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NexThought Monday – Moving Beyond Capital: Designing Technical Assistance that Works as Hard as Entrepreneurs
Technical assistance can be extremely valuable to early-stage enterprises, but they are a diverse group with different priorities, with limits on the amount of technical assistance they can absorb. Development partners have a responsibility to listen to the entrepreneurs they support and to think creatively about how to best deliver demand-driven, flexible technical assistance.
- Categories
- Health Care
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Telenor’s newest plans: Dial I for insurance in India
Late last decade, Uninor (a JV between Telenor and Unitech) was among the brash new entrants to Indian telecom, giving larger players sleepless nights. At the vanguard of a price war, Uninor offered rates as low as 29 paise per minute and came up with schemes like unlimited talktime for students at a flat rate of Rs 37 for calls within the network.
- Categories
- Technology
- Region
- South Asia
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Stepping in for Social Enterprises
With nearly a decade and a half of working in the social enterprises space, Paul Basil firmly believes that there is a huge gap in funding for-profit ventures that cater to the bottom of the pyramid. There are funds available at the angel space and then at the Series A stage, when the ventures get their first round of funding from VC firms. But, between the angel and the Series A stage, there is a huge gap.
- Categories
- Investing
- Region
- South Asia
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Necessity Breeds Lifesaving Invention – and a Hub to Launch More Innovation
Dr. Dayo Olakulehin, a young doctor in Lagos, Nigeria, fell asleep while manually ventilating a 5-year-old boy with breathing difficulties. That led him to invent D-Box, a cheap, portable, rechargeable ventilator – and then he helped develop a company to launch the device and other medical innovations in Africa.
- Categories
- Health Care, Social Enterprise
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Your Cheap Solar Lamp is Garbage
It’s easy to think of “the poor” in two-dimensional, homogenous terms and rattle off assumptions like "They’re poor people, aren’t they happy with anything?" or "Isn’t something better than nothing?" Incorrect. As the charity research organization SolarAid once put it, “The quickest way to fix a problem is the best,” and in most cases, that means quality.
- Categories
- Energy, Technology
- Tags
- Base of the Pyramid, solar
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Adapting to Climate Change (Part 1): Health Care
Climate change has led to an increase in vector-borne diseases, primarily impacting the world's poor. The Asian Cities Climate Change Resilience Network supports various private-sector solutions to this problem, and Intellecap is supporting these interventions and mapping pilot project results across various sectors.
- Categories
- Health Care
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Seven Wishes from Seven Thought Leaders for Financial Inclusion in 2016
2015 was an important year for the world of financial inclusion. To better understand and build on the year's successes, BRAC approached the Microfinance CEO Working Group to inquire about their wishes for financial inclusion over the coming year. Here’s what seven industry thought leaders shared with them.
- Categories
- Uncategorized
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IFMR Investment Launches $38 Million Debt Fund in India
IFMR Investment Managers Pvt Ltd, a Chennai-based asset management company, is raising a Rs.250 crore (about $38 million) debt fund to invest in businesses that target consumers at the bottom half of the pyramid, such as firms that finance affordable housing or agri-business.
- Categories
- Investing
- Region
- South Asia
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