NextBillion brings together the community of business leaders, social entrepreneurs, NGOs, policy makers, and academics who want to explore the connection between development and enterprise.
Our Staff Writers and Editors offer insights on the latest news, events, interviews and other happenings from the development through enterprise and base of the pyramid universes
December 3, 2009 — 01:34 pm
The formal launch was perhaps the most difficult part of the journey so far. Because both the Governor of the State and the Finance Minister were coming, the local political officials were determined that everything should be perfect.
December 2, 2009 — 09:02 am
Building a new venture from scratch often takes a lot of time. Operating in a rural area with imperfect infrastructure only makes it harder. But we were able to leverage the existing field force of our Indian partner to begin construction of our healthpoint units almost immediately after incorporation.
December 1, 2009 — 06:30 pm
When BOP entrepreneurs share war stories, they are inevitably about raising money. And I'm often asked, how do you do it? So here in brief are my experiences in raising money for our rural healthcare venture, which now has 3 operating E Health Points in rural Punjab, India.
July 27, 2009 — 09:32 am
Last week, I stood in a room in India where perhaps 15 women in clean-room garb were assembling point-of-use rapid diagnostic kits. These were pregnancy tests, but the company makes similar diagnostic kits for malaria, dengue, hepatitis, HIV, glucose levels, etc.; more than 30 in all. But that's only part of the story.
April 22, 2009 — 05:45 pm
"Emerging Markets, Emerging Models", the report on BOP entrepreneurship from Monitor Group, is probably the most important new study in the last couple of years. It is based on some intensive original research and focused on the key question: why haven't most BOP efforts scaled?
February 6, 2009 — 01:36 pm
Editor's note: Al Hammond, entrepreneur in residence at Ashoka, will write a series of reports documenting his experiences and the learning involved in started a "base of the pyramid"; (BoP) healthcare venture to serve developing countries. This is his first report in the...
November 17, 2008 — 11:19 am
I had the opportunity to attend the Tech Museum Awards ceremony last week in San Jose, California. What's interesting about this annual event is not just the social entrepreneurs and their sometimes quite remarkable innovations, but also the way Silicon Valley turns out to honor them and,...
November 12, 2008 — 09:21 am
Today I am posting the results of a unique partnership and a novel experiment in furthering social entrepreneurship, the fruits of an effort launched on this site a year ago. The partners were Santa Clara University's Global Social Benefit Incubator and World Resources Institute, and the...
September 5, 2008 — 10:09 am
The product is something people everywhere need, but is often costly or – for more than a billion people worldwide – simply unavailable. It has to be produced locally on a daily basis. And the market price, in rural India, is less than $20 per household per year. An impossible business? I...
August 24, 2008 — 08:50 pm
It's pretty intense, the process Francisco and I are engaged in this past week and the coming one. Take 16 social entrepreneurs from a dozen countries on three continents, some very knowledgeable faculty, and more than a high-powered dozen mentors and guest lecturers from Silicon Valley...
