NextBillion - An Initiative of the William Davidson Institute at the University of Michigan

Solar-Powered Water ATMs Provide Clean Drinking Water to the Thirsty

Clean water is a luxury; one in eight people around the world lack access to supplies of the stuff, and unsafe water is responsible for 60% to 80% of all disease in India alone. There are plenty of possible solutions--new wells, pricey community water filters--but an organization called Sarvajal has devised a fix that is rapidly spreading across India: solar-powered water ATMs. Sarvajal was honored...

Source

Fast Company (link opens in a new window)

Region

South Asia

Coca-Cola India Rejigs Ops to Push Growth

MUMBAI: In a bid to accelerate growth in key categories, Coca-Cola India has introduced changes to its management structure. While on the one hand, the world’s largest non-alcoholic drinks maker has created a new vertical to push growth in rural markets by catering to the bottom of the pyramid (BOP) consumers, on the other it has introduced a ...

Source

The Times of India (link opens in a new window)

Region

South Asia

Tags

poverty alleviation

Lok Capital Invests $3 million in Rural BPO

Lok Capital venture fund on Thursday said it has invested $3 million (Rs.1.44 crore) in RuralShores Business Services Ltd, a rural business process outsourcing (BPO) firm. "RuralShores will use the second round of funding to expand its operations in the rural BPO space for business development," Lok Capital partner Ganesh Rengaswamy said in a statement here. With 10 back off...

Source

Economic Times (link opens in a new window)

Region

South Asia

From No Doctor to E-Doctors in Rural India

There aren’t too many doctors in the village of Hari Ke Kalan, in the Punjab region of northern India. But for $1, residents who bicycle to a new health clinic in town can get an appointment with a physician who appears on a large-screen television, beamed in over broadband Internet. The clinic, built by a startup called Healthpoint Services, is one of a network of eight "e-health points" that the for-profit company has built in India as part of a growing effort by entrepreneurs to ...

Source

MIT Technology Review (link opens in a new window)

Region

South Asia

Tags

Base of the Pyramid

G20 Faces Obstacles in its Efforts to Spread Good Farming Practices

Spreading good ideas and practices in farming sounds like a simple enough goal, but can be immensely complicated not just on a global level but also locally. Ahead of the G20 meeting in Montpellier, France, on agricultural research and development , which begins on Monday, Mark Holderness gives a telling example from his time working in Bangladesh. He urged female farmers to plant cleaner rice ...

Source

Guardian.co.uk (link opens in a new window)

Region

South Asia

India?s ’Biggest Entrepreneurial Event’ Set to Take Off Sept 30

New Delhi: The power of entrepreneurship and innovation to transform India into one of the leading economies of the world will be visible in full measure at the TiEcon Delhi 2011. The entrepreneurial event, among the biggest in Asia, begins on September 30 at Taj Palace Hotel, New Delhi. The annual flagship event of The Indus Entrepreneurs (TiE) Delhi-NCR chapter, will see over 1500 attendees listen to the first CK Prahalad Memorial Lecture, set up in memory of the renowned Michigan Uni...

Source

Northern Voices Online (link opens in a new window)

Region

South Asia

Report Stresses Need to Identify the ’Poor’ in India

In India the poor are visible everywhere in villages, hamlets, in forestland or degraded lands, along coastal regions, in the mountains, in urban centres and in industrial areas. For all the visible signs of poverty, there is a huge chunk of these which are invisible. It comes back to the question of what makes the poor, poor. This is the question that should plague those who are at the forefront of polic...

Source

Medindia.net (link opens in a new window)

Region

South Asia

Microcredit and Lamia Karim’s ’Women in Debt in Bangladesh’

Taj Hashmi in the first part of his two-part review A report by the Government of Bengal in the 1930s revealed that a poor peasant from Mymensingh district in eastern Bengal (Bangladesh since 1971) had told a land revenue official in 1929: "My father, Sir, was born in debt, grew in debt and died in debt. I have inherited my father’s debt and my son will inherit mine." Following the introduction of microcredit, glorified as microfinance by its local and international promoters, ...

Source

The Financial Express (link opens in a new window)

Region

South Asia