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GARZA GARCIA, Mexico, November 25, 2008-- IGNIA Fund I, L.P., Latin America's first social venture fund, announced today it has reached a total of US$34 million in equity commitments by completing its second closing. Investors include the Multilateral Investment Fund (MIF) of the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB), a US family foundation, and European and Latin American individuals. This round of US$13.6 million builds on IGNIA's initial closing of $20.6 million announced in early June. IGNIA projects to achieve its target of $50 to $75 million in equity through subsequent closings into the early part of next year. Together with the $25 million in debt financing IGNIA closed on with the IDB, IGNIA will invest a combined total of $75 - $100 million in innovative businesses that serve the Base of the Pyramid (BoP) in Latin America.

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When Nachiket Mor was an undergrad studying physics in Mumbai, he spent his vacations working with nonprofits. The obligation to help others, he recalls, grew from his years at Brockwood Park, a boarding school founded by philosopher Jiddu Krishnamurti outside London to teach, among other things, the value of community. Today, after a career in finance, the 44-year-old banker has made philanthropy his full-time occupation. In the process, he may alter financial services in rural India.

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The live music is by Exaltasamba and, as it pounds out of stacks of loudspeakers, the singer gets -the several hundred people in front of the store dancing, jumping and waving their arms as if there is no -tomorrow.

It is 9.30 am and the show has been put on for the opening of a new São Paulo outlet of Casas Bahia, a Brazilian retailer of furniture and electrical goods.

The store is one of the chain's 550 in Brazil and its first to open in a favela - one of the sprawling shanty towns that spring up wherever space allows around the country's cities.

"There are Casas Bahia delivery trucks up and down here every day of the week," says Carlos de Assis Silva, a labourer. He bought his television, most of his furniture, and even a stone-cutting saw for work from what used to be the nearest Casas Bahia, in the lower middle-class district of Santo Amaro about an hour away by bus.

Casas Bahia thrives on people like Mr Silva. While no cheaper than many shops aimed at richer customers, it is hugely popular with the poor because it allows them to pay in small instalments - and at hefty rates of interest that average 4.5 per cent a month, or about 70 per cent a year. Customers receive a stack of payment slips and must go into a store to make payments. This keeps them coming back and usually keeps them shopping - unless they are among the 10 per cent who default.

Talk of economic crisis raises smiles among the shoppers who pour in when the doors open. Casas Bahia foresees no immediate downturn. It expects sales to rise from R$13bn ($5.6bn, €4.5bn, £3.8bn) last year to R$14bn this year. It spent R$2m to open its new store. Another 30 will follow next year, including others in favelas .

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This weekend an attempt will be made by world leaders to redesign capitalism. A new financial architecture will be put in place. This effort will fail unless the bottom billion – those living on less than a dollar a day – are invited from the shadows and allowed to work with us in forging our brave new model.

Just a few weeks ago it was hoped that Main Street could avoid the fallout from a disgraced Wall Street. That has proved to be another case of bankers’ self-interested delusions. It is in the nature of streets to meet. The results were as predictable as they are awful. Yet, with great effort, we will recover.

For those in Africa who live in the world’s hardest circumstances, this crisis can seem academic. Yet there is a threat that they will be overwhelmed by a new wave of poverty, just when there had been the beginnings of real sustained economic change. While Africa is sheltered from the immediate impact of the crisis because of its relative isolation from the global financial system, it will be buffeted by the after-shocks: falling demand for exports, slowing capital flows, reduced remittances, sluggish growth and the threat of development aid drying up.

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For Devi and others like her, Microsoft Corporation has played a role in providing access to technology and training that has allowed her to enter one of India's fastest growing sectors: information technology.

Microsoft, in partnership with 13 local organizations, has opened more than 700 technology learning centers across the country. At a center in Hyderabad, India, Devi completed a three-month training program in computer basics. She learned how to use the Internet, draw up Excel spreadsheets and prepare PowerPoint presentations.

She now works at a software firm, making a previously unimaginable $105 a month.

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"IGNIA Shared Services Company is a novel concept for an emerging markets venture fund, a dedicated in-house company that will fully focus on streamlining administrative operations and developing systems and procedures that will serve as administrative platforms for portfolio companies to achieve scale," said Fabrice Serfati, CEO of IGNIA Shared Services. "This will allow the entrepreneur and leadership team to focus on doing what they do best: building the core business."

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D. Light Design today announced it has secured Series A financing led by Nexus India Capital, along with Draper Fisher Jurvetson, Garage Technology Ventures, Mahindra and Mahindra, and social funds Acumen Fund and Gray Matters Capital.

The same team of investors provided seed funding for D. Light when it was founded over a year ago with the mission to bring clean, safe, and affordable light to 1.6 billion people living without electricity.

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There are many ways to cope   with hard times and a financial meltdown. Three companies, San Miguel Corp., Ayala Corp. and Vista Land provide templates...

...On the other hand, Ayala looks at the base of the consumer pyramid, which presents what Jaime Augusto Zobel de Ayala calls “a market opportunity and a new era for development.”

Jaime Ayala notes that “the bottom 90 percent of all households earn less than $600 per month on average, but represent 60 percent of the country’s purchasing power.”

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By Jack Ewing

Nokia executives have long maintained that customers in emerging markets will get on the Internet primarily through their mobile phones. On Nov. 4 the company announced a series of new devices and services designed to prove the assertion by extending the benefits of the Web to rural Indians, including crop information for farmers and mobile e-mail for people who don't have access to a personal computer.

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Nokia today announced that it plans to launch Nokia Life Tools, a range of innovative Agriculture information and Education services targeted to non-urban consumers. Designed specifically for emerging markets, Nokia Life Tools helps overcome information constraints and provides services to this next generation of mobile users. Nokia plans to launch the service, beginning in the first half of 2009 with the Nokia 2323 classic and the Nokia 2330 classic as the lead devices in India and expand across select countries in Asia and Africa later in 2009.

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