NextBillion - A WDI Publication

Expat Bangladeshis spend more calling home than others: survey

Dhaka, 28 June (bdnews24.com)—Expatriate Bangladeshis called home more frequently than their Pakistani, Indian, Sri Lankan and Filipino counterparts, spending $48 a month to stay in touch, a survey says. The survey ’"Teleuse at the bottom of the pyramid", conducted by LIRNEasia, a regional ICT policy research institute, found 87 percent of Bangladeshi migrants called home at least once a week, while 34 percent called home daily. Dr Rohan Samarejiva, chairma...

Source

bdnews24.com (link opens in a new window)

Region

South Asia

Bottom-of-pyramid poised to leapfrog with mobile wallet

Empowerment of the bottom-of-the-pyramid never looked so feasible. A revolution is silently but forcefully sweeping the developing countries, that could soon equip every single person with a mobile wallet and provide them with not just digital payment facilities but huge savings as well. The trend in mobile wallet usage has shown such vigour in countries like the Philippines, Malaysia, Thailand and Pakistan, not to mention Asian leaders in that domain, Japan and South Korea, t...

Source

The Economic Times (link opens in a new window)

Lending Talent, and Money, on a Micro Scale

Government agencies and international aid groups have long supported programs that train the world’s poor in how to start and run their own businesses. The training is seen as a way to end hunger and stabilize societies. But interest in these programs has grown lately with the wider availability of microloans, or very small enterprise loans made to the poor. As with any start-up, these businesses are more likely to survive, advocates say, if the owners have basic operational skill...

Source

The New York Times (link opens in a new window)

Markets with a social mission

By now, doctors and developmental therapists know plenty about how to treat children with cerebral palsy. But all that knowledge doesn’t matter if there’s no one to pass it along, as is often the case in rural hospitals in South Africa. So four years ago, a team of volunteer neurodevelopmental therapists traveled to Malamulele, in northern South Africa, and set up the non-profit organization Malamulele Onward to train the hospital’s rehabilitation staff. Since tha...

Source

Ode Magazine (link opens in a new window)

Unitus expands in Africa as Indian partner mulls IPO

Posted by Kristi Heim Unitus, a Seattle non-profit supporting microfinance around the world, is entering a new phase as it expands into northern India and Africa, and its social enterprise investment arm builds a second equity fund of at least $70 million, almost triple the size of its first fund. From its new location on the fifth floor of a Queen Anne building, Unitus President Ed Bland talked about the group’s progress to help small microfinance organizations grow...

Source

The Seattle Times (link opens in a new window)

Street vendors to be rechristened as micro-entrepreneurs

They may be selling bananas, paav bhaji, cosmetics, cigarettes or just about anything else either on a push-cart going round streets or simply by standing on the roadside and now these street vendors are all set to get a new designation — micro-entrepreneurs. The National Policy on Urban Street Vendors, 2009, approved by the UPA government, recognises street vendors (or micro-entrepreneurs) as an integral and legitimate part of the urban retail...

Source

Business Standard (link opens in a new window)

Region

South Asia

Banking Lessons from the Campaign Trail

By MEERA SANYAL The journey from banker to politician and back has been a rewarding one. Everything, from mapping out the strategy, putting together the team and the actual campaigning, was an inspiring and humbling experience. We struck a different path from the start. My team and I decided to eschew the decorated chariots and buses (called rathyatras) adopted by our opponents and instead opted for a campaign on foot (popularly known as padyatras). This put us right into the...

Source

The Wall Street Journal (link opens in a new window)

Hal Sirkin: Commodities And The ’Next Billion Customers’

What is the end result of globalization? A new era of international hypercompetition - and sky-high commodities prices - called "globality," says Harold (Hal) L. Sirkin, co-author of 2008’s "Globality: Competing with Everyone from Everywhere for Everything." Sirkin, senior partner of the Boston Consulting Group ’s Chicago office, has written about globality’s impact on businesses and the markets for BusinessWeek, H...

Source

iStockAnalyst.com (link opens in a new window)