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Pioneer Avers Solar Power’s Now Cheaper than Kerosene
(...) "Our product costs Rs1,000 and gives 24 hours of light on one charge. It is actually cheaper than kerosene when you spread it over the full lifetime," Chugh said. "The solution, technologically, is there.. If 700 million people can buy a mobile phone that costs Rs3,000 or more, they can surely spend Rs1,000 for energy," he said. What is missing, Chugh points out, are market ’enablers’. In other words, while it may indeed be cheaper than a kerosene in the long run, how does...
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- South Asia
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The Underdog Capitalist
If Prahalad’s work had a common theme - if he himself had a core competency -- it was what he called the democratization of commerce. He was an unapologetic celebrant of capitalism. But his version of capitalism was one in which the little guy could win, and often did. Small companies were not destined to be crushed by their larger rivals, because ideas mattered more than resources. And selling products to the world’s poor didn’t exploit them, in his mind; it gave them the same ch...
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- South Asia
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Banks to Ensure Funds for Microlenders
MUMBAI -The chief executive of the Indian Banks Association indicated Wednesday that banks will ensure microlenders remain fully funded in the short term to help them overcome temporary hiccups in repayments and maintain business as usual. Microlenders typically fund their loans to their consumers though short-term loans from banks, leaving them vulnerable to temporary fluctuations in repayment patterns. Bad loans in the Indian microfinance space have typically been as low as 0.1%...
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- South Asia
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GE Health-Embrace to Distribute Infant Warmer in Early 2011
MUMBAI: GE Healthcare, in partnership with NGO ’Embrace’ will distribute a low-cost ’infant warmer’ that looks like a small sleeping bag to rural Indian children early next year. Costing less than one per cent of the traditional incubators, th...
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- South Asia
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NGO Wants to Put City?s Cycle Rickshaws on a Fast Track
GURGAON: His business concept has changed the lives of 5,00,000 rickshaw pullers in north India. He wants US president Barack Obama to ride a rickshaw. Irfan Alam, the 35-year-old IIM-Ahmedabad graduate from Bihar who has kicked off a rickshaw revolution across eight states, wants Gurgaon to love his rickshaws. Alam’s ’smart’ rickshaws are sleek, have shelves that can stock mineral water, soft drinks, newspapers and other ’small items of necessity and is, the bit which most Gu...
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- South Asia
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Still No Access to Product and Services at BOP: Tata
AHMEDABAD: Seeking to address the issue of challenges to inclusive growth in emerging economies, Tata Group Chairman Ratan Tata today said that at the Bottom of the Pyramid (BOP) people are still not having access to product and services, as they are still slightly beyond their reach. "India is a country normally referred to the consuming markets of 253 million people. And when we analyse that market we see with the prosperity that India is enjoying today there is an upward m...
- Region
- South Asia
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ADB?s $250 Million Risk Programme to Expand Microfinance to Poor
By Sajid Chaudhry ISLAMABAD: The Board of directors of the Asian Development Bank’s (ADB) has approved a Microfinance Risk Participation Programme, marking ADB’s first large scale private sector microfinance initiative. An ADB statement issued here on Monday said the programme will allow ADB to partner with financial institutions that actively lend to microfinance institutions (MFIs) in ADB’s developing member countries, and to share the defaul...
- Region
- South Asia
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Microfinance Pioneer Yunus Criticises Indian Lenders
DHAKA - Bangladeshi microfinance pioneer Muhammad Yunus on Sunday attacked companies for "misusing and abusing" his original concept of helping poor people via small loans, after a backlash against profit-making lenders. Yunus admitted the reputation of micro-credit had been tarnished due to Indian commercial companies that charge high interest rates and use allegedly heavy-handed tactics to collect repayments. India’s biggest lender to the poor, SKS Microfinance, has been in ...
- Region
- South Asia
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