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D.Light Wins Ashden Award
D light Design, an Indian social enterprise that brings innovative solar lanterns to many people across India and other developing countries, has won the top Gold Award at the Ashden Awards for Sustainable Energy 2010. The prize, worth 40,000 pounds, was announced on Thursday night by noted environmentalist and broadcaster, Sir David Attenborough. D light Design was chosen for designing, manufacturing and marketing high quality, durable and affordable solar lanterns. In the w...
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- South Asia
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Rang De: India’s First Online Platform for Micro-Credit
Kanakama Redi, a vegetable vendor in Puri, Orissa used to work from 8.00 am till late in the evening. Yet, most of her earnings were lost in repayment of the loan, availed at higher credit rates, to buy vegetables. Like her, Baban who makes bamboo baskets too could not make the most of her skills earlier as she required money for the raw material and it came at a high interest from the local lender. But things changed once micro-finance facilitator Rang De took care of their small-term requir...
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- South Asia
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The Pyramid Base Will Get Much Larger
C K Prahalad’s paradigm of targeting the fortune at the bottom of the pyramid makes for great anecdotes. But it’s easier said than done. India is the ideal environment for "field experiments". Secular growth has seen millions move up from abject poverty to lower-income and then from lower-income to middle-income level. The sociologists and demographers have fierce, politically-loaded arguments about the percentage of poverty reduction. ...
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- South Asia
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Millennium Development Goals: Profit has a Place at the Base of the Pyramid
The death in April of C.K. Prahalad, the academic who identified the "fortune at the bottom of the pyramid", was a loss to many - and particularly those who believe business has a role in achieving the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), the list of eight targets drawn up by the United Nations in 2000. However, Mr Prahalad’s work lives on: many companies are looking at ways to address the development goals - which include poverty reduction...
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- South Asia
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Bajaj to Get into Water Purification Biz
Bajaj Electricals Limited has decided to foray into the water purification business in the country and plans to roll out its water purifier product in the current financial year. The company sees a huge opportunity in the water purification business in the country the size of which is estimated at Rs 2,000 crore per annum and is growing at the rate of around 20 per cent. "We are looking to enter the water purification business as it offer...
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- South Asia
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Threat of Microfinance Defaults Rise in India as SKS Plans IPO
June 15 (Bloomberg) -- Savita Ramesh Rathore stood at the door to her dimly lit workshop in Mumbai’s Dharavi slum, filled floor-to-ceiling with bundles of old clothes, and tallied up the cost of her son’s wedding last year. "Jewels, clothes, food, the town hall," said Rathore, 50, who makes towels from discarded clothes. She borrowed 30,000 rupees ($645) from moneylenders charging 60 percent interest and took additional loans from frien...
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- South Asia
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Janalakshmi to Focus on Financial Inclusion of Urban Poor
Narayan Ramachandran, Ex-Country Head and Managing Director of Morgan Stanley India has decided to focus on financial inclusion of the urban poor. He has been now appointed as the Director on the board of Janalakshmi Financial Services run by Ramesh Ramanathan, who is the Chairman of the organisation. Here is a verbatim transcript of an exclusive interview with Narayan Ramachandran and Ramesh Ramanathan on CNBC-TV18. Also watch the accompanying video.
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- South Asia
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Microfinance Grapples With Success
Microfinance is in the news, again for the wrong reasons. Five years ago, it was tension over multiple lending and coercive recovery in Andhra Pradesh. Now it is Muslim community leaders in a couple of districts in Karnataka issuing a fiat to their members to renege on microfinance institution (MFI) loan repayments as they do not approve of such borrowings. What’s worse, the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has issued a severe warning to MFIs against wrong practices. RBI’s main concern, re...
- Region
- South Asia
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