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India: IFC Turns Focus on Funding to Poorer States
Mumbai: The private sector lending arm of the World Bank group is sharpening its focus on the bottom of the pyramid. The International Finance Corporation (IFC) will increase lending to enterprises in seven north Indian states that lag the rest of the country in average incomes and has set up a separate unit that works in these poorer states, the lender’s top manager said on Monday. “We have shifted focus to areas where we can contribute,” said Lars Thunell, executive ...
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- South Asia
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Philips Digs At Bottom of the Pyramid
Hyderabad: Philips Electronics India Ltd is resorting to innovative pricing and customer engagement models in India to gain market share and acceptance by ’bottom-of-the-pyramid’ segments and enterprise customers. Clean energy is the common pitch that Philips is making to log in higher customer numbers through such innovations. For instance, in one such initiative, the company has collaborated with Washington-based C Quest...
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- South Asia
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Rural India Gets Chance at Piece of Jobs Boom
BAGEPALLI, India — Under harsh fluorescent lights, dozens of heads bend over keyboards, the clattering unison of earnest typing filling the room. Monitors flicker with insurance forms, time sheets and customer service e-mail messages, tasks from far away, sent to this corner of India to be processed on the cheap.
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- South Asia
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World Economic Forum India Summit to Ponder Over Social Issues
Social issues have never taken up so much corporate and CEO attention since the world wars. Income inequalities, public health, labour unrest, climate change, poverty, ethics, values, the role of business ... all that kind of thing. Suddenly, corporate social responsibility has come to acquire a brand new meaning. It’s not about the Gates Foundation any more, it’s about bankers bonuses. It’s about climate change, green technology, social justice. Developmental and beha...
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- South Asia
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B-school is India Shining
Mann Deshi Udyogini is like no other business school. Its students don’t come to the class armed with laptops, the faculty does not moonlight by writing reports for big business groups, companies don’t fall over one another to give its students jobs with fat salaries. In fact, it does not even have campus recruitments. Yet, its strike rate in producing successful businessmen - no, make it businesswomen - is perhaps better than any other B-school. Since inception in 2006, it...
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- South Asia
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World?s Top Biz Thinker Reflects on Global Impact of His Work
With $18 in his pocket, local resident C.K. Prahalad emigrated from India 32 years ago accompanied by his wife and their two young children. $18 was the amount of money he was allowed to take out of India at the time due to government currency restrictions. Fortunately, when he arrived in Ann Arbor, Michigan, he had a couple of other things going for him. He had a doctorate in business administration from Harvard Business School that he had earned two years earlier and he ha...
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- South Asia
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Apollo Hospitals: ’We Are Trying to Build 10 Hospitals Every Year’
Apollo Hospitals, the country’s largest healthcare chain, wants to add 10 hospitals a year for providing services to the population at the bottom of the pyramid. The aim is to reach out to a billion people in a decade. In an interview with Joe C Mathew, Apollo Hospitals Executive Chairman Prathap C Reddy says the challenge is not in the funding, but in finding the human resources. Excerpts: Apollo is the first and only hospital in the country to have a stamp bearing its name...
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- South Asia
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MChek Aims to Grow 10-fold in Five Years with Telecom Majors
Bangalore: Sanjay Swamy has hit it off with the big daddies of telecom and banking— Bharti Airtel Ltd, State Bank of India and ICICI Bank Ltd—offering their customers options to make payments over the increasingly ubiquitous mobile phone. The cheery Swamy heads Bangalore-based start-up mChek India Payment Systems Pvt. Ltd. Its payment feature comes inlaid on every subscriber identity module (SIM) card issued by Airtel and Tata Docomo, allowing customers to use it through a b...
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- South Asia
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