It's been quiet here on NextBillion the last few days - not by design, but rather out of necessity. Al just returned from two weeks of travel throughout Asia, and met Tuesday and Wednesday here in DC with our partners at Intel and MicroVest. Meanwhile, Bill just returned from Dubai, and Julia's currently in Toronto to present at the "Mobilizing the Private Sector for Global Health Development" conference.

And me? Well, compared to my colleagues, I'm boring - no passport needed for my recent trips to Manhattan (last week) and Armonk, New York (this week.) But that doesn't mean the trips haven't been interesting. I'll blog backwards, starting with my most recent trip - 2 days at the IBM Learning Center in Armonk - and post later about my meetings in Manhattan last week with Acumen Fund (quick previous post here), JustMeans, and UNDP.

The IBM meetings were great. First of all, they have amazing conference facilities, tucked in the woods adjacent to their corporate HQ. Everything is designed to foster collaboration, and collaborate I did. With whom? IBM has a relatively new team from across the company working on BOP projects. Not much can be said publicly about the team, per se, but some of their projects are in the public domain. Here's a quick rundown.

ThinkPlace Challenge On Monday, May 7, IBM will open up its renowned internal innovation software (ThinkPlace) to the global web community. The occasion? An "innovation jam" about the BOP and Africa. It will be a unique event to say the least. The most recent IBM Innovation Jam - held last summer - brought together over 150,000 people who contributed 46,000 ideas. The best ten received $100 million in start-up financing ($10m each). Check out my post on Worldchanging for details.

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A couple of BOP-related jobs have come across my desk lately.  Read on for the full descriptions:

Intellecap is a consulting firm focused on capital advisory for the inclusive finance space and creating and delivering mainstream, profitable solutions to address the problems of poverty and expedite sustainable development. Intellecap works with microfinance organizations across India, development financial institutions, social investors and social entrepreneurs from around the world.  They believe in being profitable while also supporting sustainable development and a progressive workforce. Intellecap's services and initiatives help the development industry consolidate and disseminate knowledge, and build networks.

There are two openings with Intellecap: Capital Advisory Associate and Online Business Exchange Associate.  See attached JDs.

The International Association of Microfinance Investors is a startup in search of its first Executive Director:

The International Association of Microfinance Investors (IAMFI) will provide investors with access to credible information, a forum for interaction with fellow investors and an advocate to represent their interests in the microfinance community.

We seek an experienced, energetic and talented leader who, working with IAMFI’s Board of Directors, will help launch and manage the association and chart its strategic course at a dynamic moment in time.

A job description and more detailed information about IAMFI are available at www.iamfi.com. Qualified candidates are invited to apply by May 14.

Web 2.0, meet BOP. (Wow, now that is a jargon-laden sentence.) Hopefully my jargon serves to highlight some of the latest efforts to bring the broad web community together in search of the next, best base of the pyramid idea. Yesterday, I introduced IBM's upcoming ThinkPlace Challenge - Africa, which will solicit innovative ideas (and comments about them) for three weeks starting on Monday. Today, it's healthcare and Changemakers' turn.

Changemakers is an Ashoka initiative that focuses on social innovation. In the spirit of market incentives, Changemakers holds idea competitions - with monetary prizes - to solicit the best ideas and models in emerging areas of social innovation. They're trying to build a new market for compelling topics in the field; the latest is entitled Disruptive Innovations in Health and Healthcare: Solutions People Want.

It's no small task - but that's where we come in. The competition is open. Just browse over to the solution mosaic to check out the current submissions. You can comment, discuss, and submit your own idea. The top three ideas - judging criteria available here - will receive $5,000 cash prizes.

This Changemakers competition is a bit different - they've partnered with the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation to help put the ideas into action. From the competition Welcome Letter, here are the details:

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Late last month, Dr. Nachiket Mor, Deputy Managing Director of the ICICI Bank and Chairman of the New Ventures India Steering Committee announced that his bank would be launching a 100 crore fund for green businesses in emerging markets with a focus on SMEs. 100 crore is a serious commitment, nearly $25 million USD. I thought of the significance of such a high profile vote of confidence for the green business sector when I ran across an article yesterday that I was somewhat surprised to find in the New York Times.

In the article, the Times described a trend that has been discussed and linked to and pondered thoroughly on the development-oriented blogs for awhile. Call them philanthropreneurs, social entrepreneurs, or now the "fourth sector;" a new class of non-profit, for-profit hybrid models is forming in the croplands of Costa Rica and the R&D facilities of General Electric that sees economic, social, and environmental gains as indistinguishable parts of a blended value proposition.

Atanu Dey, chief economist at Netcore Solutions in Mumbai and author of the Rural Infrastructure Services Commons (RISC) model and Reuben Abraham (right), director of the Cornell/ ISB Base of the Pyramid Learning Lab at the Indian School of Business make a case for developing urban strongholds instead of attempting to develop all the villages In India.

As they postulate:

India has a choice of futures, say, in 2030. Will the majority of Indians continue to live in 600,000 small villages engaged in near-subsistence agriculture or will they be in living in 600 well-planned vibrant cities (or 6,000 towns of 100,000 population, for that matter) working in non-agricultural sectors and enjoying a rich social and cultural life?

A shift from a rural agro-based economy to a urban oriented industry based economy with its attendant cultural shifts is by no means a new phenomenon. It has happened with regularity in the economic development of many parts of the world. In the case of India, things are made more complex by a history characterized by a traditionally poverty stricken population at the village level and the sheer enormity of size. Imagine that 700 million Indians live in the villages - almost equivalent to the entire population of Europe in 2005 of 728 million!

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A chance meeting in a coffee bar at the University of Sao Paulo led scientists Gehrard Ett and Gilberto Janolio to create what would become the Latin-American leader in fuel cell technology. Today, Electrocell is ready to launch the hydrogen economy in Brazil.


The offices of Electrocell are deceptively minimalist at first glance. Hidden away in the margins of the São Paulo University campus, one would not expect the grey concrete walls of the Technology-Based Incubator Center (CIETEC) to house a company that considers itself to be one of the forbearers of the hydrogen economy revolution in Brazil. Yet this is exactly the venture Gerhard Ett and Gilberto Janólio embarked upon when they brought their respective projects teams together to form a fuel cell manufacturing and commercialization business in 1998.

Gerhard recounts with a nostalgic grin how the company that today is a Latin American leader in fuel cell technology was created due to a chance meeting of a chemical engineer and a battery systems expert in the CIETEC coffee bar – this humble lounge was where Gerhard and Gilberto realized they both had the fuel cell experience and the technical knowledge necessary to enter the nascent hydrogen energy sector.

One of the main advantages of Electrocell is its team’s extensive experience in the technical aspects of fuel cell production and application, as evidenced by the huge amount of handmade technologies lying around the fuel cell office which can range from cell test kits to the occasional hydrogen powered bicycle. The team’s expertise lends them the ability to produce fuel cells that are equipped for a variety of purposes. Electrocell’s patented PEM technology is ideal for commercial use since, unlike with other fuel cell systems, all of the necessary parts and materials are widely available on the open market.

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Guest blogger Patrick Donohue is the Founder of BRINQ and a Senior Consultant at Enterprise for a Sustainable World (ESW), one of a select group of business professionals working at the grassroots intersection of innovation, poverty, and business. He holds degrees from Stanford University and the University of North Carolina - Chapel Hill. This article first appeared in the BRINQ Workshop.

By Patrick Donohue

"Every time a shaman dies, it is as if a library burned down." - Mark J. Plotkin, PhD

The old caboclo woman stopped abruptly in her explanation of the plant in her hand and stared to the back of our group, at the tall, sun-browned, shirtless man who had just stepped into her garden. “Ele é índio?” the old midwife asked excitedly, “ele entende muito de plantas, ervas, remédios?!” The newcomer had been just about to snap a photo of the scene but the force of old woman’s reaction startled him into almost dropping his camera. He turned to my girlfriend Amber and me with a confused look, “What did she just say?”

I chuckled out loud and translated for him while Amber explained to the old woman that no, our friend Kenny was neither a “native” nor from the jungle, that he was originally from Hong Kong and - as an energy trader on Wall Street – Kenny’s particular knowledge of stocks and plants probably wasn’t quite what the old woman was hoping for. The midwife’s mistake was easy enough to understand though: a dark brown, muscular man with long raven-black hair, Kenny looked like a piece of history stepping out of the jungle. In fact, most of the people we had met during our weeklong tour of riverside communities had made the same mistake about Kenny’s heritage. What surprised me instead about the old midwife’s reaction was that even though practically a medicine woman herself - born and raised in the Amazon - she still seemed desperate to pump an outsider for his knowledge of local plants and medicines.

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Between all the travel and other goings on here, I haven't had my customary quiet time with Bloglines lately.  So I'll be going through my lists over the next couple days and posting up links and excerpts from the past week or two gradually.  Before we begin, however, don't forget that IBM's ThinkPlace Challenge is now open for your contributions!  Check out the press release for all the details, or just browse directly over to the ThinkPlace, register, and starting posting.

1. Ethan Zuckerman on "Ooh, Shiny!" and M-PESA:  Ethan, a Worldchanging colleague as well as the esteemed founder of Geekcorps and Global Voices, blogs over at My Heart's in Accra.  His post last week argues that journalists tend to fall victim to the "oh, shiny!" complex and therefore report tech stories without enough checking.  This leads him to pine after his lost sense of geekery - worshipping the shiny - in lieu of a more appropriate-tech spin on things.  In his words:

In terms of what distracts me, I think M-PESA and other mobile phone cash systems are pretty much the shiniest things I’ve seen lately. Then again, I thought Dr. Amy Smith’s work on making sustainable charcoal was the shiniest thing at last year’s TED, so perhaps I’ve lost my geeky sense of shiny and adopted some new appropriate technology criteria instead. (”Crunchy”? “Useful”? “Dull”?) But M-PESA makes me want to go out and start businesses, which is a classic shiny response.

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Ever wondered how you can move into the elusive world of BOP consulting?

The DC chapter of the International Private Enterprise Group is pleased to announce its May meeting, "A Day in the Life of a BOP Consultant." The featured speaker will be Andrew Mack, founder and Principal of AMGlobal Consulting.

Andrew, a former World Bank official, has worked in over 70 countries - with special emphasis on emerging markets in Latin America, Asia, and especially Africa. He has represented international donors, NGOs, and private sector firms such as Oracle, Chevron, Motorola, and Volvo in work with Emerging Markets around the world. AMGlobal, a growing consulting firm, helps companies increase and deepen their work in emerging economies.

For his presentation, "A Day in the Life of a BOP Consultant," Andrew will discuss the founding of AMGlobal and give IPEG members unique insights into the day-to-day operations of an emerging markets consulting firm.

The May meeting will be held on Wednesday, May 23 at the World Resources Institute, starting at 6:00. Snacks and beverages will be provided; RSVP is requested to Rob Katz (rkatz [at] wri -dot- org).


RSVP: Rob Katz (rkatz [at] wri -dot- org)

Two upcoming events are worth noting - the Development Marketplace and the Chicago Microfinance Conference.  Registration is open for both.  Here's a bit more detail:

Development Marketplace is a competitive grant program of the World Bank that funds creative, small-scale development projects that deliver results and have the potential to be expanded or replicated.  They are holding their annual event here in Washington on May 22 and 23 - I'll be there at least part of the time.  Register at EventBrite (free) by May 15.  Also, if you're in town on the 23rd, consider stopping by WRI to meet the NextBillion team and attend the IPEG May meeting that afternoon.

The 3rd Annual Chicago Microfinance Conference comes recommended by our friend David Satterthwaite over at MicroCapital.  Unlike other conferences, this event will focus on the road ahead - not what has worked in microfinance over the years, but rather what will need to happen to reach billions of people instead of the current (estimated) 100 million microfinance clients. 

Keynote speakers are SKS CEO Vikram Akula and CGAP head Elizabeth Littlefield.  Admission ranges from $25 to $65 depending on your affiliation, and I can vouch that it will be money well spent.

Also on the event front, the EMPEA/IFC 9th (!!!) Global Private Equity Conference starts today in DC.  My colleagues from New Ventures are attending, and they've promised to blog, so stay tuned.

Guest blogger James Dailey consults with Sevak Solutions and is CTO of Microfinance Clearinghouse.  He was founder of the Microfinance Open Source initiative while at Grameen Foundation. 

Pakistan is home to at least 160 million souls, many of them at the "base of the pyramid" and altogether a more complex and interesting place than that painted by the international media, which focusses on the threat of Terrorism.  These are some impressions: A ferris wheel a short distance from the centuries old fort in Lahore; a ski lift outside of Islamabad that is a way to see pretty views where middle class families go; traffic clogged streets with elaborately decorated hauling trucks and an exuberiance of local trading; women dressed in colorful materials and women in head-to-toe black; men in western slacks and those in more traditional garb with longish beards; dry-dry mountains and fields; and fertile Punjab (five rivers) lands.  It is not a major tourist destination, but it is a fascinating land and people, with eons of culture rubbing up against cosmopolitan sophistication.

The politics are also more complex.  In the few weeks I have been here, a growing controversy has been brewing over the - shall we say effective - dismissal of the Supreme Court Chief Justice, with the largest anti-government demonstrations in many  years.  Initially a constitutional issue, it has taken on more ominous political implications. 

Also, euphemistic "power management" or "load shedding" are scheduled power blackouts to deal with a 500MW electrical capacity shortfall, and this headed into the hottest period of the year when temperatures regularly exceed 105F (41C).  Here in Karachi, riots are expected, maybe even today, if the outages last more than a few hours, as power management is, again, a highly politicized issue.

Microfinance reaches over 1 million people in Pakistan, more than a drop in the bucket but far less than the need for financial services for the tens of millions who live below or slighly above the official poverty line.  My work here is directed at scaling up these microfinance providers utilizing the convergence of banking services and mobile phone carriers.  This is the exciting future, ubiquitous communications via mobile phones enabling entirely new service models, via banking agents, for a variety of financial services to...well, everyone not currently reached by banks.  The work, funded by USAID and executed by ShoreBank International, is also aimed at helping the earthquake victims of October 2005; massive devastation of lives and livelihoods, which is still strongly felt today.

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When I decided to write about BoP skills, I planned to center the discussion on a conversation I’d had with Yasmina Zaidman of the Acumen Fund. She was kind enough to chat with me a few months ago during an informational interview and gave me a great overview of critical BoP competencies. My plan hit a snag when I failed to locate the notes from our conversation. What else is new?

However, as often happens in life, I found them while looking for something else. To celebrate my good fortune, I am sharing that information via a mini-update. Some of the points have been addressed, but bear repeating. Others are new. Off we go…

At the BoP one must be able to build new markets, utilize operational skills, and design marketing strategies for areas lacking traditional distribution channels. Not surprisingly, this means that the “must have” skills are product design, distribution/supply chain management, marketing, pricing, and product financing. If you want to work for an outfit like the Acumen Fund, you’ll not only need consulting skills or investing experience and an understanding of development issues, but also a demonstrated commitment to the sector and changing the way development is done.

Let’s recap. Question: “What does the BoP need?” Answer: “Everything.”

The old expression goes "Give a man a fish and you will feed him for a day. Teach him how to fish and you will feed him for a lifetime." An article from the latest issue of the Economist seems to imply that we could add a BoP twist to update this saying - something like "Give a man a fish and you will feed him for a day. Sell him a cellular phone and you will give him the ability to sustain long-term income by efficiently marketing his fish at the highest price in the location where they are in greatest demand, simultaneously saving resources by ensuring no fish markets get oversaturated."

Or something along those lines, I won't deign to mangle Chinese proverbs any further. The article itself centered around a study conducted by Robert Jensen on Kerala fishermen, who had to constantly deal with distorted pricing because they had no way of knowing in advance where to sell their catches - ie knowing which markets gave the best price, which were already saturated - with a resulting deadweight loss of 5-8%, the amount of fish that would get thrown away on a daily basis.

That is, until cellular technology became widely available. All of a sudden, fishermen were able to call associates while at sea to determine which market they should head to, bringing local consumer prices for fish to a lower equilibrium over time while raising profits for fishers and bringing waste down to virtually zero.

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I encountered a strange dilemma while perusing the website of Mobile for Good. Charged with doing a write-up of the organization, I quickly realized that the folks at M4G have already done a great job of describing what they do. As a result, I’ve just reproduced text from the website here, and added a few of my own comments for good measure.

Mobile for Good (M4G) is a social franchise project designed to use mobile phone technology to help alleviate poverty and improve the lives of people in the developing world. It delivers vital health, employment and community content via SMS on mobile phones in order to inform and empower disadvantaged individuals and help bridge the ‘digital divide’ – the widening technology gulf which exists between rich and poor countries.

The content services are targeted at Base-of-the-Pyramid (BOP) consumers – generally defined as the low income segment of the population that lives on less then two USD a day. However, the business concept also includes premium services aimed at higher income groups, which allows services offered to the BOP to be subsidized.

The content services include:

• Kazi560, a job information service aimed at blue-collar workers and employers. It offers jobs in more than 40 categories from carpenters to secretaries

• Health Tips, which is designed to provide subscribers with useful tips on various pertinent health issues.

• MyQuestion, a service that allows customers to anonymously ask HIV/AIDS and Breast Cancer related questions and receive answers.

• Her560, a lifestyle channel aimed at professional women, providing information on health, diet, fitness, fashion, family, finance, events, etiquette, motivation, romance and the home.

• The Community News service, which is distributed free to subscribers in Kibera, Kangemi, Kawangware, Mathare and Mukuru. It provides a channel for sending out information on events in the community.

The Mobile for Good project has already been implemented in Kenya via a project called OKN Mobile launched by One World UK (OWUK) in 2003, where it has been instrumental in helping more than a hundred people to find jobs every week. Additionally, the business has already broken even and has had over 70,000 people use its services. Over 60,000 have found employment through the job service, Kazi560. In addition, some employers have said that this is the only form of recruitment they are now using.

A social franchise model has been developed by OWUK to provide entrepreneurs with a package of tools including a generic business model, technical platform, marketing advice, links with local telecom companies, and ongoing consultancy, which will allow them to set up a M4G business in their country. The success of this pilot has driven plans to replicate the franchise in further countries across Africa and the rest of the developing world including Cameroon, Tanzania, Uganda, Nigeria and Nepal.

Mobile for Good has been extensively covered by both national and international press, including articles from the BBC, New York Times and Reuters, amongst others.

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One of my regular news feeds brought this item to my attention, and it struck me as perhaps a meaningful watershed.  Red Hat, the Linux software/middleware company, just announced last week the launch of its "Global Desktop" -- enterprise software at affordable prices.  Red Hat has been working with Intel to maximize performance on low-cost, Intel-based desktop PCs.  It has also been working with One Laptop Per Child to simplify the functioning of highly-sophisticated desktop suites.  Interestingly, Red Hat seems to have navigated the sometimes hostile relationship between Intel and the OLPC people for the purposes of this project.

For the open software folks, you'd think that the emerging economy markets would be a high visibility target, but the economics of their businesses are perhaps even more demanding than the proprietary software solution providers.  The development, then, of specific solutions for low-income consumers represents to me at least a significant shift in the center of gravity of the overall markets.  Admittedly the customers for this software are at the top of the BOP market, if not above, but still, it's a great sign.