categories
HOT TOPICS
- The Accelerator Conundrum
- The Startup Velocity Question
- Platform as a Service
- Man and Superman
- Web 3.0 = (4C + P + VS)
- The Future: End of Capitalism
- Capitalism 2.0
poverty
Vision India 2020: Doctor At Hand
Many readers write to me with ideas for Vision 2020 ventures. One, Dr. Vaman Shanbhag, a neurologist in Mumbai, sent me a great idea for a healthcare venture which inspired Doctor At Hand.
McKinsey Study on the Growth of India’s Middle Class
Republishing this piece to remind readers why urban congestion is a danger that the Tata Nano aggravates: Great article from McKinsey Quarterly, that offers the following projections: * Over the next 20 years, India will likely grow to become the world’s fifth-largest consumer economy, up from 12th now. * A study by the McKinsey Global
2007 Base of the Pyramid e-Journal Competition
The Base of the Pyramid (BoP) Learning Lab of the Center for Sustainable Global Enterprise at the Johnson School of Management, Cornell University is accepting submissions for its 2007 BoP e-Journal Competition. The competition seeks to highlight the challenges of doing business in underserved markets and identify innovative business experiments or solutions to those challenges.
Selecting Great Microfinance Partners (Part 2)
By Guest Author, Robert Lowry, Unitus As I discussed yesterday, Unitus focuses on two kinds of microfinance institutions (MFIs) for partnership: emerging microfinance institutions, which serve more than 2,500 clients and are in the early stages of growth; and commercial startups, which may not have a track record of growth but are well-capitalized and have
Efficiency—The Key to Microfinance Success
By Robert Lowry, Unitus, Guest Author Microfinance reaches fewer than 20% of the people who could benefit from it. Only 2% of microfinance institutions serve more than 100,000 clients. Why is the impact of microfinance, after more than 30 years of effort, still so limited? A big reason is efficiency—or lack thereof. Inefficient microfinance institutions
Innovation in the Microfinance Industry
By Robert Lowry, Unitus Microfinance is a powerful, sustainable way of reducing poverty. However, despite its tremendous strength, it’s just not available to enough people. Three decades after Muhammad Yunus started giving microloans to women in the village near his university in Bangladesh, fewer than 20% of the world’s working poor have access to basic
BOP Markets: Mobile Telephony (Excerpt from the WRI Report)
Perhaps the strongest and most dramatic BOP success story is mobile telephony. Between 2000 and 2005 the number of mobile subscribers in developing countries grew more than fivefold—to nearly 1.4 billion. Growth was rapid in all regions, but fastest in sub-Saharan Africa—Nigeria’s subscriber base grew from 370,000 to 16.8 million in just four years (World
BOP Markets (Excerpt from the WRI Report)
The 4 billion people at the base of the economic pyramid (BOP)—all those with incomes below $3,000 in local purchasing power—live in relative poverty. Their incomes in current U.S. dollars are less than $3.35 a day in Brazil, $2.11 in China, $1.89 in Ghana, and $1.56 in India. Yet together they have substantial purchasing power:
