Serving the BoP from within

Jeff Mowatt — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 13:22:50 -0500

This was very much the case with an early adopter of a social business model which was delivered in Russia between 2000 and 2005 under the People-Centered Economic Development paradigm. It began with self-investment to deliver a proposal for microeconomic development, which identified local business opportunities and the need for a moral collateral based microcredit bank.

A resounding success with 98% repayment, women borrowers outnumbering men by a factor of 4:1 and 10,000 new enterprises. And yet, it is almost unheard of.

This is I believe do to the misconception that the origins of advocacy for business models applied to eradicate poverty came post 2004, when in fact they were delivered as a white paper to US government nearly a decade earlier.

As a participant here I have never been able to write about it, or persuade editors to examine it.

Since 2004 P-CED has been a UK based software business, with a development presence in Ukraine. Our activism and advocacy being funded by software sales and maintenance revenue.

Our efforts over the past 4 years in Ukraine have been in raising awareness of corruption and mistreatment of children in institutional care and the preparation of a microeconomic 'Marshall Plan' with a nil overall cost outcome based on leveraging business investment for a mix of more-than and less-than full cost recovery social components.

While presidential candidates compete in their advocacy for a 'Marshall Plan' against poverty, the only plan that is more than political rhetoric sits largely ignored.

All of the above will be found, presented openly on the website link embedded next to my name above.

I'm frequently astonished of the extent to which an organisation like ours can both pioneer and be excluded from the dialogue on successful models for development.

Jeff Mowatt P-CED - Economics for humanity

“How to do Business at the BoP” - Conference Wrap-Up

Manuel Bueno — Sun, 02 Mar 2008 09:05:45 -0500

As Robert Katz posted last week, a BoP Conference entitled “How to do Business at the BoP” was held on February the 27th in Madrid. The conference had pretty impressive speakers and visitors, since it was mainly directed at the corporate world.

Robert was the first speaker of the day. He kicked off by explaining the reasons for BoP studies and briefly went through the three main penalties suffered by BoP customers: price, quality and access. After giving an overview of business strategies at the BoP, he presented “The Next 4 Billion” study and explained some of the most important conclusions that the study sheds light upon, such as the significant unmet needs in the ICT and Transport industries.

The second part of the conference introduced several BoP case studies from different industries, presented by members of the BoP companies themselves.

(This post continues past the break. Click 'Read more to continue.)

NextBillion.net - Development Through Enterprise - “How to do Business at the BoP” - Conference Wrap-Up - Comments

Serving the BoP from within

“How to do Business at the BoP” - Conference Wrap-Up