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Business Basics at the Base of the Pyramid
A decade after founding SKS Microfinance, CEO Akula explains how to make money at the bottom tier of the economic pyramid while raising the living standards of the people who occupy it. His company, which provides many small-business loans and other financial services to poor women in India, has a customer base that has been nearly tripling each year and now numbers more than 2 million. Akula attributes his firm’s success in part to heeding three principles: Adopt a profit-oriented approach ...
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- South Asia
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New Frontiers: Story at the Bottom of the Pyramid
By Anisha Motwani Rural India seems to be the latest flavour in town. From finance ministers to corporate India across industries, everyone seems to be shifting focus to the bottom of the pyramid. All boardroom discussions are getting centred on finding ways and means to grab a share of this lucrative pie. Numbers look seductive with statistics and data giving enough evidence of volume potential... smaller ticket sizes but more buyers...
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- South Asia
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4 Lessons to Learn from Tata’s Nano
The announcement in January by Tata Motors of its newest car, the Nano, was revealing on many levels. The announcement generated extensive coverage and commentary, but just about everyone missed the Nano’s real significance, which goes far beyond the car itself. But, OK, let’s start with the car itself - particularly the price. At about $2,500 retail, the Nano is the most inexpensive car in the world. Its closest competitor, the Maruti 800, made in India by Maruti Udyog, sells...
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- South Asia
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A Cellphone with no Flips, no Folds – Just a Very Low Price
PARIS: It looks a bit like a child’s toy, a walkie-talkie circa 1975, a cheap plastic throwback to the good old days when telephones were made for talking. But to Spice Ltd., a telecommunications company in the world’s fastest-growing phone market, this new product embodies the latest, greatest innovation in cellphone technology today: a handset priced at less than $20. Spice, which is based in Noida, India, unveiled what it is branding the People’s Pho...
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- South Asia
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In India, How Do Rooftop Gardens Grow?
HYDERABAD, India -- Can growing vegetables on India’s slum rooftops and holding cooking classes in slum alleyways make a difference? That is the contention of a new program that’s about to begin in a 100-acre slum in the capital city of India’s southern state of Andhra Pradesh. The country has seen hundreds of programs over the years designed to combat malnutrition. The latest aims to clear out the garbage, create a patchwork of small organic farms to grow vegetables th...
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- South Asia
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Nurture Entrepreneurship to Eradicate Poverty
Speaking at the launch of T.S. Srinivasan Chair Professorship of Entrepreneurship at city-based Great Lakes Institute of Management for Entrepreneurship by TVS Capital Funds Ltd here Wednesday, Prahalad said: Entrepreneurship in India could be divided into three phases. The first phase was after the country’s independence and up till 1990. The second phase is from 1990 when India opened its doors and the third phase is when Indian companies started acquiring oversea...
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- South Asia
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Bangladeshi Microfinance Firm ASA Gets Largest Funding Of $125 Million
Bangladesh is the home of grameen banking. Now the country will have another distinction with a microfinance institution (MFI) headquartered in that country receiving the world’s largest ever funding for an MFI. ASA International, which has presence in Asia and Africa, will receive about $125 million from Catalyst Microfinance Investors (CMI), a leading private equity fund focused on investing in microfinance institutions on a commercial basis. CMI has achieved its final privat...
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- South Asia
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Connecting the Poor With World Class Healthcare
C.K. Prahalad, author of The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid; Eradicating Poverty through Profit, has long championed the notion that business, rather than government hand-outs, represents the most effective solution to poverty. At the recent TiE Entrepreneurship Summit in New Delhi, Devi Prasad Shetty, chairman of Narayana Hrudayalaya, a pediatric heart hospital in Bangalore, offered an example of Prahalad’s principles at work in health care. The hospital operates a low-cos...
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- South Asia