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It's no secret that air quality in the bustling metropolis of Mexico City leaves much to be desired, but three local entrepreneurs are looking to change that image. The founders of Vehizero are taking on one of the world's greatest environmental challenges one car at a time with sleek new fleets of hybrid vehicles that are in some ways better engineered than current models in the US. The young enterprise just released its first line in February, but sales have jumped so quickly they actually had to tone down their marketing campaign. Not a bad problem to have; but not to worry, Vehizero is rapidly expanding its production to keep up with demand, and fueled by investments from groups such as E+Co and Conacyt, the team is working on designing new autos for household use.

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We talk a lot about pyramids - as in bottom of the pyramid and base of the pyramid - here at NextBillion. Now, (apologies to the math department at Council Rock High School) it’s time to start talking circles. As a follow up to last September’s Mexico conference, WRI, FMCN (New Ventures Mexico) and EGADE are launching a BOP Circle in partnership. The Circulo BOP will convene interested players working on BOP themes, strategies, and approaches in order to drive the Mexican BOP agenda.

A preliminary roundtable was held yesterday in Mexico City that laid the groundwork for the Circle, which will be formally launched in June. The BOP Circle will share resources, lessons, and challenges to try to identify private sector strategies that meet the needs of the BOP. Potential areas of work for the Circle include market research, a BOP pilot, working with the Learning Lab, and participating in the BOP Protocol.

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For years, we at New Ventures have been encouraging investors and aid organizations to pay attention to the growing numbers of SMEs being created by waves of adventurous entrepreneurs throughout the developing world. I would point to businesses like Aires as shining examples of small, innovative companies that have strong potential for rapid growth. It was good to read this morning that communications giant Nortel agrees. The corporation recently announced a new strategy to target the burgeoning demographic of SME owners entering the Indian market. As competition has increased, these businesses are becoming progressively more sophisticated and demanding better IT infrastructures, a fact that has driven Nortel’s profits in the region.

The potential benefits lay on both sides of the spectrum; for larger corporations engaging SMEs as clients, and for rural India, which has a huge potential customer base that SMEs will tap into. Adil Zainulbhai, CEO of the consulting firm McKinsey & Co. recently touted the profits to be gained among rural communities that will soon wield $500 billion of buying power. The agility and BOP connections among smaller businesses puts them in a perfect position to take advantage of this new resource. Like Nortel, I have a feeling India’s investors will catch on to the trend.

When John and Rob aren't blogging about cellphones improving incomes and health, they're forwarding news links about...cell phones improving incomes and health. This IHT story (great find by Rob) vividly illustrates just how valuable connectivity is on an individual and village-wide level, in this case in Sierra Leone.

(Note that ensuring healthy childbirth is a challenge across developing countries, especially low birth weight. Some of our health activities address the problem of scarce health services in rural areas, like Pesinet and PATH's baby scale . There's also a Lifewrap body suit that prevents bleeding to death in post-partum women.)

Also worth a read is Technology and Change Chris Albon's very thorough analysis of how wireless technology improves livelihoods and health, by allowing the "smallest clinic" to " ask for advice from national or international health experts," enabling "rapid and cheap health surveys in rural regions" and reducing non-compliance of patient self-treatment via text messaging.

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I was just reading through the new issue of Co-Creations, the e-Newsletter by the Kenyan Development Network Consortium (KDNC). Amidst informative articles about sustainable eco-tourism and the current state of ICT development in Kenya is a fascinating piece about the provision of appropriate medical devices to the country. The article is worth a quick read not only for what it says about Kenya or healthcare, but about approaches to development in general.

According to the story, most people living in Eastern Africa (and many other developing regions) have traditionally obtained medical devices and equipment largely through donor-funded initiatives. These efforts may in fact do more harm than good.

“The majority of the equipment is literally dumped into the African continent by suppliers who are funded through donor agencies. Indeed, close to 75% of medical equipment donated from industrialized nations are not in usable condition six months after arrival. Some 25% have major defects, another 50% fail progressively due to age or lack of proper maintenance.”

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One of the fundamental principles for business engagement with the ‘base of the pyramid’ is to take a triple bottom line approach to business model development and evaluation. This approach takes into account environmental and social impacts in addition to – and in support of – the financial bottom line.

Whole Foods has built a successful business around this principle. It’s co-founder and CEO John Mackey states that “the enlightened corporation should try to create value for all of its constituencies. From an investor's perspective, the purpose of the business is to maximize profits. But that's not the purpose for other stakeholders-for customers, employees, suppliers, and the community. Each of those groups will define the purpose of the business in terms of its own needs and desires, and each perspective is valid and legitimate.”

This business philosophy runs counter to a famous article written in 1970 by future Nobel laureate Milton Friedman whose title aptly summed up its main point: "The Social Responsibility of Business Is to Increase Its

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Are you a graduate or undergraduate student interested in emerging markets and/or private equity? Want to spend the summer in Washington, D.C.? Well, EMPEA’s got a job for you: the Emerging Markets Private Equity Association (EMPEA) is hiring 2 graduate interns and 1 undergraduate intern to work in their Washington, D.C. offices this summer.

The job descriptions are available at the EMPEA web site, along with a good description of the organization itself. Don’t forget (shameless self-promotion here) that NextBillion.net is also looking for a few good interns.

(Via IPEG)

A relative veteran on NextBillion, Grameenphone's mobile business model set an early standard for innovative service provision. The concept of at-your-door delivery of traditionally unaffordable goods and services --to remote and poor communities also works well with low-cost health care, using health vans and medicine trains. The same concept (sometimes on foot) seems to work for providing "Portacredit" microloans in Ecuador.

Now, I notice that this mobility-enabled delivery model seems to have caught on best for education: Check out India's Mobile Solutions Center

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The New Ventures Entrepreneur of the Week series continues with a feature on the Solar Trade Corporation (STC), a rapidly growing business that sells solar-powered coffee dryers to farmers in Mexico and Central America. For this piece I interviewed VP Richard Trubey, who somehow made a huge career leap from the non-profit universe to heading up marketing for a young startup.

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Remittances are not a substitute for aid, but their aggregate size encourages positive private sector activity that helps the BOP. This was my first thought when I saw Ignacio’s posting at the Poverty and Growth blog. He quotes the World Bank’s Raj Nallari, who criticizes government incentive programs as “more problematic than efforts to expand access to financial services or reduce transaction costs.” I couldn’t agree more.

At NextBillion, we’ve documented some of the positive externalities attributed to remittances, including increased access to financial and telecom services for BOP markets. On the other hand, government incentives – such as matching-fund programs and tax benefits – may encourage local fund diversion or tax evasion, certainly not the government’s intention but negative impacts nonetheless. I hope, as does Nallari, that governments will concentrate on improving their financial climate and telecom regulation, helping the private sector increase the quality and quantity of services it can offer to BOP consumers.

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