News
Pakistan approves strategy to expand microfinance outreach to 3 mln households 
Associated Press of Pakistan, February 14, 2007
Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz has approved the strategy to expand microfinance outreach from one million to three million households by 2010.He was chairing a meeting here Wednesday to review the strategy prepared by State Bank of Pakistan (SBP) to increase the coverage of microfinance sector in Pakistan.
>> More Details | created on: 02/16/2007
India's Huge Market for Cheap Phones
By Nandini Lakshman, Business Week, January 8, 2007
It's one of the world's hottest mobile phone markets, but Nokia, Motorola, and Samsung must deliver cool handsets at very thin profit margins.
>> More Details | created on: 01/12/2007
India poised for pharmaceutical boom
By Mark Sappenfield, The Christian Science Monitor, January 2, 2007
For decades, India's drugmakers have been the pharmacy for the world's destitute, finding ways to copy the best medicines at the lowest prices. By some estimates, India's generic medicines treat half the AIDS patients in the developing world.
Yet this picture has begun to change since India decided to comply with global patent standards last year. Now as never before, Indian pharmaceutical companies are looking to expand business in rich countries, which, critics say, will come at the expense of the world's poor. The intent is to follow the footsteps of India's information-technology (IT) sector, which parlayed lower costs and improved innovation into India's greatest modern success story.
>> More Details | created on: 01/12/2007
Citi plans thumbprint ATMs for India poor
Financial Times, December 1, 2006
Citigroup is rolling out a network of biometric automatic cash machines aimed at illiterate Indian slum dwellers, using the latest technology to woo the country's millions of "unbanked" poor.
The machines will recognise account holders' thumbprints, eliminating the need for a personal identification number, and will have colour-coded screen instructions and voiceovers to help guide them through transactions.
>> More Details | created on: 12/07/2006
Vikram Akula, Founder & CEO of SKS Microfinance
CNN.com, November 13, 2006
Vikram Akula is on an economic mission: to empower India's poor.
His drive to fight poverty led to the birth of the Hyderabad-based SKS in 1998. It is a microfinance company that lends small amounts of money, typically $100, to impoverished women.
The cash is used to buy everything from animals to irons so clients can start their own homegrown ventures. SKS started out as non-profit but later changed its status and is now one of the fastest growing microlenders in the world.
With role models like Mohammad Yunus of Grameen Bank, who recently won the Nobel Peace Prize for his microfinance work, Akula is in good company. CNN's Andrew Stevens asked the former management consultant why he made this career choice.
>> More Details | created on: 11/21/2006
Credit will cut rural poverty in India
By Amy Yee , Financial Times, October 31, 2006
Microfinance in India, -currently focused on small loans for the rural poor, is growing fast enough to make an impact over the next -decade, according to a new report.
However, the sector must focus on transparency and governance, training local partners, and developing a more diverse menu of services, says the report, released yesterday at a microfinance conference in New Delhi.
>> More Details | created on: 11/10/2006
For India's Traditional Fishermen, Cellphones Deliver a Sea Change
By Kevin Sullivan, Washington Post, October 15, 2006
Babu Rajan pointed off the starboard bow and shouted: "There! There!" In choppy, gray seas four miles from shore near India's tropical southern tip, Rajan spotted the tinselly sparkle of a school of sardines. He ordered his three dozen crewmen to quickly drop their five-ton net overboard.
>> More Details | created on: 10/20/2006
Microfinance Institutions Reach Crucial Agreement with Government in Andhra Pradesh, India
MicroCapital, October 11, 2006
In a broad reaching agreement, Microfinance Institutions (MFIs) operating in Andhra Pradesh, India have reached an agreement with the state government on MFI interest rates, product portfolio, inter-MFI competition, credit disbursement and loan recovery methodologies. An agreement pertaining to a smaller jurisdiction – the Krishna district of Andhra Pradesh was earlier reported on MicroCapital.
As per the terms of the agreement, MFIs have agreed to an interest rate ceiling of 15%. They have agreed to desist from providing multiple credit to an existing borrower and recover loans at a pace compatible with the borrower’s income level. MFIs are also to remain strictly within the micro-credit domain, avoiding micro-insurance products.
>> More Details | created on: 10/13/2006
India's BIG microfinance revolution
By Nandini Lakshman, Business Week, September 25, 2006
ICICI Bank is a big money-center lender that deals with sizable companies in Bombay, Bangalore, and New Delhi. It is also one of India's biggest consumer lenders. So why does Nachiket Mor spend a lot of time in India's economically depressed rural hinterland looking for prospective borrowers?
He recently visited a family of five living in a soot-covered hut, getting by at barely subsistence levels in the North Indian state of Uttar Pradesh.
Mor signed off on a one-year, $130 loan that will allow the family to buy a buffalo and sell its milk. And written into this loan contract is a most unusual clause. If the animal isn't milking, the family gets a moratorium on its monthly loan repayment.
>> More Details | created on: 09/29/2006
Bill to regulate microfinance sector on cards
The Economic Times, September 21, 2006
International venture funds foraying into microfinance will not have to grapple with conflicting rules of operation. The government is preparing a bill to regulate the sector, which is expected to grow to Rs 35,000 crore, by ’10. The big funds planning to make a foray into the sector include, the Maharashtra government promoted VC Fund -Urjankur, UK-based CDC, Unitus Private Equity and Delhi-based Lok Capital.
Even IFC has set up a fund with the Andhra Pradesh Industrial Development Corporation (APIDC), for the purpose. Finance ministry services special secretary Vinod Rai said on Wednesday, the microfinance legislation will be tabled in the winter session of Parliament.
>> More Details | created on: 09/22/2006
Banks bet on booming remittances
By Joel Rebello, DNA India, September 11, 2006
With an increasing number of Indians living abroad, either for work or having settled there, foreign exchange remittances into the country is likely to increase, market players say.
India receives the largest amount of remittances in the world, “getting over 10% of the $230 billion global market, according to World Bank numbers,” says Manish Misra, ICICI Bank’s head of global remittance. He expects the business to grow 15-20% annually in the next 4-5 years.
“It is inevitable that, with the need for overseas workers, India will remain a big market for the remittance business,” Misra says. The bank’s remittance service, Money2India, has a 22% market share in the Indian business.
>> More Details | created on: 09/29/2006
Bangladeshi who founded bank for poor wins peace prize
Yahoo News, September 6, 2006
The Bangladeshi who established a bank for the poor has been named winner of the eighth Seoul Peace Prize.
The biennial prize of 200,000 dollars, awarded to Muhammad Yunus, honours peace efforts by politicians, academics, activists and international organizations.
"His tireless endeavor to root out poverty and create a new model of giving credit to the poor will bear fruit in terms of greater peace in the world," the Seoul Prize Cultural Foundation said.
>> More Details | created on: 09/08/2006
Fighting poverty $1 at a time
By Shahreen Abedin, CNN.com, September 5, 2006
It all started with $50. In 1988, that's what it took Noni Bala Ghosh to revive her family's business of making sweets to sell in Kholshi, her tiny village in Bangladesh.
Family members had given up the business because they could no longer afford to buy milk to churn into rich chhana, a thick cottage cheese used to make creamy sweets.
Driven to despair, Noni heeded the advice of several women in her village who had taken loans from Grameen Bank, a lending organization that developed the poverty-busting lending program known as "micro-credit," in the 1970s.
Through a series of small loans from the bank, she soon bought a cow and began to supply her own milk, and eventually engaged her two sons and husband, Gopal, to help support the family business she led. After 3 1/2 years, Noni had become the key supplier to a prominent sweets shop in Dhaka. Once again, she could afford to feed and clothe her family.
>> More Details | created on: 09/08/2006
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
India's Banks Are Big on Microfinance
By Nandini Lakshman, Yahoo News, August 23, 2006
ICICI Bank (IDN) is a big money-center lender that deals with sizable companies in Bombay, Bangalore, and New Delhi. It is also one of India's biggest consumer lenders. So why does Nachiket Mor spend a lot of tie in India's economically depressed
rural hinterland looking for prospective borrowers? He recently visited a family of five living in a soot-covered hut, getting by at barely subsistence levels in the North Indian state of Uttar Pradesh.
Mor signed off on a one-year, $130 loan that will allow the family to buy a buffalo and sell its milk. And written into this loan contract is a most unusual clause. If the animal isn't milking, the family gets a moratorium on its monthly loan repayment. "The client would need to find other money to service the loan or even sell the buffalo to pay us, which would be counterproductive for both of us," explains Mor, deputy managing director at ICICI.
>> More Details | created on: 09/08/2006
Microcredit and moneylending in India
The Economist, August 17, 2006
MONEYLENDERS bad; microcredit good. That has been the common view about financial services in much of the Indian countryside. Traditional moneylenders charge extortionate interest rates to those in desperate need.…
>> More Details | created on: 09/08/2006
Reaching the bottom of the pyramid
By Bhaskar Hazarika , ciol.com, August 11, 2006
Rural India has more than 60 per cent of the disposable income, and thanks to the Internet, the rural Indian can now buy what his urban counterpart is buying.
>> More Details | created on: 08/14/2006
Microloans May Work, but There Is Dispute in India Over Who Will Make Them 
By Tyler Cowen, The New York Times, August 10, 2006
MICROFINANCE is based on a simple idea: banks, finance companies, and charities lend small sums — often no more than a few hundred dollars — to poor third world entrepreneurs. The loan recipients open businesses like tailoring shops or small grocery stores, thereby bolstering local economies.
But does microfinance, in fact, help the poor?
>> More Details | created on: 08/10/2006
ICT Access Centers to be introduced in rural areas
News from Bangladesh, August 3, 2006
The government for the first time is going to introduce ICT Access Centers for the rural people to attach the underprivileged section to the technology-based knowledge society, reports UNB.
The rural ICT Access Centers, to be equipped with modern computers and Internet facilities, will provide ICT-enabled services to the rural people to bring them into the mainstream of development.
“Within next two months, we’ll be able to introduce such knowledge centers,” Science and ICT Minister Dr Moyeen Khan told a workshop here Wednesday.
>> More Details | created on: 08/03/2006
India's great leap forward?
By Brian Bremner, Business Week, August 2, 2006
The world second fastest-growing mobile phone market offers challenges for telecoms and implications for Indian society.
>> More Details | created on: 08/03/2006
Micro-insurance - "Reaching out to the poor"
By Interview with Vipin Sharma, Program Director for Micro Finance at CARE India, WBCSD, July 31, 2006
Allianz and CARE are cooperating to offer the people in the tsunami-struck region of Tamil Nadu micro-insurance products. Vipin Sharma, Program Director for Micro-finance at CARE India, speaks about the project.
>> More Details | created on: 08/03/2006
Going Mobile in India
By Nandini Lakshman, Business Week, July 24, 2006
Service providers and handset manufacturers look forward to explosive growth as India skips the copper wire and heads straight for wireless networks.
>> More Details | created on: 08/03/2006
India’s farmers switch faith to mobile phones
By Ashling O’Connor, The Times online, July 24, 2006
FOR centuries, Indian farmers have relied on ancient rituals, the study of wind direction and local gossip to ascertain the annual onset of the unpredictable monsoon rains. Deciding when to sow their crops and when to take their produce to market is based on experience and instinct.
>> More Details | created on: 08/03/2006
Tata offers Rs 25 cr annual medical aid to poor
rediff news, July 19, 2006
The Tata Group and three other top business houses have joined hands with the Jharkhand government to ensure medical treatment to the state's below poverty line population.
Apart from the Tatas, Birla, Essar and Jindal group have formed the Sarva Swasthya Mission Trust -- which will be the first of its kind private-public partnership in the country.
This project will provide health coverage and medical treatment to the poorest of the poor in the state at affordable prices and also encourage good private sector health services to reach out to remote and rural areas, a release by the Tata Group said.
>> More Details | created on: 07/20/2006
'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
High finance reaches Bangladesh's poor
Yahoo News, July 6, 2006
Tiny loans for Bangladesh's rural poor became part of a groundbreaking financial product on Thursday through one of the world's first "microcredit" securitisations.
>> More Details | created on: 07/07/2006
Haier sees growth at bottom of pyramid
TMCnet, July 2, 2006
Haier India is on overdrive as it plans to launch an India-specific range of products by mid-'07. This is as per its strategy of capturing the low-end of the consumer durables market.
>> More Details | created on: 07/06/2006
Management goes to bottom of the pyramid
By Kalpana Pathak, Business standard, June 28, 2006
INNOVATION: A Fortune 500 company will form business partnerships with slum-dwellers in Mumbai.
Slum-dwellers of Santosh Nagar, Goregaon (Mumbai), will soon be business partners with a Fortune 500 American company (name yet to be disclosed) that plans to invest money to set up a nutrition unit at the slum as a pilot project.
>> More Details | created on: 07/06/2006
Tata promises Rs 1 lakh car by 2008
Hindustan Times, June 23, 2006
Tata Motors on Friday said it would launch the much-touted Rs one lakh car in early 2008, as the company had completed its styling and designing and tested the prototypes within the plant.
>> More Details | created on: 06/27/2006
Quantifying the BoP in India: Marketers target the ABCD junta
By Shailesh Dobhal, The Economic Times, June 21, 2006
NEW DELHI: Interested in selling profitably to the poor? Most Indian marketers are not strangers to management thinker and author CK Prahlad’s almost decade-old bottom-of-the-pyramid (BOP) idea, essentially the existence of a huge market opportunity with low-income consumers. However, in the absence of concrete data on where these consumers and markets reside, it has sadly remained a mere cliché, with many paying just lip-service to Mr Prahlad’s path-breaking BOP approach.
>> More Details | created on: 06/27/2006
Immigrants from India spread business success to homeland
By Edward Iwata, USA Today, June 20, 2006
SANTA CLARA, Calif. — When Silicon Valley entrepreneur Sabeer Bhatia was a kid growing up in Bangalore, India, in the 1980s, his native country seemed eons from evolving into an economic power.
Bhatia and his parents, a banker and a government bureaucrat, waited 10 years before their house got a telephone line. Because of auto shortages, they waited two years to buy a tiny Suzuki car. They shopped at small family stores with limited goods.
>> More Details | created on: 06/27/2006
Dharavi poor may get health cover
By Falaknaaz Syed, Business Standard, June 2, 2006
Scheme to see partnership between physicians and residents.
Over 30,000 families living below the poverty line in Asia’s largest slum at Dharavi may soon have insurance cover for their medical expenses and regular health check-ups, thanks to a unique care model.
>> More Details | created on: 06/05/2006
Indian motor maker gives the go-ahead for £1,200 'people's car'
By Randeep Ramesh, The Guardian, May 20, 2006
One of India's biggest motor manufacturers announced ambitious plans yesterday to launch a cheap, small "people's car" in 2008 for about £1,200.
Tata Motors, a subsidiary of one of the country's largest conglomerates, said it would invest 10 billion rupees (£120m) in the plant near Kolkata in West Bengal. Initially the plant will employ 2,000 people.
>> More Details | created on: 07/06/2006
Free outgoing call creates a new price threshold
By Satish John , DNAIndia, May 16, 2006
MUMBAI: The bugle was sounded for a fresh battle on Thursday in the booming Indian telecom market.
‘Don’t stop Mobile’, a new scheme unveiled by Tata Indicom across 20 circles that allows customers to make free outgoing calls for a period of 2 years to any Tata Indicom Mobile or Tata Indicom fixed phone. It allows a maximum outgoing talktime of 3,600 minutes (60 hours) to another Tata Indicom phone.
It was only in October last year that Tata Indicom had coined a new free incoming scheme called “non-stop mobile” which forced its competitors to follow suit quickly as new subscribers emerged to enlist for the Tata scheme.
>> More Details | created on: 05/16/2006
Mobile phone boom spurs economic growth in Bangladesh
Yahoo News, May 10, 2006
DHAKA (AFP) - Bangladesh's booming mobile phone industry has emerged as a key driver of the cash-strapped nation's economy, creating nearly 240,000 jobs and adding 650 million dollars to gross domestic product.
>> More Details | created on: 05/18/2006
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
Future Capital to foray into retail of financial products
By Kala Vijayraghavab and R Sriram, The Economic Times, April 26, 2006
Mumbai: Future Capital, a majority-owned company of Pantaloon Retail, is chalking out a massive foray in the next few months into the manufacture and retailing of financial products, based roughly on a Latin American model.
>> More Details | created on: 04/26/2006
ICICI Bank Targets 250 MFI's
By Sunita Jyoti, The Financial Express, April 14, 2006
Besides retail, ICICI Bank, the second-largest commercial bank, has aggressively doubled its rural microfinance and agri-business
loan portfolio over a period of nine months. The outstanding in group's total rural microfinance and agri-business portfolio has increased to Rs 10,000 crore compared to Rs 5,200 crore last year.
>> More Details | created on: 04/17/2006
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
ICRISAT to collaborate with CII and Coca Cola Foundation on watershed development
Moneycontrol.com, April 3, 2006