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IGNIA Fund I Co-leads US$6.0 Million Investment in Primedic, Mexican Healthcare Provider to the Base
Monterrey, Mexico, Sept. 3 /PRNewswire IGNIA Fund I, LP announced today that it has committed US$3.0 million to Primedic SAPI de CV as co-lead in a US$6.0 million first round of financing for the Company. Primedic, formerly known as Transparencia Medica, is a leading provider of healthcare services in Monterrey, currently operating three clinics and one radiological imaging facility. This funding will enable Primedic to rapidly expand operations to other cities in Mexico and to at...
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A Market at the Bottom of the Pyramid?
Over the years, it has become fashionable to talk about the business opportunity offered by those at the bottom of the (economic) pyramid. Many national and international seminars have been conducted to highlight this hitherto undiscovered gold-mine. Any challenge to the business rationale for pursuing such a market is considered heretical and almost blasphemous. Under the assumption that it is the responsibility of all business managers to generate the optimum (and certainly a minimu...
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Strong partnership key to success in bottom of the pyramid markets
For those at the ?bottom of the pyramid? (BoP), the four billion people or so living on less than two dollars a day, life is hard. Although collectively they have considerable combined purchasing power, they have up to now been traditionally overlooked by businesses. However, major multinational corporations (MNCs) are now seeing opportunities in developing products for the BoP markets, while making a difference to the lives of the poor people. ?For this concept to work, there needs...
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Social Entrepreneurship: Make Everyone A Change-Maker
By Harvey S. Keh Renato Mercado had worked as an assistant architect for 15 years in Saudi Arabia. Last year, he got a one-month leave and was finally able to visit his family in Laguna province after four years. Upon arrival, he was shocked to know his family was in disarray. His wife was not able to save a single centavo from the remittances he had been making; his eldest son was a drug addict. For Renato, all the sacrifices and years ...
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Big Finance Muscles In on Microlending
By Uwe Buse Microloans were invented to help the poorest of the poor help themselves. Now major banks and pension funds are getting into the business, as they discover that the interest paid by the poor can produce high returns. Is it aid or exploitation? Muhammad Yunus is one of the good ones, on a par with Nelson Mandela, Martin Luther King and Mother Teresa. Like them, he won the Nobel ...
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Going for Gold in India
India obviously has barely touched its potential, still faced with vast poverty, corruption, and infrastructure needs. University of Michigan global management expert C. K. Prahalad this spring told Indian business leaders that if India, which is already producing 3 million college graduates a year, can educate the poor, it will have the world’s largest pool of trained people power by 2022. By Derrick Z. Jackson IN WINNING India’s first-ever individual gold med...
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Compartamos versus Yunus
The Mexican micro-finance entity that raised $400 million from an IPO comes under fire for becoming the moneylender the micro-finance institutions were supposed to protect the poor from. A crimson and red screen lights up and a clutch of golden fish stream left and then right. This is the home page of the website of Compartamos Banco, the Mexican entity that became the first micro-finance institution (MFI) in Latin America to raise equity capital, as much as $400 million, through an i...
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Agflation helps poor, says study
Studies conducted by economists at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace (CEIP) have deduced that rising global food prices can actually help improve the conditions of the majority of the poor and alleviate poverty in the country. Ms Sandra Polaski, senior associate and director at the CEIP pointed out that analysis of data collected through surveys by the Indian government of over 2.5 lakh poor families had shown striking correlation between increasing global food prices and...
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