NextBillion - A WDI Publication

Making Eyeglasses That Let Wearers Change Focus on the Fly

As a promising Caltech graduate student in applied physics, Stephen Kurtin could have taken a job offer from Intel at the dawn of the microelectronics era 40 years ago. Instead he followed the path of a lone inventor, gaining more than 30 patents in fields including word processing software and sound systems, culminating in the pair of glasses resting on his nose, which he believes can free nearly two billion people around the world from bifocals, tr...

Source

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

The Next Billion Cell Phone Users

If you’ve ever traveled the world, you’ll eventually discover that the US mobile phone market and technologies are always about 2 - 4 years behind Japan, Korea, the Nordics and even the Philippines and India. The US with it’s advanced telecommunication infrastructure is hobbled by its own enormous capital expenditure investments in hardwired systems. Mobile infrastructures in emerging countries have no need to string copper and fiber optics along great distances to deliver widely ...

Source

mobile phones (link opens in a new window)

Aavishkar Goodwell Invests in Early Stage Microfinance

SMF will be the first MFI in India to secure equity funding prior to the commencement of its ops. Pune based Suryoday Microfinance (SMF), a micro finance company led by three former bankers, has received an equity investment of Rs 45 million from Aavishkaar Goodwell India Microfinance Development Company. An interesting point to note is that this would be the first MFI in India to secure equity funding from an institutional investor prior to the commencement of its oper...

Source

VC Circle (link opens in a new window)

Region

South Asia

Emerging Market for Medicines

When Haruo Naito, chief executive of Eisai, the Japanese pharmaceutical company, signalled his continued interest in western markets by inaugurating his company’s European headquarters in the UK last month, his mind was already elsewhere. "We have already finished our investments in all major areas in the US and Europe," he says. "Now we are thinking about new areas. We are very interested in emerging markets, especially China, India, the Middle East, Turkey and north Africa."

Source

Financial Times (link opens in a new window)

Region

Asia Pacific

From Chulhas to Defibrillators: Can Philips India Be All Things to All People?

Philips India was once unchallenged in India’s lighting and electronics arena. With more than 75 years in the country, the nearly wholly owned subsidiary of the Dutch multinational Royal Philips Electronics boasts impeccable parentage. But competition eroded its vaunted position, and today Philips has redefined itself as a "health and well-being company." "Through consumer insight, we understood that people perceive health and well-being as a combination of superior lifestyle and av...

Source

Knowledge @ Wharton (link opens in a new window)

Region

South Asia

Low-cost housing in Mumbai: A market at the base of the pyramid?

Estimates suggest that India has a shortfall of more than 25 million low-cost or affordable houses. The result is sprawling slums that ring some of the country’s largest cities and a bewildering maze of tenement buildings in which three-generations-under-one-roof-families jostle for space and privacy in spaces of 150 square feet and above. As Supriya Menon said recently, they say it is easy to find everything in Mumbai except for a house ( BBC , 15 June). Just lik...

Source

CSR Asia (link opens in a new window)

Categories

Uncategorized

Tags

Base of the Pyramid, housing

Research be Profit-Driven to Sustain: Bill Gates

Bill Gates while replying to a query on why Bell Labs’ research had ceased said that research with profit motive needed to be encouraged so that it could be sustainable. Research where the government encourages a company in return for a quid pro quo in the form of a regulated environment for that company was not sustainable in the long run, said Gates. Gates identified Xerox as having done great innovation from which companies like Apple and others had later benefited. He ...

Source

CXOtoday.com (link opens in a new window)

Real Economic Development in Afghanistan

A successful woman-run rug business has been operating for the last five years in Afghanistan. Arzu Rugs currently employs 600 people and provides direct economic support to almost four times that many. Arzu means “hope” in Dari. In addition to the well-paying jobs created by the rug-weaving work, the company funnels its profits back to the community in the form of medical care, education, and social services that touch the lives of an estimated 100,000 Afghans. Arzu was cre...

Source

Center for American Progress (link opens in a new window)

Region

South Asia