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New Apps for the Bottom Billion
When it comes to mobile communications, there's still a lot of room for innovation at the bottom. In Bangalore, India, researchers from the University of Toronto and Microsoft are now imagining new business models for the world's poorest phone owners by adapting a little-known protocol that can receive pictures as bitmapped text messages. The technology could readily be used in the roughly 1.5 billion low-end Nokia and Samsung phones in circulation.
- Categories
- Technology
- Region
- South Asia
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India Needs to Liberalize Further to Combat Poverty: Pitroda
The U.S.-India Business Council, in partnership with the Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry, held the first annual U.S. India Business Summit-West, titled “Building Bridges, Fostering Innovation,” at the Rosewood Sand Hill Hotel here April 26 and 27 (Read: India-US N-Deal 'One of My Proudest Moments': Condi Rice).
- Region
- South Asia
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Singapore’s Social Enterprise Stock Exchange to Launch Soon
For impact investors and social enterprises looking for ways to link up, the ultimate dream is to have a stock exchange aimed solely at mission-driven companies. That’s a difficult feat to pull off, to put it mildly. You need a critical mass of investors and stock-exchange ready companies, not to mention the wherewithal to meet all manner of red tape and regulatory hurdles, as well as establish the technology capable of supporting the venture.But such an exchange is well underway in Singapore.
- Region
- South Asia
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Forus Health Raises $5 Million From Accel Partners & IDG Ventures India
Bangalore-based affordable medical technology and solutions company Forus Health Pvt. Ltd. (Forus) has successfully raised Series A funding of $5 million from two leading venture capital funds, Accel Partners and IDG Ventures India.Forus's mission is to address the healthcare delivery issues in the developing world through innovative, inclusive product design and service deployment. Its flagship product 3nethra, a portable, low cost, non-mydriatic, non-invasive pre-screening ophthalmology solution, can detect Cataract, Glaucoma, Diabetic Retina, Refraction and Cornea problems. 3nethra can be operated by a minimally trained technician, and can be deployed in remote areas.
- Categories
- Health Care
- Region
- South Asia
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The Cookstove Conundrum
Cooking the family meal can be a dangerous business for poor people in developing countries. According to a study by the World Health Organization, indoor air pollution from “primitive household cooking fires” is the leading environmental cause of death in the world. In most rural homes, which lack electricity, a stove can be an open fire and the fuel as basic as wood, dried animal dung or agricultural residue, together known as “biomass” fuels. The result is nearly 2 million deaths a year, worldwide, almost as many as are caused by malaria and tuberculosis combined. What’s worse, cooking with biomass releases carbon dioxide and “black carbon” into the atmosphere and consequently is a significant contributor to climate change.
- Region
- South Asia
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In Rural India, Manufacturing Is Booming
When you think rural India, think factories and cell phones, rather than fields and bullock carts.Rural India, says a Credit Suisse report, is no longer an agrarian economy whose fortunes are dependent upon an erratic monsoon. Rather, they are now increasingly tied to the national economic cycle, something they had been largely immune from so far, as it gradually shifts away from agriculture.
- Region
- South Asia
- Tags
- manufacturing
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India’s Aadhaar ID Project Turns Nation’s Poor into Economic Players
Power Shift India: Nation turns to technology to extend a guaranteed identity to its poor
- Categories
- Impact Assessment
- Region
- South Asia
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Govt to Probe Sister Concerns of Grameen Bank
The government will form a commission to look into the activities of 54 organisations associated with Grameen Bank, the finance minister has said.
- Categories
- Uncategorized
- Region
- South Asia
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