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How to Serve Remote Customers Who Live on Less Than $2 a Day
The worlds of business and charity are increasingly merging. Social enterprises engage in activities that don’t perfectly fit in either of these worlds. Blending the two is a powerful tool: the solutions are often more effective, more innovative, and above all more sustainable.
- Categories
- Health Care
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Medtech Business Opportunities: There’s Plenty of Room at the Bottom
There is a huge underserved market for medical technology—roughly two-thirds of the global population—that is largely ignored by the medtech industry. That market sits at the base of the pyramid (BoP), and it is composed primarily of populations in the emerging global markets. A report from global business consultancy PWC, "Quality healthcare for all: Starting from a strong base," considers this market to be a tremendous opportunity for companies to do good, both in business terms and for the human condition. "There may be no better place to look than the BoP healthcare market to seek new business," write PWC analysts. "Companies that do may find huge revenue potential combined with the opportunity to improve the lives of billions of people through access to better healthcare."
- Categories
- Health Care
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Celebrating World Health Day with Business Ideas
As their earnings increase, people at the BoP tend to consider health a priority expense, opening the door to businesses interested in serving this market. In celebration of today’s World Health Day, Lina M. Salazar Ortegón with Opportunities for the Majority, provides a few ideas for health companies and service providers in search of new opportunities.
- Categories
- Health Care
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Driving Financial Inclusion at 4G Speed
Base-of-the-pyramid financial services providers in emerging markets are increasingly using data analytics to pioneer new products for reaching the unbanked. Alifinance in China is using the underlying transaction data of vendors on the giant online platform Alibaba to underwrite small business loans. M-Shwari in Kenya leverages M-Pesa's mobile money data for short-term, unsecured credit. Cignifi analyzes cell phone usage to provide credit as well as savings propensity scores. Lenddo uses online social network data for credit risk assessment. Similarly, a number of companies including Tiaxa and MODE use cell phone data to extend immediate nano-credits to prepaid customers who run out of airtime balances.
- Categories
- Technology
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African Mobile Device Pioneer Mi-Fone Opens Up on Strategy
Alpesh Patel, CEO of African mobile player Mi-Fone, said that its strategy for the region is based on “aspiration within reach”, arguing that “you’ve got to be realistic about the consumers’ pockets”.
- Categories
- Technology
- Region
- Sub-Saharan Africa
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Twitter Sunday
Ah spring (at least in this hemisphere). The snow has melted, the buds are starting to open and the birds are chirping. So are the Twitter birds, of course. Here are a few good eggs from the week that we’ve gathered into our nest.
- Categories
- Uncategorized
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Weekly Roundup – The BoP Beer Business
SABMiller wants to sell more beer to Africans, wants to source much more agricultural inputs from African farmers, and wants to generate much, much more revenue in Africa. The company forecasts it will grow revenue by 10 percent over the next three to five years in Africa. To achieve that goal it will use differentiated pricing to attract low-income customers across Africa.
- Categories
- Agriculture
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Social Enterprises On the Rise
A prudent man holds on to the old as long as it is good, and grabs hold of the new as soon as it is better; so goes an old adage. It's time to let go of the old and discredited handout and hand-me-down charity approach, and take hold instead of the hand-up approach to community and nation-building practised by social entrepreneurs and social enterprises. There are two outstanding men among us who are at the forefront of grabbing hold of this new paradigm; one from the public sector and the other from the private sector.
- Categories
- Uncategorized
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