NextBillion - A WDI Publication

Business Basics at the Base of the Pyramid

A decade after founding SKS Microfinance, CEO Akula explains how to make money at the bottom tier of the economic pyramid while raising the living standards of the people who occupy it. His company, which provides many small-business loans and other financial services to poor women in India, has a customer base that has been nearly tripling each year and now numbers more than 2 million. Akula attributes his firm’s success in part to heeding three principles: Adopt a profit-oriented approach ...

Source

Harvard Business Review (link opens in a new window)

Region

South Asia

Scojo Foundation Changes Name to VisionSpring, Launches $5 Million Prospectus to Build Sustainable S

Scojo Foundation today announced that it is changing its name to VisionSpring to better reflect its mission and brand for the long term and is launching a five year, $5 million dollar prospectus to secure funding to build a sustainable enterprise capable of reducing poverty and creating economic opportunities throughout Latin America, South Asia and Africa.? ?VisionSpring?s prospectus builds on our commitment as part of the Clinton Global Initiative to triple the scale of our impact ...

Source

Press Release (link opens in a new window)

Kenyan mobile IPO may mark market?s zenith

The stage has been set for east Africa?s biggest ? and most hyped ? initial public offering, with record-breaking profits, a share sale almost five-times subscribed and the cheerleading of Kenyan politicians. Safaricom, a Kenyan mobile phone operator part-owned by Vodafone, begins trading on the Nairobi stock exchange on Monday following the government?s sale of a 25 per cent stake in the group. In spite of the euphoria surrounding the company, which dominates Kenya?s two-p...

Source

Financial Times (link opens in a new window)

Microloan Sharks

Banco Compartamos, the largest microfinance institution in Mexico, is the acknowledged poster child for commercial microfinance institutions (MFIs). From its inception in 1990 until 2000, Compartamos operated as a not-for-profit nongovernmental organization (NGO), receiving $4.3 million from international development agencies and private Mexican donors. In 2000, the organization was reaching 60,000 borrowers? mainly poor women in rural areas. To tap commercial funds for even faster growth, the N...

Source

Stanford Social Innovation Review (link opens in a new window)

Review: Out of Poverty

By Paul Hudnut OUT OF POVERTY: What Works When Traditional Approaches Fail Paul Polak 240 pages (Berrett-Koehler, 2008) Until now, the social enterprise bookshelf contained mostly two types of books?studies of what works, and studies of what?s broken. David Bornstein?s How to Change the World, which chronicles the inspiring work of Ashoka Fellows, best represents the first type. The writings of Jeffrey Sachs, Hernando De Soto, and William Eas...

Source

Stanford Social Innovation Review (link opens in a new window)

One Laptop Meets Big Business

The fate of OLPC is uncertain, and it’s too early to judge the effectiveness of the computers. Still, it’s possible to draw lessons about the difficulties of such grand-scale social innovation. The group’s struggles show how hard it is for a nonprofit made up largely of academics to operate like a business and compete with powerful companies. They also show what happens when differing philosophies of education and beliefs in how software should be created go head-to-head. Values the ...

Source

BusinessWeek (link opens in a new window)

Misguided Calls for Business Thinking

?Philanthrocapitalism? is all the rage these days ? the use of business thinking to strengthen philanthropy and the not-for-profit world, which is the world I have been working in since 1982. If I had a dollar for every time I?ve been told to ?behave more like a business? I would be a successful philanthrocapitalist myself. The problem is that these calls are misguided and possibly even dangerous. They threaten to erode the distinctive values and independence of the not-for-profit sec...

Source

Financial Times (link opens in a new window)

Investments in People

The next few years could see a shift in emphasis in the non-profit world ? at least, if the work of organisations supporting entrepreneurs is an indication of the direction the sector is taking. ?Philanthropy is one of those wonderfully antique words that we will stop using in 10 to 15 years,? says Bill Drayton, who founded Ashoka and pioneered the idea of identifying and investing in entrepreneurs. ?The business/social boundaries are simply collapsing.? As models such as venture phil...

Source

Financial Times (link opens in a new window)