NextBillion.net - Development Through Enterprise - Eradicating Poverty through Profit

IGNIA Fund I Invests US$3 Million in Pro-Organico

Wed, 01 Jul 2009 21:41:36 +0000

IGNIA Fund I, LP announced today that it has committed US$3 million to Pro-Organico S.A.P.I. de C.V. in the Company's first round of equity financing. Pro-Organico is a leading grower and exporter of a broad line of USDA-certified organic produce.

Pro-Organico links Mexican farmers to the rapidly-growing North American organic produce market by managing agricultural operations and coordinating logistics with distributors and retailers across the United States, Canada and Mexico. "By transforming small-scale farmers into organic producers and incorporating them into the global supply chain, Pro-Organico helps growers realize a significant increase in revenue per acre relative to conventional farming," said Alvaro Rodriguez Arregui, co-founder and Managing Partner of IGNIA. "Growth will also make it a platform for substantial job creation."

Rice Power: Cisco, DFJ Award Seed Money to Husk Power Systems

Wed, 01 Jul 2009 19:48:17 +0000

We first wrote about Husk Power Systems, a startup that turns rice husks into energy, back in November 2008. Now the startup, which already powers an entire small town in India, has beat out over 1,000 competitors to win the Draper Fisher Jurvetson and Cisco-sponsored Global Business Plan Competition. As a result, Husk will receive a $250,000 seed round.

Husk Power Systems, founded in 2007 by University of Virginia business students Chip Ransler and Manoj Sinha, operates 35 kW to 100 kW mini power plants that convert rice husks into methane gas for energy. The plants are used to deliver electricity to small villages of 2,000 to 4,000 inhabitants in India's Rice Belt, which usually has loads of leftover husks from rice milling. Ash generated from the plants can be used as fertilizer or as an ingredient for cement.

India’s New Retailers

Tue, 30 Jun 2009 23:38:38 +0000

In a dry and dusty fair in Osmanabad, a small town tucked away in the Marathwada region of Maharashtra, a thousand women have just spoken. Their verdict is loud and clear. CANDY RED.

Consumer durables firm Godrej & Boyce is parading several colours of its new breakthrough product, ChotuKool, a nano refrigerator. A few fluorescent colours come first. The women vote this out with a cacophonous show of hands. They know what they want. Candy Red.

They did more than choose the colour of the fridge. They helped Godrej conceive and design the product. Then, from September 2008, when the first prototype of ChotuKool was unveiled to them, they began working with executives from Godrej & Boyce to ‘co-create’ it. The ChotuKool is like no other fridge. It does not have a compressor. It runs on a battery. Utensils and bottles need to be loaded into this 43-litre cool box from the top. It weighs only 7.8 kg and costs only Rs 3,200. And, of course, it is Candy Red in colour.

Over a hundred ChotuKools are being tried and tested in Osmanabad district. It is to the refrigerator segment what the Tata Nano is to the car market...only it’s a lot more innovative. ChotuKool, the product, is itself an innovation. The way it was co-created with village women, through several rounds of alterations based on their feedback, is another innovation. And the manner in which it will be distributed, sold and serviced is even more innovative

Fund houses target the bottom of the pyramid

Tue, 30 Jun 2009 13:20:38 +0000

Savita Devi, a daily wage earner in Gujarat, is saving for her future through a mutual fund. And she has company. Around 150,000 small investors are putting Rs 50-200 per month in UTI Asset Management Company’s (AMC’s) Micro Pension Plan.

UTI AMC is not the only fund house targeting the bottom-of-the-pyramid investors to extend its presence. SBI Mutual Fund, an affiliate of State Bank of India (SBI), also launched a ‘Chota Systematic Investment Plan (SIP)’ in April.

Even Reliance Mutual Fund has ‘Reliance Common Man SIP’, in which one can invest a minimum of Rs 100 per month. Sahara Mutual Fund is awaiting approval from the market regulator, the Securities and Exchange Board of India (Sebi), for a scheme that will allow the investor to put in as little as Rs 10 per day.

‘Chota SIP’ is an equity-based SIP that offers long-term investment benefits to low-income households residing in rural and semi-urban areas. This product is being marketed by SBI. All these players have definite plans to promote these schemes. SBI, for example, is not only depending on its huge network of over 15,000 branches, but is also tapping self-help groups (SHGs), NGOs and micro credit/finance institutions.

Invest India Micro Pension Services (IIMPS) and UTI’s pension plan, a government notified plan jointly promoted by Sewa Bank, UTI AMC and some private individuals, is promoting these products through puppet shows and plays. It has already tied up with thousands of rickshaw pullers and the National Association of Street Vendors. It is in talks with panchayats to promote these products.

Grameen Foundation and Google create mobile apps for Africa

Tue, 30 Jun 2009 01:50:48 +0000

Posted by Kristi Heim

Real time information about farming, health and trading will be available to mobile phone users in Uganda with new technology services developed by the Grameen Foundation, Google and telecom operator MTN Uganda.

The Grameen Foundation saw the proliferation of mobile phones in Africa as a way to get information and services to poor communities in Uganda without Internet access. About 18 months ago it started a project called the Application Laboratory (AppLab), with much of the early work being done in Seattle through the Grameen Foundation's Technology Center. The first suite of those applications is being launched today.

Peter Bladin, Grameen Foundation executive vice president, said AppLab builds on the success of an earlier project, Village Phone, in which local entrepreneurs rent cell phone use to villagers for pennies a call. Uganda now has 50,000 Village Phone and pay phone operators and nine million cell phone subscribers.

India needs a brilliant wave of entrepreneurs

Mon, 29 Jun 2009 14:00:52 +0000

MUMBAI|NEW DELHI: Zeus, for once, was thwarted as the driving rain and rolling thunder failed to dampen the cheery mood at the concluding chapter

of The Power of Ideas programme in Mumbai. The Times of India building was the venue for the interaction between shortlisted candidates and investors from the Indian Angel Network (IAN), VCs and incubators. There was a flurry of activity as entrepreneurs and investors drove up in their cars and taxis, hurrying to keep their appointments. Each team had been allotted 45 minutes to present its business ideas.

George Koshy, 32, quit his job at Castrol India over a year ago and started Latent Tech with the objective of selling ‘cooling’ motorcycle helmets for two-wheelers. Koshy has been working towards his dream for seven years now and had applied for a patent as well. “I need capital to launch and scale up the business. Investors were impressed with the idea, and now I am keeping my fingers crossed,” he says.

The missing middle to drive sustainable growth

Mon, 29 Jun 2009 13:56:23 +0000

Just imagine how different the world would be if, back in Microsoft’s earliest days, Bill Gates had been unable to find anyone to invest in him or if a decade ago the same had happened to Google founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page as they tried to get the business going from the garage of a suburban home in California.

Entrepreneurs the world over who try to start up and grow businesses face the problem of lack of access to finance. Often, they also experience an equal if not even bigger challenge: lack of access to the business training and development that will give them the skills to ensure the business succeeds.

But this problem is acute in Africa where lack of business skills, collateral and access to finance frustrates the start-up and growth of enterprises that are the heart of sustainable job creation.

Bolivian Microfinance

Mon, 29 Jun 2009 13:53:16 +0000

Bolivia has been the success story in microfinance in Latin America in the last twenty years. I decided to spend one week in La Paz to better understand the business model of the Bolivian microfinance institutions. During the six day stay in La Paz I had the privilege of meeting the Executive Director of Bolivia’s Financial Services Supervisory Authority (ASFI) Ernesto Rivero, the former President of Bancosol and Prodem Fernando Romero Moreno, the President of the Bolivian Academy of Economic Sciences Gerardo Gonzalez, and the Country Director of Promujer Vivianne Romero.

Ernesto Rivero was appointed Executive Director last 8 May 2009 in a shift many argue grants the Morales Administration more control on the supervision of financial institutions. ASFI was previously named Superintendencia de Bancos. I asked Ernesto if the change in name and in Executive Director carried a change of approach. He mentioned he was determined to shift the focus of microcredit in Bolivia to more productive activities, away from commercial activities. He identified as productive activities agriculture and farming. Ernesto is concerned that the rural poor are not being reached by the microfinance institutions of Bolivia, some of which, including Bancosol, are among the most profitable in the whole of Latin America.

Fernando Romero Moreno shares Ernesto’s vision. He is concerned that the mainstream microfinance institutions, ie the more commercial institutions, are not serving the bottom of the pyramid, but have rather focused on higher incomes that are typically urban, although informal. Fernando was the President of Fundacion Prodem until the microfinance institution was sold to Venezuelan investors.

Safe, comfy and chatting away - women’s empowerment at PCO booths

Mon, 29 Jun 2009 13:51:26 +0000

New Delhi, June 28 (IANS) Anjali Kher, 33, a small-time designer from Srinagar, keeps in touch with her family in the Kashmir Valley from the public telephone booth next to her home in Delhi.

“The booth remains open till midnight and I drop in almost every day after work to call my father and my brothers,” Kher, who lives in Mayur Vihar, told IANS.

The public telephone - including the PCO (public call office) phone booths with STD facilities - in India has become a tool of empowerment for women in middle class India, particularly migrants.

A new study says public telephones are the most frequently used method of making calls by Indian women at the bottom of the social pyramid compared to other South Asian nations like Bangladesh, Pakistan, India, Sri Lanka, Philippines and Thailand.

Indian men at the bottom of the pyramid, on the other hand, rely more on their mobiles, the study said.

Expat Bangladeshis spend more calling home than others: survey

Mon, 29 Jun 2009 13:48:43 +0000

Dhaka, 28 June (bdnews24.com)—Expatriate Bangladeshis called home more frequently than their Pakistani, Indian, Sri Lankan and Filipino counterparts, spending $48 a month to stay in touch, a survey says.

The survey '"Teleuse at the bottom of the pyramid", conducted by LIRNEasia, a regional ICT policy research institute, found 87 percent of Bangladeshi migrants called home at least once a week, while 34 percent called home daily.

Dr Rohan Samarejiva, chairman and CEO of the LIRNEasia, disclosed the result of the survey on Sunday in Dhaka.

Dr Samarejiva said the survey was conducted over 1,500 overseas and domestic migrant workers from Bangladesh, India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, the Philippines and Thailand.

The survey found that on average a Bangladeshi overseas migrant spends $48 per month, as against $15 by an Indian overseas migrant.

Overseas migrants mostly work in the Middle East and east or Southeast Asia.

On average, they earned approximately $485 and sent $203 home per month. The most popular way of communicating home was by telephone, though unlike the other nationalities, a significant 28 percent also made calls through the internet.