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

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Venture Capital for MicroFinance: Chris Brookfield (Part 1)

Chris Brookfield is the Investment Director at Unitus Investment Management Company. He has been a venture capital and private equity investor his entire professional career. In 2004 he co-founded Open Water Investors. Chris has also been an Associate at Redleaf Venture Management, a Silicon Valley seed stage venture investor, and is familiar with pure play

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Beyond Microfinance

By David Stoker, Guest Author After 2005 was declared the year of Microcredit and 2006 had the father of microcredit, Muhammad Yunus, being awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, microcredit has become a mainstream concept and strategy in poverty alleviation. (Even my eighty-year old grandfather is a lender on Kiva.org now) However, with increased attention comes

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Sequoia Enters Micro Finance

Those of you who read this blog regularly, know that I am a huge proponent of MicroFinance. Last week, an important piece of news item surfaced: Sequoia Capital has invested $11.5 Million in a Microfinance company called SKS. At the heels of Dr. Yunus’ Nobel Prize, this is a great development for the advancement of

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Nobel Peace Prize to Dr. Yunus

Dr. Yunus has won the Nobel Peace Prize. He could just as well have won the Economics prize. Here’s a video that you must watch. NY Times article on Yunus.