NextBillion - A WDI Publication

Entrepreneur gets big banks to back very small loans

Microlending-for-Profit Effort In India Draws Business From Citigroup, HSBC By ERIC BELLMAN SHIVNOOR, India? Vikram Akula runs a company that doles out loans of $100 or less to desperately poor villagers so they can buy a water buffalo or a bicycle. But he’s hardly a typical do-gooder. Mr. Akula, the 37-year-old founder of SKS Microfinance Pvt. Ltd., is at the forefront of the latest trend in microlending, or making tiny loans that ...

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Wall Street Journal (link opens in a new window)

Applying the ?shampoo sachet? paradigm to affordable housing, rather than evictions and demoliti

Professor C K Prahalad’s much celebrated book entitled The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid was launched on the Independence Day two years ago. The book is about how to eradicate poverty through profits. For more than a decade, Prahalad has urged business leaders and leading capitalists to see the poor as individuals and consumers. The poor represent a huge market waiting to be tapped. If you sell products and services in small portions, at affordable prices, your business c...

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Mumbai Mirror (link opens in a new window)

MUMBAI: The bugle was sounded for a fresh battle on Thursday in the booming Indian telecom market. ?Don?t stop Mobile?, a new scheme unveiled by Tata Indicom across 20 circles that allows customers to make free outgoing calls for a period of 2 years to any Tata Indicom Mobile or Tata Indicom fixed phone. It allows a maximum outgoing talktime of 3,600 minutes (60 hours) to another Tata Indicom phone. It was only in October last year that Tata Indicom had coined a new free i...

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DNA India (link opens in a new window)

Mobile phone boom spurs economic growth in Bangladesh

Bangladesh’s booming mobile phone industry has emerged as a key driver of the cash-strapped nation’s economy, creating nearly 240,000 jobs and adding 650 million dollars to gross domestic product (GDP). The mobile phone industry in Bangladesh employs 237,900 people directly and indirectly. These are well-paid jobs with salaries many times the national average, said the study by the international consultancy firm Ovum. Bangladesh is one of the world&#...

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Yahoo! News (link opens in a new window)

Get Paid for Planting Your Own Trees

Via PSD Blog , rural Kenyan farmers have joined the global carbon trade: A group of farmers in Nanyuki have now joined the global carbon trade. They are being urged to plant trees, not for firewood, timber or electricity poles, but for absorbing excess carbon from the environment - and they are being paid for it. Through this new concept, 45 members of Rongai Development Programme have each ...

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The Nation (Nairobi) (link opens in a new window)

The case for ICT-led development

Information technology (IT) is fundamental in driving productivity and economic growth. A McKinsey study found that IT-producing sectors of the US economy generated 36 per cent of its productivity growth in 1993-2000, in spite of accounting for just 8.0 per cent of gross domestic product (GDP). A similar study, by the United Nations International Telecommunications Union, recently found that 27 per cent of GDP growth in the Group of Seven (G-7) leading industrial...

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Financial Express (link opens in a new window)

Intel Corp. is pledging to invest $1 billion over five years to help provide broader access to technology and educational resources in developing countries. The big U.S. chip maker said the program, called World Ahead, combines projects the company has funded previously with new activities -- all aimed at giving people in developing countries more access to computers and the Internet. Intel’s announcement continues a string of initiatives from other large and small ...

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Wall Street Journal

?NEW DELHI: There is no fortune at the bottom of this heap. At a time when the markets are booming, rural India has been virtually barred from participating directly in futures trading. The reason: you need to open demat accounts which require PAN numbers. As farmers do not have PAN numbers and banks are strictly enforcing new rules, a large swathe of the population has been effectively shut out from trading both in equity and commodity markets. For farmers who had started to believ...

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Economic Times (link opens in a new window)