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Bringing Tech to the Next Four Billion
The thing about poor people is that they pay for services, says Allen Hammond of the World Resources Institute. How else are they going to get them? ?The thing about poor people is that they pay for services,? says Allen Hammond of the World Resources Institute. ?How else are they going to get them?? That bittersweet remark anchored a panel on ?The Next Four Billion? at Fortune?s iMeme conference. Hammond?s research indicates that the four billion poorest peopl...
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Microfinance Draws Mega Players
If you think microfinance is the exclusive domain of do-gooders seeking a free-market cure to global poverty, think again. While much of the money flowing into loans for the working poor is indeed ponied up by people with high-minded goals, these days its coming increasingly from those with a sharp eye for the bottom line?raising new questions over how to balance the altruistic mission of microfinance with the pursuit of profits. The high interest paid on microloans makes the operatio...
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Scojo Foundation provides cheap eyeglasses to the third world
Surrounded by measuring tapes and ornate paintings of Hindu gods hanging on the walls of his dimly lighted workshop, Adimulam Devanand pushed the bridge of his glasses up his nose and hunched over a sewing machine to stitch a shirt. A year ago, Devanand, 42, had lost the ability to see objects as fine as a needle and thread, and his tailoring business was faltering. I’d given up working altogether, and my wife had to do all the work, he said over the ...
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Industrial and Rural Energy in China
China’s massive industrial sector is an economic juggernaut, helping to drive national gross domestic product (GDP) growth rates of around 10 per cent per year. But while the country’s highly productive factories and plants may be boosting national prosperity, their rapid expansion carries with it a serious environmental burden and costly energy inefficiencies that are increasingly becoming a barrier to China’s sustainable development, thus contributing to climate change.
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Innovate for India’s Poor
When the Korean steelmaker Posco decided to invest $11 billion in the bleak hinterland of eastern India, it might have expected to be greeted with flowers. Instead, two Posco executives were recently kidnapped, but later released unharmed, in a protest over government policies to transfer land from struggling farmers to the mega-corporations driving India’s modernization. It is only the latest evidence of gathering rage among the hundreds of millions who remain mute spectators to ...
- Region
- Asia Pacific
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The Next Billion Banking Consumers
The problem of financial exclusion?individuals? limited access to, or use of, formal banking services?looms large. Governments and microfinance institutions have made some headway in alleviating exclusion, but banks have lacked a commercial impetus to do so, stifling the development of solutions that have the reach required to confront this problem. By embracing innovation, however, banks can upend the economics of reaching consumers long considered unserviceable, opening up opportunities for ...
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The Next Billion
The economic boom in emerging markets has bypassed a distinct group-the next billion consumers-whose potential to become viable customers has been greatly underestimated. Sitting on the brink of commercial viability, these consumers are stranded between the formal and informal sectors. Companies that embrace them can grab a disproportionate share of a massive revenue and profit pool. In fact, the next billion could determine the winners and losers in many industries and herald the rise of new ...
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The latest report from the Aspen Institute finds that courses dealing with the bottom of the pyramid -- markets serving the world’s poor -- are growing exponentially in business programs around the world. The report highlights data from a biennial survey conducted by the Business and Society Program at the Aspen Institute. The Beyond Grey Pinstripes report surveys 112 business schools in 23 countries about their educati...
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