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India’s Demographic Dividend: The Impact Opportunity in Student-Led Social Business
India's social enterprise sector is growing fast, but its overall startup ecosystem doesn’t support social businesses as much it does “commercial” enterprises. And the support it does offer tends to be directed toward larger, more established companies, hampering the sector's broader growth. According to Geet Kalra at Yunus Social Business and Nandan Luthra at Novartis, India can turn this around by leveraging its huge youth population to build multiple small enterprises, through a model called student-led social business. They discuss the potential impact of this innovative approach.
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- Social Enterprise
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Beyond ‘Take-Make-Waste’ Supply Chains: MIT Solve Seeks Circular Economy Solutions
Most of the products we use today — clothing, furniture, electronics and more — come from “take-make-waste” linear supply chains. These systems result in 2 billion tons of solid waste each year, produce major carbon emissions, and often involve toxic working conditions. MIT Solve is seeking new models through its Circular Economy Challenge, which will give $10,000 grants to the eight most promising solutions - the application deadline is July 1.
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- Environment, Transportation
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Accenture, Mastercard and Amazon Web Services create blockchain powered circular supply chain
Accenture has partnered with Mastercard, Amazon Web Services (AWS), Everledger, and Mercy Corps to explore solutions that will “empower consumers, enable transparency and promote financial inclusion for small-scale producers” through a circular supply chain.
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- Finance, Technology
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Inexpensive Impact: The Case for Frugal Innovations
Over 4 billion people around the world lack necessities like food, water, energy, health care and housing. This represents not only a major social challenge but a major market, as low-income consumers have an annual purchasing capacity of US $5 trillion. Rajat Chabba and Sheena Raikundalia at Intellecap explore how entrepreneurs are developing innovative, frugal products to meet these customers’ needs – and why an ecosystem approach is needed to help them scale their solutions.
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- Technology
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How Can Corporations Make the Transition to Sustainability? A Q&A with the Authors of ‘All In’
Global corporations can play a major role in addressing the core social challenges of our time. But how can they make the transition to sustainability – especially when many of their business models depend on unsustainable resources or practices? That's one of the questions explored in 'All In: The Future of Business Leadership,' a new book by three leading thinkers in corporate sustainability. In this Q&A, the authors discuss the keys to effective corporate sustainability leadership, the importance of the year 2030, and the ways smaller social enterprises can contribute.
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- Social Enterprise
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Building BoP Ecosystems: Register for the 2018 BoP Global Network Summit, April 18 – 20, New Delhi, India
Ecosystem development in BoP business has evolved from a buzzword to an emerging reality, with multiple new partnerships and platforms. The 3rd BoP Global Network Summit aims to catalyze and support such partnerships, convening 200 participants from 15+ countries on April 18 – 20 in New Delhi, India. Register soon: Early bird pricing ends Feb. 28. And subscribe to NextBillion Notes for a chance to win one of two free tickets we'll be raffling off to subscribers in the coming weeks.
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- Uncategorized
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The 7 Trillion Dollar Question: Can Sustainable Financial Products Close the SDG Financing Gap?
Val Smith of Citi gives global context to what sound like the impossibly high costs of reaching the Sustainable Development Goals on clean energy and global warming, saying there is good news behind the daunting gap. The challenge is that current investment levels in development and climate-positive activity remain far below what is required – but current trends in innovative finance are heartening.
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- Energy, Environment, Investing
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Transforming Waste Management, and Waste-Pickers’ Prospects, in Bengaluru
In February, Ennovent Global's Impact Investment Holding invested in Hasiru Dala Innovations, a Bengaluru-based company offering waste management services. The firm's initiatives, centered on the circular economy principle, provide waste management and urban gardening services and products, and also help ensure the livelihoods of waste-pickers, improve facilities for Bengaluru residents and divert over 90 percent of waste from landfills.
- Categories
- Environment, Investing, WASH