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Wal-Mart Banks on the ’Unbanked’
Every day 2.5 million people walk through the doors of a Wal-Mart (WMT) store in Mexico, generating nearly $20 billion in sales last year. Now they are potential customers of Banco Wal-Mart, the chain’s new lending operation. So are the company’s 12,000 Mexican suppliers, as well as its 155,000 employees. We want to leverage this traffic we have in our stores, says Julio B. G?mez, Banco Wal-Mart’s chief executive. As in the U.S., Wal-Mart is Mexico’s larges...
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The Ugly Side of Microlending
In a gleaming office tower in Mexico City secured with retinal scanners, bulletproof glass, and armed guards, dozens of workers in white lab coats dart around a large operations center monitoring long rows of computers. Along one wall, 54 enormous screens flicker dizzyingly with numbers, graphs, and fever charts: a relentless stream of data. You’d think the urgent mission involved tracking the trajectory of a spacecraft or the workings of a national power grid, not tiny amounts of cash and c...
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India?s dismal record on many fronts
By Rasheeda Bhagat Even as we get ready to cheer the 20-K mark the BSE Sensex might once again breach sometime soon, and do a lot of back-slapping on how India continues to remain an investment destination of choice, details in the 2007 Human Development Report released on November 27, highlighting some stark realities, should sober us up. On the Human Devel...
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MicroPlace Adds India to Roster of Microfinance Investment Opportunities
MicroPlace ( www.MicroPlace.com ), a wholly-owned subsidiary of eBay Inc. , today announced that it now offers investment opportunities in India through Oikocredit , the world’s largest private financier of the microfinance sector. For the first time, everyday people can make investments in India’s working poor by leveragin...
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Putting a Different Face on Africa: Hope for an Economic Turnaround
Africa’s stunning lack of basic services, such as electrical and telephone grids and Internet connectivity, might cause many to despair, but Euvin Naidoo -- a leading advocate for Western investment in the underdeveloped continent -- looks at the map and sees something different: hope. Naidoo, president and CEO of the South African Chamber of Commerce in Ame...
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How the Mobile Phone Is Becoming a Wallet
The Credit Suisse Thought Leadership Conference 2007, organized by ISP for key clients, took place on November 20 in Zurich under the slogan Entering the Next Level. One of the speakers was Professor C. K. Prahalad from the University of Michigan, USA. In an interview he talked about microfinance and market potential at the bottom of the income pyramid. Cornelia Stauffer: Why are you campaigning for the market at the bottom of the income pyramid? Pro...
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Bottom-of-Pyramid entrepreneurship should get due attention: Montek Singh Ahluwalia
If the benefits of economic growth and entrepreneurial activity have to spread to the nation at large for inclusive growth, focus on Bottom-of-Pyramid (BOP) business ideas is important, said Mr Montek Singh Ahluwalia, deputy chairman, planning commission While delivering his keynote address at the TiE Entrepreneurial Summit in the capital on December 11, Mr Ahluwalia said, Our growth should be inclusive and for that entrepreneurs shoul...
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Cashless in the Hinterlands
Mobile phones are making life better for people in remote, underserved areas of India . They no longer have to walk kilometers to public call offices to use a telephone-an essential tool for buying and selling goods based on the latest market data, getting credit from lenders and other commonplace activities. So far, most of the benefits have come from one of the phone’s simplest features: voice calls.
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