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Accel Partners Raises $155M for New India Venture Fund
Accel Partners, which has backed global Internet majors like Facebook and Groupon, has raised a new $155 million venture capital fund that will invest in seed and early-stage investments in India. Accel India III is nearly two-and-a-half times its predecessor, Accel India Venture Fund II, which raised $60 million three years ago. With the inception of the new fund, the assets under management of Accel India will reach $235 million across its three early-stage funds. "The fund has ...
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- South Asia
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PepsiCo Counters Inflation with Small Packs, Low Cost Items
NEW DELHI: With high inflation making consumers think twice before spending, food and beverages major PepsiCo is turning to measures like reducing pack sizes and introducing very low priced items in order to keep sales volume counter ticking in India. Despite hiking prices, the company is confident that steps like launching products specifically for bottom of pyramid consumers as well as for the premium-end segment will help it strike a balance between volumes and value. ...
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Ujjivan?s Social Development Program Helps Underprivileged Children in Kolkata
Ujjivan Financial Services, Bangalore-based Microfinance Institution (MFI), set up a concrete water reservoir at Vidhya Bhanvan Primary School at Kasba, Kolkata. Also Ujjivan presented two water purifiers to the underprivileged students at "Children of Topsia" school, as part of its national Social Development Program. The 400 students of the primary school till now had been suffering without proper access to drinking water. The ’Children of Topsia’ school is run by a Span...
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- South Asia
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SKS Microfinance Should Present Themselves as a Business, Not as Do-gooders: Vinod Khosla
In one of the toughest environments to raise money, Vinod Khosla recently closed a $1.05-billion fund and promised to use most of this cash to back startups that he believes will change the way the world consumes energy. Since 2004, when he started Khosla Ventures, the Sun Microsystems co-founder has displayed almost messianic zeal in his quest to find alternative energy companies that can disp...
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- South Asia
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A Spring of Hope
India has over six million blind people and over 50 million malnourished children. It also has one of the highest rates of maternal deaths at childbirth in the world. Just some statistics that highlight the shortcomings of the healthcare sector in the world’s second most populous nation. But there is hope in the form of some private ventures that are addressing these problems and are establishing global standards for cost, quality and delivery. In the first of our three-part series on sus...
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India?s Innovation Stimulus
By Thomas Friedman THE world hit seven billion people last week, and I think I met half of them on the road from New Delhi to Agra here in India. They were on foot, on bicycle, on motor scooters. They were in pickups, dented cars and crammed into motorized rickshaws. They were dodging monkeys and camels and cows. Somehow, though, without benefit of police or stoplights, this flow of humanity that is modern India impossibly went about its business. But just when your mind tells you that ...
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- South Asia
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Indian Companies’ Embrace of Shared Value Project Will Boost Inclusivity
India is a country of stark contrasts. In recent decades, the sub-continent has experienced a rapid rate of economic growth, and has risen to become a key player in the G20. However, this stands in stark contrast to the fact that India still ranks 119 out of 169 countries on the Human Development Index. Widespread poverty, ill health and malnutrition are but a few of the critical issues that still plague hundreds of millions of India’s citizens. Inclusive growth, ie ensuring that In...
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- South Asia
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Mobiles Can Save India?s Poor Women
India ranks 122 out of 138 nations in the United Nations Development Programme’s gender equality index-and for good reason. Only 65% of Indian women are literate, compared with nearly 83% men. A third of the married Indian women are underweight. Maternal mortality rate is high (450 per 100,000 live births) in part due to inadequate antenatal care coverage. Women now account for 39% of HIV infections, and awareness of prevention and treatment still lags. Can any technological or comm...
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- South Asia
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