NextBillion - A WDI Publication

Now VCs to Invest in Rural Tech

Venture capitals in India, which traditionally invested in urban segments or technology sector, have begun investing in rural-centric technology firms. Avishkaar India Micro Venture Capital Fund, Acumen Fund, and Rural Innovations Network are showing increased focus on rural markets. A non-profit investment firm E+Co, with investments in 28 countries, plans to begin operations in India. The firm with $183 million capital mobilised and $24.6 million investment portfolio will focus on c...

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Business Standard (link opens in a new window)

McCann Offers Peek at Lives of Latin America’s Poor

By Antonio Regalado During presentations at McCann Worldgroup’s office in Bogot?, Colombia, staffers have taken to letting a chicken loose to hunt and peck around clients’ feet. In Mexico City, the big advertising agency hired a local merchant to install racks of potato chips and otherwise transform its conference room into a bodega, or corner grocery store. Clients lunch on tacos served on a plastic table mat. The point of these exercises: to give big ma...

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Wall Street Journal (link opens in a new window)

Social Entrepreneurs Turn Business Sense to Good

By Steve Hamm As chief executive of Mercy Corps since 1994, Neal Keny-Guyer helped turn the Portland (Ore.) relief organization into a global powerhouse with 3,500 employees and a budget of nearly $300 million. But he was taken aback last year when one of his lieutenants proposed the radical step of buying a bank in Indonesia. Why would a not-for-profit disaster relief agency go the capitalist route and buy a bank? Gradually, though, he warmed to the idea. He saw that, if M...

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Business Week (link opens in a new window)

Power to the People

In rural areas of India, local midwives have a new device to help them deliver babies: a headlamp. The headlamp, which is solar charged, not only makes their work easier but also replaces kerosene lamps, which provide poor light quality and run on costly fuel that emits heat and pollutes the air. To pay for the lamps, midwives can turn to microfinance institutions for small loans. The matching of the headlamps and micro-loans was the brainchild of Harish Hande, an entrepreneur who is ...

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Financial Times (link opens in a new window)

A For-Profit Brings Clean Water to the Poor

Tralance Addy knows all too well what can happen to people if they run afoul of dirty water. When his company, WaterHealth International, was shooting a video to promote its water purification systems for rural villages, he posed beside a lake near Hyderabad, India, that was none too clean. The video producers suggested he reach down into the lake and let the water run through his fingers. Which he did. Unfortunately, he forgot to wash his hands immediately afterward. A few hours later, he becam...

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BusinessWeek (link opens in a new window)

From Microfinance to Microinsurance

By Andrew Kuper The financial services industry is facing unprecedented challenges worldwide due to excessive risk-taking. Complicated investment vehicles, insufficient transparency and excessive swapping of credit default risk have had a severe and pervasive impact on confidence. The world’s most advanced markets for financial services are reeling in uncertainty. Standing in stark contrast to these perilous markets is the largest, most underserved market per capita in ...

Source

Forbes (link opens in a new window)

Bottom View

If estimates by the National Council for Applied Economic Research (NCAER) stand true, the rural housing stock in India will rise by 42-44 million by 2025. A study, ?Rural Housing in India: Challenges and Opportunities?, collected data from 3,000 households in 150 villages. Results reveal that most households reported increase in income over the past decade, with land owning households reporting about 25% increase in their income. ?A lot needs to be done to improve availability of adequate housi...

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The Financial Express (link opens in a new window)

IGNIA Completes Second Closing, Bringing Fund I to $34M

GARZA GARCIA, Mexico, November 25, 2008-- IGNIA Fund I, L.P., Latin America’s first social venture fund, announced today it has reached a total of US$34 million in equity commitments by completing its second closing. Investors include the Multilateral Investment Fund (MIF) of the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB), a US family foundation, and European and Latin American individuals. This round of US$13.6 million builds on IGNIA’s initial closing of $20.6 million announced in early Jun...

Source

Venture Capital News (link opens in a new window)

Region

Latin America