NextBillion - A WDI Publication

Inclusive business model could serve the poor

Doing business with the poor need not be about philanthropy. Nor does it necessarily mean wafer thin margins. When the bottom of the pyramid is represented by 4 billion people with combined income of about $5 trillion, can companies choose to completely ignore them? Individually, they may be living on less than $8 a day, but as a group their income is equivalent to the gross national income of Japan, the world?s second largest economy. Importantly, the poor are willing to pay for good...

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Economic Times (link opens in a new window)

Rockefeller 2.0: Gates relaunches philanthropy

There’s a story about Bill Gates that his wife, Melinda, likes to tell. Shortly before the couple established their philanthropic foundation in 1997, Bill carried around in his briefcase for a month an emotional letter from an American family asking him to help a sick child who needed a kidney. Bill agonized over it, Melinda recalled at a digital industry conference last month in California. Do you spend $20,000 on a single transplant or buy vaccines for many children in...

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MSNBC (link opens in a new window)

Defying Convention

If one believes in the story of a relentless, meteoric rise, Bangalore-based Affordable Business Solutions or ABS as it is well-known, is just the right case in point. The quintessential trail blazer, true to its name, has achieved steady success in just a matter of four years since its inception, and strictly on its own terms. Co-founders, Srikant Rao and Ravindra Kini, recount their story, which abounds in interesting facets of the company’s continued tryst with the SME.

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Channelworld India (link opens in a new window)

Auditioning for Entrepreneur TV series moves to Aba

AUDITIONING of participants for the Entrepreneur TV Series sponsored by ECOBANK and Vitamalt has moved to Aba, Abia State. The Aba auditioning is coming barely two days after the Kano show, which had participants from most of the northern states scuttling for place in the TV reality series. Producer of the TV series, Inspire Media Production Company says the Aba auditioning is meant to take care of interested participants from the South East and South South part of the country. Ex...

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Guardian Newspaper (link opens in a new window)

Wholesome Investing

The idea that you can do good for society and the environment-and still make a healthy profit-is starting to catch on Even with a single bottom line-the raw pursuit of profit-first-time venture funds struggle to post positive returns. Add in a mandate to combine social good with financial gain, and odds of success would seem daunting enough to keep even the most risk-tolerant emerging manager from attempting a double bottom line approach. Not so. This year, ...

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Venture Capital Journal (link opens in a new window)

Cracking the BoP code

Pointing towards the slide of an elephant carrying electronic voting machines in Assam, C. K. Prahalad quipped, Don’t focus on the face of poverty. Tap the technology. Conventional management wisdom had yet again been questioned by the strategist at a conference focusing on the ?Bottom of the pyramid’ market segment at the Maastricht School of Management in The Netherlands, one of the premier business sc hools in Europe. Knowledge-intensive multinationals and wo...

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Hindu Business Line (link opens in a new window)

Doing good by doing very nicely indeed

For years Muhammad Yunus reigned as the public face of microfinance. It seemed only right when, in 2006, the Bangladeshi economist cum social entrepreneur and his Grameen Bank shared the Nobel peace prize for a micro-lending revolution that has helped millions to earn their own way out of poverty. Yet for the past year or so, microfinance has had another public face, one that troubles people like Mr Yunus. CompartamosBanco argues that the best way for microfinance to help the poor is for it t...

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Economist (link opens in a new window)

Region

Latin America

Interconnected We Prosper

The World Bank recently revisited its dollar a day global poverty yardstick and came to a startling conclusion: It was wrong when it said some 250 million people in China had escaped from severe poverty between 1990 and 2004. Instead, by its latest count, some 407 million Chinese citizens rose out of poverty during those 14 years - roughly one-third of the entire population of the most populous country on the planet! This upward shift is being repeated around...

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International Herald Tribune (link opens in a new window)