think rural India, think factories and cell phones, rather than fields and bullock carts.Rural India, says a Credit Suisse report, is no longer an agrarian economy whose fortunes are dependent upon an erratic monsoon. Rather, they are now increasingly tied to the national economic cycle, something they had been largely immune from so far, as it gradually shifts away from agriculture.
- Region
- South Asia
- Tags
- manufacturing
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India’s Aadhaar ID Project Turns Nation’s Poor into Economic Players
Power Shift India: Nation turns to technology to extend a guaranteed identity to its poor
- Categories
- Impact Assessment
- Region
- South Asia
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