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It’s ragtime folks! India Inc. is poised to get ragpickers to strike fortune at the bottom of the pyramid. Top companies like Tetra Pak, Dabur, Amul, Parle, Karnataka Dairy, among others, are wooing ragpickers to participate in their value chain. Though Tetra Pak is spearheading the movement of carton collection, companies are signing up thick and fast.

In the normal run, paper mills cough up $75-110 per tonne for used Tetra Pak cartons. That works out to precisely Rs 4 a kilo. India Inc. is encouraging ragpickers-in-uniform (company gloves, jackets, et al) to go from door-to-door , collect and separate dry waste from wet, and sell directly to the nearest paper mill through NGOs at remunerative rates — all without that meddlesome middleman in the way.

For Tetra Pak, the future of packaging in India lies in value-based waste management systems. “If the waste has a value, it’s part of the value chain,” maintains Amit Deep Singh, environment director, Cluster South and South-east Asia, Tetra Pak.

Driven by this philosophy, Tetra Pak approached NGOs like the Mumbai-based Stree Mukti Sanghatana, and thrashed out an arrangement for door-to-door collection of waste by ragpickers. “Waste paper has good value, but cartons are yet to make an impact since people are not quite sure about the fibre content of cartons, which can be further recycled . We want to create awareness about the value of cartons among paper mills, so that highfibre paper can be extracted and recycled,” adds Singh.

The money actually lies in dry waste, and once dry waste is mixed with wet waste, the recycling ability just goes waste. Segregating garbage helps ragpickers fetch a better price from the mill.

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Microsoft has teamed up with Advanced Micro Devices and India’s Zenith Computers to launch a personal computer aimed at Indian students for 21,000 rupees ($513).

The IQ PC will run on AMD Athlon processors and have education software from both Microsoft (nasdaq: MSFT - news - people ) and local partners. It will initially be sold in the cities of Bangalore in the south and Pune in the west for three months starting from Saturday, followed by a nationwide rollout in November.

While far from cheap by Indian — or even U.S. — standards, the computer will include Microsoft’s Windows Vista Basic version, the MS Office suite and educational programs. That may arguably make it more feature-rich than the $150 laptop that the One Laptop Per Child initiative is attempting to mass produce for children in emerging countries. (See: " The $100 Computer")

“The current growth of IT penetration in India might be rapid, but it is not rapid enough. Affordability is critical and goes far beyond low-cost hardware,” Microsoft India Chairman Ravi Venkatesan told reporters in New Delhi at a conference to announce the launch.

A report from industry tracking company IDC this month said India has an installed PC base of 22 million, or one computer for every 50 people.

“Quality of Indian education still faces many challenges and the biggest of them all is to make [information communication technology] available to the millions at the bottom of the pyramid,” said Orlando Ayala, senior vice president of emerging segments market development at Microsoft.

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At a time when “inclusive growth” is taking centrestage in India, a report by the World Resources Institute and International Finance Corporation provides some food for thought. The report, “The Next 4 Billion”, focusses on developing a market strategy for the millions of people living in relative poverty; what it calls “base of the pyramid” (BOP).

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God and Mammon are not generally seen in each other's company, let alone in a business school classroom. But as more MBA students become interested in the potential for the private sector to foster growth in some of the poorest parts of the world, one student-led initiative has led to a most unusual alliance – a partnership between Vanderbilt University's business school students and its divinity students.

The unorthodox partnership – the Project Pyramid Global Poverty Alleviation programme – was launched last year at Vanderbilt's Owen Graduate School of Management. The programme takes as its inspiration the work of Muhammad Yunus, the microfinance pioneer and a Vanderbilt graduate, and aims to give students the tools with which to create business plans that can help reduce poverty in the developing world.

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In advance of last week's G-8 Summit, President Bush announced a new initiative to promote private sector development in Africa. While overshadowed by the news of economic sanctions against Sudan and the climate change debate, the Africa Financial Sector Initiative (AFSI) is a step forward in the administration’s foreign aid policy. By providing much-needed technical assistance and creating private equity funds for underserved markets, the U.S. has made an intelligent choice in its fight against poverty in Africa.

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Los mercados de bajos ingresos pueden ser la puerta del crecimiento. Para tener éxito, hace falta desarrollar una relación de respeto y de largo plazo con el consumidor. Lecciones de empresas que lo están logrando.

"Pensaba que nunca iba a tener un piso decente. En 19 años que llevo viviendo aquí, jamás había visto una baldosa", dice María Agatón, al explicar cómo cambió el piso de cemento de su sala por baldosas de cerámica. "Y de la fina", señala con orgullo. Le alcanzó hasta para revestir la escalera de su casa, ubicada en Usme, uno de los sectores más deprimidos del sur de Bogotá.

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The cover story of this summer’s Stanford Social Innovation Review hits like a bombshell: “Microcredit Misses Its Mark.” For the development-savvy, pro-market reader, the claim seems out of line. In the long, spotty history of development aid, isn’t microfinance, with its emphasis on entrepreneurship, grassroots action, and individual responsibility, the one thing we can safely be proud of?

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Anyone wishing to escape the human crush of India's teeming capital to visit the marble splendour of the Taj Mahal can travel by train in just two painless hours. Alternatively, they can struggle to negotiate the crowded single-lane road that heads south to the city of Agra in a journey that can take up five hours.

But if India's roads seem cluttered and inadequate, things are set to get much worse. Over the coming months, a series of car manufacturers are set to unveil new models aimed at India's burgeoning middle class. Remarkably, some of the new cars designed to entice the wallets of India's newly wealthy consumers will be priced as cheaply as $3,000 (£1,500). One model, due to be available as early as next year, has been dubbed the "People's Car".

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Even as competition has built up to unprecedented levels in the car market, one segment has remained untouched - that of entry-level small cars. But that's all set to change from next year, with a slew of cars priced around Rs 1 lakh revving to get off the blocks.

Urban planners might be appalled at what this could mean for traffic congestion and parking, but companies - and consumers - are raring to go. The first launch will be that of Tata Motors' much-talked-about Rs 1 lakh car. But in just a couple of years, you might have half-a-dozen such vehicles to choose from. Nissan Renault on Thursday joined the bandwagon, unveiling plans for a $3,000 (around Rs 1.25 lakh) car for Indian roads.

Nissan Renault is expected to team up with Indian manufacturer Mahindra & Mahindra to enter the sub-Rs 1.5 lakh segment in which the likes of Hero Group, Bajaj Auto and Maruti Suzuki, the original aam admi car manufacturer, have already evinced interest. Even Xenetis, a low-cost PC maker, intends to be in this segment.

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NEW YORK (Fortune) -- It can't be said too often, because so few people even still understand its gravity: The adoption of technology in the developing world is tech's biggest trend. A new report by Forrester Research predicts there will be 2.25 billion PCs in the world by 2015, up from 755 million today. The vast majority of that growth will come in places like China, India, Brazil and Eastern Europe.

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