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Making business for the poor: Innovative approaches can convert poverty into opportunity, says Ferda
The report said that 4 billion bottom of the pyramid (BOP) people with a per capita income of less than $1500 a year provides multinationals and large local companies with an alternative market for their goods and services. A good example of a business ecosystem at work is Hindustan Lever Ltd., a major producer of personal care and food products in India. Its ecosystem includes 80 manufacturing factories, 150 small and medium enterprise suppliers employing up to 40,000 ...
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- Financial Express
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PC builders feel pull of developing world — For profit or charity, low-cost units target vast untap
Under the code name Terra PC, Via plans to use its existing silicon to launch three classes of systems for service providers and systems integrators in China and India. They include full-fledged PCs with gigahertz processors selling for about $250 without a monitor and two versions of thin-client PCs-media stations using flash memory instead of hard drives and comms stations that handle basic browsing, VoIP and e-mail tasks for as little as $100 without a...
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- Electronic Engineering Times
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Report from Davos: Bridging the Digital Divide, by David Kirkpatrick
Corporate leaders, government officials, and researchers at the conference shared ideas on how technology can improve the lives of the world’s poor Wiring developing countries-and its poorer citizens-has two virtues. First, since information is power, finding ways to get better information systems-think cellphones, PCs, PDAs, and yet-to-be-invented hybrids-to the world?s disenfranchised will give them greater political clout and financial opportunities. It?s the way to ...
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- Fortune
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From a handout to a hand up, by Alison Maitland
For more than 40 years, Citigroup has supported micro-finance initiatives as a form of philanthropy. Last year, however, it decided to look at them as a business opportunity as well. It appointed a senior banker to develop services and products for micro-lending programmes, initially in Mexico and India. Full article available here. ...
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- The Finacial Times
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Microsoft bets on Africa’s IT future, by Scarlet Pruitt
?The company has also invested a hefty amount to establish information and communication technology (ICT) training centers and develop local language versions of its software in Zulu and Swahili, for example. Full article available here. ...
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- IDG News Service
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Gillette India shareholder seeks deal, by Khozem Merchant
Gillette has signalled its ambitions by selling non-core assets and launching products such as a landmark razor that can be cleaned without running water; millions of Indian consumers lack access to tapped water. Full article available here. ...
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- The Financial Times
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Can tiny science bring big solutions to world’s poor?, by Catherine Brahic
Nanotechnologies could, for instance, help filter water, provide cheap, clean energy, rapidly diagnose diseases, make information and communication technologies affordable to developing economies, and make food production cheaper and more efficient. Full article available here. ...
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- SciDev.Net
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MIT?s Nicholas Negroponte pushes a cheap PC for the rest of the world
The low-cost computer will have a 14-inch color screen, AMD chips, and will run Linux software, Mr. Negroponte said during an interview Friday with Red Herring at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. AMD is separately working on a cheap desktop computer for emerging markets. It will be sold to governments for wide distribution...Major companies from Hewlett-Packard to Microsoft to Dupont, facing saturated markets in the richest industrial countries, have show...
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- Red Herring
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