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Root Capital Director Explains His Company?s Lending Role
Financing typically comes in two sizes for businesses: very large or very small. Large-scale financing caters to the needs of large businesses, while small-scale financing answers the needs of tiny enterprises. In a manner reminiscent of Goldilocks’ perfect fit, Root Capital - a nonprofit social investment fund based in Cambridge, Mass. - aims to provide much-needed capital to help such medium-sized businesses grow. Last night, students and faculty alike gathered in the Plant Scienc...
- Region
- Latin America
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IGNIA Completes Second Closing, Bringing Fund I to $34M
GARZA GARCIA, Mexico, November 25, 2008-- IGNIA Fund I, L.P., Latin America’s first social venture fund, announced today it has reached a total of US$34 million in equity commitments by completing its second closing. Investors include the Multilateral Investment Fund (MIF) of the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB), a US family foundation, and European and Latin American individuals. This round of US$13.6 million builds on IGNIA’s initial closing of $20.6 million announced in early Jun...
- Region
- Latin America
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Retailer at Home in the Favelas
The live music is by Exaltasamba and, as it pounds out of stacks of loudspeakers, the singer gets -the several hundred people in front of the store dancing, jumping and waving their arms as if there is no -tomorrow. It is 9.30 am and the show has been put on for the opening of a new S?o Paulo outlet of Casas Bahia, a Brazilian retailer of furniture and electrical goods. The store is one of the chain’s 550 in Brazil and its first to open in a favela - one of the sprawl...
- Region
- Latin America
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Mexican microfinance institution Compartamos breaks silence since IPO
Breaking their silence since their April 2007 IPO, Carlos Danel and Carlos Labarthe, co-founders of Compartamos, the leading Mexican microfinance bank, publish an excerpt of their newly released Letter to Our Peers in the latest issue of the magazine Microfinance Insights. The authors, who have been criticized by members of the microfinance community since their IPO brought in extraordinary returns, acknowledge in the letter that social and economic goals can reinforce each other,...
- Region
- Latin America
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Doing good by doing very nicely indeed
For years Muhammad Yunus reigned as the public face of microfinance. It seemed only right when, in 2006, the Bangladeshi economist cum social entrepreneur and his Grameen Bank shared the Nobel peace prize for a micro-lending revolution that has helped millions to earn their own way out of poverty. Yet for the past year or so, microfinance has had another public face, one that troubles people like Mr Yunus. CompartamosBanco argues that the best way for microfinance to help the poor is for it t...
- Region
- Latin America
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Latin America’s Poor Provide Rich Pickings
Peruvian housewife Genoveva Airaconda spends her days visiting neighbours around her shanty town on the outskirts of Lima. It might not sound like a profitable pastime, but her visits provide a steady income for her family as well as adding to the bottom line of Swiss-based multinational Nestl?. Airaconda is one of hundreds of door-to-door salespeople that the food giant has recently employed to sell their nutritional products in the Peruvian capital. By usi...
- Source
- The Guardian
- Region
- Latin America
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Latin America: Social innovation ? Giving the majority a stake
Latin American companies are getting to grips with ?bottom of the pyramid? business. Illiterate residents across rural Bolivia have never heard of the academic CK Prahalad. And until recently many had never used modern banking services. They still don?t know who Prahalad is, but now they are withdrawing money from a voice-recognition ATM developed by Prodem, a microfinance institution. In addition to understanding verbal instructions, the specially adapted bank ...
- Region
- Latin America
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Grupo Salinas Founder and Chairman Ricardo B. Salinas Addresses FIU Highilighting Opportunities at t
With a presentation entitled Selling to the Poor: a 100-Year Success Story, Mr. Salinas shared some of the entrepreneurial and social development opportunities of businesses that focus on low-income consumers, a market referred to by University of Michigan Business School Professor C.K. Prahalad as the Bottom of the Pyramid. The best solution to the problem of poverty is to create wealth, argued Mr. Salinas. We need to look for new entrepre...
- Region
- Latin America
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