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Social Business Roundup: A $1 Smartphone, the Upshot of Disparity and the Quizzing of Presidents
If you manufacture a phone that comes with apps advertising to low-income consumers, can you sell it for as little as $1? The folks at SocialEco think so. Other items NextBillion's editors came across for this week's Roundup included a concentration on wealth concentration, an unhappy birthday for M-Pesa, plus a presidential Q that will hopefully result in an A.
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- Health Care, Technology
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Paying for School: Six Insights for Better Financial Services
The inability to pay fees and other education expenses keeps many children out of school. What is the extent of these challenges, who is affected and what kinds of financial services could help? These questions are explored here by Michelle Kaffenberger and Lauren Braniff, and in a new CGAP publication, “Digital Finance and Innovations in Financing for Education.”
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- Education
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Creative Climbing: How Impact Enterprises are Overcoming Obstacles in East Africa
In 2016, Intellecap undertook a study to better understand how East African impact entrepreneurs manage to design viable business models despite the various market challenges. The insights from the study can inform inclusive development in the region and across the global south. The study classified impact enterprises across three levers based on their interaction with the BoP: access, ability and knowledge.
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- Agriculture, Investing, Social Enterprise, Technology
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EdTech Startups are Flashy, But Teacher Relationships Remain Critical
In this Q&A, Amy Ahearn and Santiago Melo of Acumen explain how the use of education technology, or "edtech," is evolving in emerging markets. For one thing, it's become obvious that in addition to building technology, organizations that hope to reach scale must also build relationships with teachers, and approach districts and governments as customers.
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- Education
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Will demonetization reach C.K. Prahalad’s bottom of the pyramid?
What after demonetization? Can the Modi Government use it to empower the poor and turn the economic initiative into a definitive political initiative? The economists are divided on the issue. The Late Professor C.K. Prahalad the author of the much acclaimed book Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid suggested some pathbreaking methods over a decade back that the economists backing demonetization could take heed off.
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- Uncategorized
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Helping Microfinance Clients to Save: Are Incentives a Solution?
La Ceiba is a microfinance institution that serves low-income clients in rural Honduras, where the combination of distance, cost and knowledge gaps discourages clients from opening and maintaining a savings account. The MFI decided to leverage small incentives and special training to address those challenges; here's how they did it and what they learned along the way.
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- Uncategorized
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Unitus Seed Fund is clearing the decks for a second fund to support new-age social ventures
Unitus Seed Fund raised $23 million for impact investing in India, nearly a third of it from local investors. It is now gearing up for a second, larger fund. With internet penetration reaching critical mass, the 'base of the pyramid' is a serious investible asset class.
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- Impact Assessment, Investing
- Region
- South Asia
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Tools of the Recycling Trade Include … Tricycles
Lagos has a trash collection problem. A very big one. When Bilikiss Adebiyi-Abiola heard about it, she thought it represented a business opportunity. So she started a recycling firm, Wecyclers, which shuttles recyclable materials from homes to processing centers on a fleet of tricycles. In this Q&A, she talks about how she got the idea and where she hopes to take it.
- Categories
- Environment, Social Enterprise