News
Chasing the 'base of the pyramid' 
By Marc Gunther, Fortune Magazine, November 15, 2006
Veteran cleaning-product firm SC Johnson seeds startups in the poorest parts of Africa. Socially responsible? Yes, but also good business, reports Fortune's Marc Gunther.
>> More Details | created on: 11/21/2006
HLL, ITC draw up two-pronged strategies to woo customers
By LALITHA SRINIVASAN, The Financial Express, August 31, 2006
India’a largest FMCG company Hindustan Lever Ltd (HLL) is gearing up to launch its rural initiative ‘Project Shakti’ in Bihar and Jharkhand very soon.
With this, Project Shakti will be operational across all states in India. The company also plans to cover 500,000 villages with 100,000 Shakti Ammas (women entrepreneurs) in the next two years. Competitor ITC Ltd is also planning to set up 50 Choupal Sagars (rural super stores) by the end of this fiscal year.
Clearly, India’s two major FMCG players in rural markets are now extending their reach to woo new consumers.
>> More Details | created on: 09/08/2006
UN Tourism Agency Teams Up With Microsoft to Boost African Tourism
allAfrica.com, July 12, 2006
The United Nations tourism agency has teamed up with Microsoft to use information technology to improve the industry's competitiveness and quality in developing countries, especially in Africa which at present accounts for only 4 per cent of international tourism.
>> More Details | created on: 07/13/2006
UN and Microsoft for small business in Africa
Bloomberg, July 12, 2006
Cape Town and Seattle - Microsoft, the world's biggest software company, and the UN are forming a partnership to supply information technology (IT) and other support to small businesses in Africa.
>> More Details | created on: 07/13/2006
Motorola May See Gains In Emerging Markets
By R.M. Schneiderman, Forbes, July 11, 2006
Motorola, the number two manufacturer of wireless headsets, could see market share gains in both developed and emerging markets in the second quarter, according to a Monday report by Morgan Stanley.
>> More Details | created on: 07/13/2006
'One lakh' car to roll out from 3-4 places: Tata
The Economic Times - India, July 7, 2006
NEW DELHI: Tata Group Chief Ratan Tata on Friday said the ambitious Rs 1 lakh car will be manufactured from three-four places, including West Bengal and Uttaranchal.
>> More Details | created on: 09/13/2006
Business Joins African Effort to Cut Malaria
By Sharon LaFraniere, The New York Times, June 29, 2006
BELULUANE, Mozambique — With malaria spread across southern Mozambique, executives at the international mining company Billiton expected some workers to call in sick as it began building a massive new aluminum smelter amid the cornfields here.
What they did not expect was that nearly one in three employees would fall ill — 6,600 cases in just two years. And they certainly did not expect 13 deaths, not after the company had built a medical clinic, doused the construction site with pesticides and handed out bed nets to thwart malaria-carrying mosquitoes.
>> More Details | created on: 06/30/2006
Citigroup and Coca-Cola: Two Global Investors Share Their Experiences in Emerging Markets
Knowledge @ Wharton, June 22, 2006
Todd S. Thomson, chairman and CEO of global wealth management at Citigroup, and Muhtar Kent, president of Coca-Cola International, clearly head up vastly different operations, but during keynote speeches at Wharton's Global Alumni Forum in Istanbul June 8-9, they shared a sense of opportunities still to be realized in a number of emerging markets in the Middle East, Asia and Latin America.
>> More Details | created on: 07/31/2006
The role of business in tomorrow's society
By Odd Gullberg, World Business Council for Sustainable Development, June 2, 2006
The global enterprises of today enjoy unprecedented opportunities, but they also face some uncomfortable challenges. On the one hand, many companies are doing well, achieving new levels of reach, innovation and brand awareness. On the other, operating at global scale means they come face to face with the world's most pressing problems – including climate change, poverty, resource depletion, inequality, fast-growing populations in developing countries and ageing populations in developed ones.
>> More Details | created on: 06/15/2006
Microsoft Testing Pay-as-You-Go PC System in Brazil
By Mary Jo Foley, Fox News, May 22, 2006
Microsoft (MSFT) unveiled a new financing program designed to make PCs more affordable to emerging-market customers on May 22, the day before the kick-off of its annual Windows Hardware Engineering Conference (WinHEC) in Seattle.
>> More Details | created on: 05/23/2006
India: Largest international banker to diversify into agribusiness financing
Sify Business, May 10, 2006
Standard Chartered, the largest international banker in India, has firmed up plans to enter agriculture and commodities financing during 2006. It will also consolidate its operations in traditional as well as in the growing retail banking sectors.
>> More Details | created on: 05/25/2006
Intel CEO: Need To Speed Gains For ‘Next Billion People
Intel Press Release, May 3, 2006
The multiplying effects of computers, the Internet and education can double the reach of technology’s benefits worldwide in the next 5 years, Intel Corporation President and Chief Executive Officer Paul Otellini said today in a speech at the World Congress on Information Technology.
>> More Details | created on: 05/08/2006
What's next for Tata Group: An interview with its chairman
By Ranjit V. Pandit, The McKinsey Quarterly, April 28, 2006
In this interview, Tata Group chairman Ratan Tata discusses the strategies of India's huge steel-to- software conglomerate, his vision of India as a global knowledge center, and the trade-offs between business success and social responsibility.
Rather than aspiring to be truly global, Tata Group seeks to expand in countries where it can achieve "a meaningful presence."
At home Tata Group wants to pioneer new products, including a $2,200 "people's car," for India's emerging mass market.
Tata, who is also the chairman of India's investment commission, explains why improving the infrastructure of his country is essential to retaining its best people and persuading those who have left to return.
>> More Details | created on: 04/28/2006
Rural Students Benefit from the World of Computers
Development Gateway, April 11, 2006
The PiL Program( China), which began in 2003 and ends in 2008, Microsoft will contribute over US$10 million in investment, donations and other forms of support to help furnish computer education and computer-aided teaching programs in primary, junior middle and teachers' schools, especially those in rural and remote areas.
>> More Details | created on: 04/13/2006
Six Trends Will Drive Sustainable Development, According to PricewaterhouseCoopers
PricewaterhouseCoopers, April 10, 2006
Sustainable development will steadily advance over the next 10 years, with six major trends influencing industry world-wide, according to a new PricewaterhouseCoopers' report, "Corporate Responsibility: Strategy, Management and Value." The challenge of creating strategies that meet immediate needs without sacrificing the needs of future generations will be driven by the growing influence of: global market forces; revisions in corporate governance; high speed innovation; large scale globalisation; evolving societal requirements and communication, the report says.
>> More Details | created on: 04/11/2006
Making the market work for the poor
By Ann Bernstein & Paul Zille , Business Day, April 6, 2006
AS a new development approach, making markets work for the poor (MMW4P) can have a big impact in SA because it is about changing the circumstances that prevent the poor from participating more effectively and extensively in the market economy.
>> More Details | created on: 04/11/2006
ICRISAT to collaborate with CII and Coca Cola Foundation on watershed development
Moneycontrol.com, April 3, 2006
ICRISAT & Coca-Cola Foundation Collaboration for Backward Areas Development through Strategic Intervention in Watershed Development The International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics (ICRISAT), Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) and the Coca-Cola Foundation will collaborate for sustainable and equitable management of Rural Water Resources Infrastructure and other Natural Resources Management (NRM).
>> More Details | created on: 04/07/2006
Sales Effort Gives India's Rural Poor an Opportunity
By John Lancaster, Washington Post, April 2, 2006
This article discusses a Hindustan Lever initiative that enlists about 20,000 poor and mostly illiterate women to sell products.
>> More Details | created on: 04/07/2006
Intel Kicks Off Low-Cost PC Effort
By Jeremy Kirk, PCWorld.com, April 1, 2006
Intel has partnered with a Mexican telecoms company to sell an affordable PC designed for first-time computer users in developing countries. It's the latest effort by technology vendors to develop products for emerging markets.
>> More Details | created on: 04/07/2006
New environmental targets for DSM plants
Hugin News/DSM, March 26, 2006
The Nutrition Improvement Program, which focuses on the fortification of foods with vitamins and minerals in order to prevent disease and mortality due to malnutrition, is DSM's first initiative in the context of the 'Base of the Pyramid'. This is a new development in the field of sustainability to which the company will increasingly be paying attention.
>> More Details | created on: 04/04/2006
Bottled Water Big for Multinationals
By Mark Stevenson, Yahoo News, March 21, 2006
Violent protests have driven away corporate investment in desperately needed municipal water systems in developing nations. So the world's poor buy bottled water from Coke, Pepsi and other multinational companies.
>> More Details | created on: 03/30/2006
Building Wealth by the Penny
By John Lancaster, Washington Post, March 14, 2006
With its open sewers and mud-walled homes, this impoverished farming village of 2,200 in southern India did not look like fertile territory for an entrepreneur. But Srilatha Kadem was undeterred. Oblivious to the midday heat, she marched briskly along the unpaved streets, her cloth bag filled with soaps and shampoos and her heart with vaulting ambition.
>> More Details | created on: 03/14/2006
Grameen teams up with Groupe Danone to set up food plant
By Reaz Ahmad, The Daily Star, March 13, 2006
Microcredit guru Prof Muhammad Yunus launches a joint venture food enterprise in collaboration with one of the world's major food producers -- Groupe Danone.
>> More Details | created on: 03/22/2006
Power to the people
Economist, March 11, 2006
AS A young boy in rural Bangladesh in 1971, Iqbal Quadir walked ten miles to collect some medicine for a sibling who was unwell. But when he arrived at his destination, the medicine man was not there, so he had to walk home empty-handed, having wasted an entire day. Many years later, having moved to America and become an investment banker, Mr Quadir was reminded of this episode when the network at his New York office stopped working.Mr Quadir was seized by the idea that "a telephone is a weapon against poverty". He decided to dedicate himself to making telephones more widely available to the poor in his homeland.
>> More Details | created on: 03/10/2006
Tech a Key to Easing Poverty, Microsoft official adapts software for Third World uses
By Sara Israelsen, Deseret News, March 11, 2006
The connection between a computer and the economic stability of an African villager may seem like a stretch, but to Kevin Johnson, it's a connection he works on every day. Johnson, co-president of the Platforms and Services Division of Microsoft, spends his weeks traveling the world, trying to adapt Windows technology to the various developing countries and citizens.
>> More Details | created on: 03/17/2006
Give Africans the Blackberry -- and they will do the Job
By Dan Latendre, The Record, March 11, 2006
What do computers, cellphones and BlackBerrys have to do with eradicating extreme poverty in Africa? Quite a bit as it turns out.
>> More Details | created on: 03/17/2006
New infoDev Report on m-Commerce
By InfoDev, February 24, 2006
The proliferation of mobile communications in developing countries has the potential to bring a wide range of financial services to an entirely new customer base. This report explores the use of mobile phones to expand financial services in the Philippines.
>> More Details | created on: 02/28/2006
The Birth of Philanthrocapitalism
By The Economist, February 23, 2006
RELATIVE to the corporate environment, we are in the 1870s. But philanthropy will increasingly come to resemble the capitalist economy, predicts Uday Khemka, a young Indian philanthropist and a director of the SUN Group investment company owned by his family.
>> More Details | created on: 02/28/2006
The Business of Giving
By The Economist, February 23, 2006
Philanthropy is flourishing as the number of super-rich people keeps growing. But the new donors are becoming much more businesslike about the way their money is used, says Matthew Bishop.
>> More Details | created on: 02/28/2006
Fancy Phones to Clash with Low Cost PCs
By Pragya Singh , Financial Express, February 20, 2006
Here is something the bottom of India’s mobile user pyramid can cheer about. If 2005 was the year of the cheap PC, 2006 will see the dawn of entry-level smart phones in rural parts.
>> More Details | created on: 02/23/2006
MTN's CSR Initiative Wins GSM Association Award
Africa News, February 17, 2006
>> More Details | created on: 02/17/2006
Grameen and Segway team up to produce micro-entrepreneurial "Slingshot"
By Erick Schonfeld, CNNmoney.com, February 16, 2006
Dean Kamen, the engineer who invented the Segway, is puzzling over a new equation these days. An estimated 1.1 billion people in the world don't have access to clean drinking water, and an estimated 1.6 billion don't have electricity.
>> More Details | created on: 02/23/2006
Intel's Hiring Spree
By Michael Fitzgerald, Technology Review, February 14, 2006
Why is Intel, the giant chip maker, in the process of hiring more than 100 anthropologists and other social scientists to work side by side with its engineers? While the success of this strategy will become clearer over the next 12 to 18 months, it's obvious Intel is betting that sales will rise and new markets will emerge because of this nonintuitive pairing.
>> More Details | created on: 02/23/2006
Google's Big BOP Bet? Bringing Wi-Fi to Africa
By John Paul, World Resources Institute, February 9, 2006
Google
announced this week that it has selected Abuja, Nigeria as one of about seven African cities the company will fully connect with a wireless network.
>> More Details | created on: 02/17/2006
Q&A: C.K. Prahalad
Red Herring, February 6, 2006
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Business Prophet
By CK Prahalad, Business Week, January 23, 2006
This article discusses how strategy guru C.K. Prahalad is changing the way CEOs think.
>> More Details | created on: 01/27/2006
All They Need is a Fair Chance to Compete
By Heather Stewart , The Observer, January 22, 2006
Hilary Benn tells Heather Stewart that, far from being the enemy, the global private sector is the one certain way that poverty can be made history.
>> More Details | created on: 01/23/2006
Putting Paid to Poverty
By Al Hammond & Bill Kramer, January 17, 2006
"Putting Paid to Poverty" provides a hopeful scenario for the development of the 'base of the pyramid' over the next ten years.
>> More Details | created on: 02/17/2006
OSS CEO Announces Global Campaign to Deliver Intelligence to the Poor, Lifting the Bottom of the Pyramid - the Poor - With Information
Yahoo Finance, December 14, 2005
>> More Details | created on: 01/04/2006
Can Africa Join the Investment Revolution
By Africa Business, November 29, 2005
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Founder of Ebay sets up Dollars 100m microfinance aid fund
Financial Express, November 4, 2005
The Dollars 100m (Euros 84m, Pounds 56m) fund, which will be run for profit by endowment managers at Tufts University in the US, marks a growing trend among a new generation of philanthropic entrepreneurs and technology billionaires to seek market-based solutions to global poverty rather than rely solely on traditional charities.
>> View Article | created on: 11/18/2005
India's phone-to-farmers operator
Financial Express, October 19, 2005
The idea was to connect India's farms with the world by modernising a clapped-out supply chain that allows most produce to rot long before it gets to market.
>> More Details | created on: 11/23/2005
AMD to jointly sell cheap personal computers in India
Agence French Presse, October 14, 2005
US-based semiconductor maker AMD said it would enter a joint venture with an Indian firm to sell personal computers for the same cost as cellphones.
>> More Details | created on: 11/23/2005
Calling an End to Poverty: Mobile Phones and Development
By The Economist, July 7, 2005
Discusses how mobile phone firms have found a way to help the poor help themselves.
>> More Details | created on: 11/23/2005
Pennies from the poor add up to fortune
By David Ignatius, The Korea Herald, July 1, 2005
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Trickle-Up Economics
By David Armstrong & Naazneen Karmali, Forbes.com, June 20, 2005
How low-tech, low-cost designs are helping the poorest farmers on Earth grow their way out of poverty.
>> View Article | created on: 11/18/2005
Selling to the Poor: There is a Surprisingly Lucrative Market in Targeting Low-Income Consumers
By Kay Johnson & Xa Nhon, Time Magazine, April 25, 2005
Identifies the lucrative market in targeting low income consumers.
>> View Article | created on: 11/18/2005
Selling to the Poor: Mobile Firms Plan Cheap Handset
BBC News, February 1, 2005
An alliance of mobile phone firms has launched an ultra-cheap handset in the hope of connecting millions more customers in developing countries.
>> View Article | created on: 11/18/2005
The Akassa Community Development Project in Nigeria: Statoil and BP