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Microsoft has chosen India as the fifth destination for a low-cost version of Windows
The Redmond, Wash.-based software giant on Wednesday announced a yearlong pilot program to start shipping Windows XP Starter Edition to India in early 2005. Earlier this week, the company made a similar move in Russia, while plans for Thailand, Indonesia and Malaysia were confirmed in August, as part of the software maker’s plan to gain market share in developing nations. ...
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- CNET News.com
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Commentary: Will a snack do for India what software can’t?
Sawant is one of 40,000 Indian women who are defying poverty by working for and jointly owning Lijjat, which has a $66 million global market, including Singapore, London and New York. Run by a self-help group that shares profit among its all-female members, Lijjat is doing for India what the booming software industry can’t: provide the tools of economic improvement to those without formal education. Read f...
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- Bloomberg
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Tiny Loans, High Finance
This kind of small-lot lending to the impoverished has been around since the 1980s. Time and again it has been proved that just $50 can make a huge difference for an entrepreneurial villager, who can build a business around a new cow, a sewing machine, or a chicken coop. Development economists have also long remarked on the near-zero default rates of these credits. Read full article here. ...
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- BusinessWeek
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With affluent markets maturing, tech’s next 1 billion customers will be Chinese, Indian, Brazilian,
Tech companies are scrambling to cash in on what they hope will be the next great growth wave. Led by China , India , Russia , and Brazil , emerging markets are expected to see tech sales surge 11% per year over the next half decade, to $230 billion, according to IDC. What makes these markets so appealing is not just the poor, but also the growing ranks of the middle-class consumers. Already, there are 60 million in China and 200 million in India , and their numbers are growing fast."...
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- BusinessWeek International Cover Story
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Sarbuland Khan talks about how the U.N. is helping developing nations use info tech to stimulate the
Sarbuland Khan is the Executive Coordinator of the U.N. Information & Communications Technologies Task Force. His organization has the goal of helping to spread information technologies into emerging economies to foster economic development. He recently spoke to BusinessWeek Senior Editor Steve Hamm about how technology -- applied correctly -- can make the difference between poverty and prosperity. Read ful...
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- BusinessWeek Online Extra
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Penny-wise
It isn?t altruism that inspires companies to make these investments; it?s the prospect of profit. The profit motive, indecorous though it may seem, may represent the best chance the poor have to reap some of globalization?s benefits. Through the years, the poor have received assistance from innumerable government agencies and nonprofit organizations, and they?ve been an exploitable labor source, but they have almost never been treated simply as customers. ...
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- The New Yorker
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CMU project envisions computers even the poorest Third World farmer could use
That includes the residents of the small farming village in southern India where he grew up and those of thousands of villages like it. It includes the 4 billion people who live on annual incomes of less than $2,000 a year. And it includes people who can’t read or write. For more than a decade, Reddy, former dean of computer science at Carnegie Mellon University, has been pondering how the developing world could make greater use of today’s information and telecommunications technol...
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- Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
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Nyakrom rural bank launches new scheme
The Bank had disbursed about 5 billion cedis to women’s groups at Agona Swedru, Nyakrom, Odoben and Bobikuma, adding that, there were plans to extend the facility to other areas. He said the scheme had become necessary to meet the growing demand of customers and stated that the Bank was striving hard to increase deposit and profit margin to offer more facilities to its customers. ...
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- Ghana News Agency
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