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Social Enterprises See Funding Dip, but Investors Still Upbeat
The value of investments in India’s social enterprises has fallen by around 7% this year as investors struggle to identify companies that not only cater to the bottom of the pyramid by offering products and services at the right price points, but also provide sustainable returns for investors. Excluding microfinance institutions (MFIs), the investor-backed six social enterprises have put in $21.6 million (around Rs.112.5 crore) this year so far, compared with eight such investments ...
- Region
- South Asia
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Tata PE Buys 10% in Ginger Hotels
MUMBAI: Tata Capital’s private equity fund has acquired a 10% stake in Roots Corporation, which runs budget hotel chain Ginger. The stake-purchase in Ginger was completed by the $550 million Tata Opportunities Fund and it marks the one-year-old fund’s debut investment, said sources familiar with the matter. Tata Opportunities Fund, spearheaded by Mukund Rajan, is a third party private equity fu...
- Region
- South Asia
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Caterpillar Foundation Partners With Water.org to Expand WaterCredit in India, Indonesia
PEORIA, Ill., Nov. 29, 2011 /PRNewswire/ -- Caterpillar Inc. (NYSE: CAT ) today announced that the Caterpillar Foundation and Water.org announced a $3 million partnership to reach more than 218,000 people with clean water and sanitation over the next three years. The program will support a significant expansion of Water.org’s WaterCredit activities in India, and also fund a mark...
- Region
- South Asia
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How a Classic Model of Social Commerce Can Teach the World How to Save
In a dusty hallway in Mumbai’s Dharavi slum, two women barter used clothes for pots and pans. The going rate today is ten pieces of used clothing for one new tin pot. This is the informal economy, growing as the world’s population continues to urbanise in mega-cities like Mumbai and São Paulo. In Mumbai, where 60% of residents live in slums, activity in the informal economy, from bartering to neighborhood savings groups to co-ops, rivals the scale of the formal economy of...
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- South Asia
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HSBC Invests ?4m in Big Issue Invest Social Enterprise Fund
Big Issue Invest has edged closer to its £10m target for its Social Enterprise Investment Fund, with HSBC Bank investing £4m, bringing the total committed capital to £8m. Big Issue Invest (BII) is now seeking to raise a further £2m to complete its £10m target by the March 2012. The Social Enterprise Investment fund aims to provide creatively structured, medium-term growth capital to social enterprises that have the potential to have a significant social imp...
- Region
- Europe & Eurasia
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Bringing Online Education to Mongolia, in Wireless Backpacks
As a turbulent snowstorm whips across the vast, desolate Mongolian grasslands, a group of schoolchildren huddle over laptops, their eyes transfixed as the sagacious Sal Khan works through Newtonian physics. But Khan is only reaching these kids because of a bold initiative from another creative edupreneur: Neil Dsouza , age 27, cofounder of TeachAClass.org , ...
- Region
- Asia Pacific
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Rural Peru Gets Connected
The connection was not of crisp video quality, but the chorus of schoolchildren from San José de Huamaní, near Ica in the south, could be heard loud and clear: "Good morning," they chanted. Hundreds of kilometres away, they were greeted with applause, through video link, by a brightly lit conference room full of Peruvian and European Union officials. They were meeting in Lima to announce the completion of an ...
- Region
- Latin America
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Vodafone Increases Banking Options in Rural India with Mobile Service
Vodafone India and HDFC Bank have announced plans to launch a mobile banking service across the country next year after a successful trial period, according to an Economic Times article . The service, which is called ’M-Paisa’ (named after its monetary unit, the p...
- Region
- South Asia
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