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Whistle for a `photo taxi’, by R. Narayanan
Is there a service model available here that can enable self-financing brand-building? The camera industry needs to look at alternate revenue models by targeting the underserved customer at the bottom of the pyramid. It could come up with a service model that increases the number of users, and simultaneously builds brand equity for existing or new players. For this, we’ll have to take a look at what the customer really wants. The customer did not want a camera in the first place....
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- The Hindu Business Line
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Malaysia launches major biotechnology drive
Noting that in biotechnology the journey between discovery to cashflow is a long one, sometimes longer than the patience of conventional private sector investors, he pledged strong government support. The Malaysian government commits itself today to undertake the role of developer and catalyst of the country’s biotechnology sector, he said in a speech announcing a national biotech policy. Abdullah outlined nine thrusts of the policy, the first t...
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- Agence France Presse
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In S. Africa, a model bank for Third World, by John Donnelly
For most of South Africa’s working poor, doing business with a bank has been out of the question. One-month loans carried an average 30 percent interest rate. Many savings accounts lost money every month because of multiple fees. Now the poor suddenly have new options, including one that some analysts say could be replicated throughout the developing world. Perhaps the most promising initiative is offered by privately owned Capitec Bank, which opened five years ago as a micro-lend...
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- The Boston Globe
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Who?s afraid of the digital divide? – IV, by Val Souza
Some multinational technology firms are keen to extend their reach to the bottom-tier four billion. Companies such as Hewlett-Packard, Intel and others, faced with increasing levels of saturation in their existing markets, are eyeing the developing world and working at perfecting low-cost devices and unconventional business models to get a foothold in these potential goldmines. Of course, their main markets still remain the developed west and they need to maintain price points in these markets b...
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- Express Computer
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AMREF Ethiopia: Reducing poverty through skills provision
AMREF’s new project in Kechene aims to capitalise on the artisan know-how in the area. People who make a living from handicrafts are often looked down on by the Ethiopians ? they are viewed very much as the bottom of the heap. They are often taken advantage of financially by local, better educated traders. Over the next year, AMREF will single out 50 people and help them to set up small businesses. They will receive a loan but also learn business acumen and marketing skills. The...
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- African Medical and Research Foundation (AMREF)
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The push for the next billion, by John C. Tanner
One of the top themes at this year’s 3GSM World Congress in February was the next billion mobile users. Six weeks later, it’s looking more like the next few billion mobile users. The mobile industry has been talking about the next billion since the one billionth mobile user signed on somewhere in mid-2003. Now, it’s more than halfway there, and the mobile industry is already looking ahead to the three-billion mark. In 2003, when th...
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- Wireless Asia
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Texting for Jobs in Kenya, by Mike Masnick
Kenyans are finding it easier to post and find jobs via mobile phone text message than the traditional Internet, highlighting how mobile services leapfrog more than just voice communications in developing nations. For years, there have been stories about how mobile phone service in developing nations would help them to leapfrog other nations with legacy landline phone systems. Most of the focus, though, has been on the voice communications aspect of the...
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- TheFeature
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Bringing the Internet To the Whole World, by Jonathan Krim
AMD, known mostly as a computer chip maker perennially in the shadow of giant Intel Corp., recently unveiled a pared-down personal computer that costs roughly $200 in an ambitious drive to get computers with Internet access into the hands of 50 percent of the world’s population by 2015. Trying to bridge the digital divide with low-cost computers is neither a new idea nor one that has been particularly successful. A handheld machine developed in India called Simputer is attracting ...
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- The Washington Post
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