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

Tata offers Rs 25 cr annual medical aid to poor

Excerpt: The Tata Group and three other top business houses have joined hands with the Jharkhand government to ensure medical treatment to the state’s below poverty line population. Apart from the Tatas, Birla, Essar and Jindal group have formed the Sarva Swasthya Mission Trust -- which will be the first of its kind private-public partnership in the country. This project will provide health coverage and medical treatment to the poorest of the poor in...

Region

South Asia

Tata promises Rs 1 lakh car by 2008

Excerpt: Tata Motors on Friday said it would launch the much-touted Rs one lakh car in early 2008, as the company had completed its styling and designing and tested the prototypes within the plant. Tata Group Chief Ratan Tata told shareholders that the launch of the car would create a new paradigm in low-cost personal transport, carve out a new market segment and reach a broader base of the pyramid. ...

Source

Hindustan Times (link opens in a new window)

Region

South Asia

Immigrants from India spread business success to homeland

Excerpt: Bhatia and many thousands of Indian immigrants with strong ties to the USA and India are storming back to their ancestral homeland to cultivate business and cut deals. With 1 billion people, a rising wave of consumers and annual economic growth of 8% since 2004, India is the world’s most promising economy after China....

Source

USA Today (link opens in a new window)

Region

South Asia

Indian medical care goes global

Excerpt: With hospitals in India’s cities boasting first world medical care at third world prices, the country is poised for a major share in the multibillion dollar global healthcare market....

Source

Aljazeera.net (link opens in a new window)

Region

South Asia

BANGALORE: HP on Wednesday announced a revolutionary pen-based technology that allows users to compute in their respective languages even without prior knowledge of English or typing. The gesture-based keyboard [GKB], developed by researchers at HP Labs India, also holds the potential for Indian languages derived from the Devanagari ? Tamil scripts and Kannada scripts ? to be used in a similar manner. This is to benefit more than 1.5 billion non-Engli...

Source

The Hindu (link opens in a new window)

Region

South Asia

Life insurance coming to rural India, 1 town/day

Bajaj Allianz notches up some good numbers selling life insurance in India?s smaller towns. Bajaj Allianz Life Insurance was languishing among the also-rans about a year ago. Today, it is in the reckoning for the top slot among private sector life insurers. The credit for this goes to Sam Ghosh, Bajaj Allianz?s CEO and country head for Allianz, who transformed the company from a niche play to mass marketer. Ghosh was chosen to spearhead Bajaj Allianz Life Insurance in January 2004, after he deli...

Source

BusinessStandard.com (link opens in a new window)

Region

South Asia

Private-Public partnership model to improve the livelihoods of the Bottom of the Pyramid (BOP)

CII - ICRISAT & Coca-Cola Foundation Collaboration for Backward Areas Development through Strategic Intervention in Watershed Development The International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics (ICRISAT), Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) and the Coca-Cola Foundation will collaborate for sustainable and equitable management of Rural Water Resources Infrastructure and other Natural Resources Management (NRM) through watershed+ interventions in Dungarpur district...

Source

Moneycontrol.com (link opens in a new window)

Region

South Asia

Rural artisans and SSI better, proves Bangladesh

Can farm mechanisation lead to greater employment generation and poverty alleviation? The answer is ?yes?, provided the mechanisation is on a small-scale and equipment are manufactured by rural artisans and small-scale industry. A case in point is Bangladesh, which has been experimenting with this concept for sometime now (...) Bangladesh, Dr Kabir said, had gone for small-scale farm mechanisation, wherein tillage operations are mechanised and most of the farm equipment are manufacture...

Source

Oneworld South Asia (link opens in a new window)

Region

South Asia