Pointing towards the slide of an elephant carrying electronic voting machines in Assam, C. K. Prahalad quipped, "Don't focus on the face of poverty. Tap the technology."
Conventional management wisdom had yet again been questioned by the strategist at a conference focusing on the ‘Bottom of the pyramid' market segment at the Maastricht School of Management in The Netherlands, one of the premier business sc hools in Europe. Knowledge-intensive multinationals and work process innovations are no longer exclusively confined to industrialised economies, management gurus such as Prahalad concur. (The BoP, which is the worldwide population living on less than $2 a day is a promising market segment worth $5 trillion for MNCs.) "The good news for consumers worldwide is that the BoP market will drive down prices," said Prahalad.
Market-based eco-systems have changed rapidly with the advent of public-private partnerships. Interestingly, the strained relations between MNCs and NGOs are increasingly becoming passé. More companies are partnering NGOs to uplift the 4-billion strong BoP segment and social activists for their part are also evolving into social entrepreneurs.
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Latin America
For years Muhammad Yunus reigned as the public face of microfinance. It seemed only right when, in 2006, the Bangladeshi economist cum social entrepreneur and his Grameen Bank shared the Nobel peace prize for a micro-lending revolution that has helped millions to earn their own way out of poverty. Yet for the past year or so, microfinance has had another public face, one that troubles people like Mr Yunus. CompartamosBanco argues that the best way for microfinance to help the poor is for it to make a socking great profit.
Since Compartamos listed its shares for over $1 billion in April 2007, it has stirred up an increasingly fierce debate. To Mr Yunus and its other critics, the Mexican bank is no better than an old-fashioned loan shark, earning its huge profits by charging poor borrowers a usurious interest rate of at least 79% a year. Perhaps sensing opinion turning against it, the bank has belatedly sprung to its own defence, issuing a defiant justification of its business in an 11-page "letter to our peers". And it manages to make a convincing case for its strategy of fighting poverty with profits.
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The World Bank recently revisited its "dollar a day" global poverty yardstick and came to a startling conclusion: It was wrong when it said some 250 million people in China had escaped from severe poverty between 1990 and 2004.
Instead, by its latest count, some 407 million Chinese citizens rose out of poverty during those 14 years - roughly one-third of the entire population of the most populous country on the planet!
This upward shift is being repeated around the world with amazing implications for society. The Brookings Institution recently forecast that one billion people would join the ranks of this rising middle class by 2020.
This is cause for global celebration: The world's riches are being opened to all of its citizens, who in turn are contributing new value and advances that will propel the world economy to greater heights of shared prosperity.
Why, after centuries of human endeavor, is this amazing transformation happening now?
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Further international recognition for microfinance programme
Daily Star — www.thedailystar.net
Published on June 30, 2008
MICROCREDIT is undoubtedly the number one image builder for Bangladesh. It has earned the most coveted Nobel (peace) prize for the initiator Dr Muhmmad Yunus and his Grameem Bank. It has earned many other international applauds for the operators, including the recent "Banking at the Bottom of the Pyramid" prize jointly awarded by the Financial Times of London and the International Investment Institute (IFC) to ASA. Mayor of London Boris Johnson formally announced the prize on June 3 selecting the Bangladesh institution from among 129 institutions of 54 countries.
Although a new conception in world economy and development programme, micro credit is gradually gaining a greater importance there. It is considered as a better way to reduce economic discrimination for world peace and security. This new Bangladesh brand is being included in development programmes of various countries in alleviating poverty across the world.
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A sunrise industry coming up in West Delhi’s Uttam Nagar
Live Mint: Wall Street Journal — www.livemint.com
Published on June 27, 2008
New Delhi: Shyama Kumari has a new-found sense of confidence. The 20-year-old college goer taught part-time at a local school for two years and saved Rs8,000, which she has put in a bank account. Her banker? The local drug store.
Kumari isn’t the only one who banks in a shop and shops in a bank. Around 1,400 people in her neighbourhood, Uttam Nagar—a lower middle class colony in West Delhi—have, through shops that include grocers and chemists, opened accounts that now have between Rs20 and Rs 14,000.
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Gates Steps Down from Microsoft to Guide Foundation
News VOA — www.voanews.com
Published on June 27, 2008
Friday June 27, Bill Gates will step down from his full-time job at Microsoft, the company he co-founded with his childhood friend, Paul Allen. Gates said he will focus his efforts on improving the health and living conditions of the world's neediest people through the world's biggest charitable foundation, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. VOA's Mike O'Sullivan has more from Los Angeles.
Bill Gates may be the world's most successful college dropout. More than 30 years ago, he quit Harvard University to start Microsoft.
Last year, as he accepted an honorary doctorate from the prestigious school he once attended.
"I want to thank Harvard for this honor. I'll be changing my job next year, and it will be nice to finally have a college degree on my resume," he said.
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Sun looks to emerging markets with new division
Channel Web — www.channelweb.co.uk
Published on June 27, 2008
Sun has launched an new division to drive sales in emerging markets such as South and Eastern Europe, Latin America, India and Greater China.
The vendor has also embarked on a series of management changes to realign the business with its latest plan for growth.
The new Emerging Markets division will be headed up by Denis Heraud, Sun's senior vice president of Asia Pacific. Peter Ryan has been appointed as executive vice president of Sun's Global Sales and Services organisation, reporting to Jonathan Schwartz - president and chief executive.
Schwartz said: "Rapidly developing and emerging economies have been some of the most assertive in embracing Sun's approach to sustainable network computing, via open source software and open document formats, along with power sensitive datacentre infrastructure.
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Sun looks to emerging markets with new division
Channel Web — www.channelweb.co.uk
Published on June 27, 2008
Sun has launched an new division to drive sales in emerging markets such as South and Eastern Europe, Latin America, India and Greater China.
The vendor has also embarked on a series of management changes to realign the business with its latest plan for growth.
The new Emerging Markets division will be headed up by Denis Heraud, Sun's senior vice president of Asia Pacific. Peter Ryan has been appointed as executive vice president of Sun's Global Sales and Services organisation, reporting to Jonathan Schwartz - president and chief executive.
Schwartz said: "Rapidly developing and emerging economies have been some of the most assertive in embracing Sun's approach to sustainable network computing, via open source software and open document formats, along with power sensitive datacentre infrastructure.
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Dell's Quest for Growth: to Offset Domestic Slowdown Company Chases Latin America
Statesman — www.statesman.com
Published on June 27, 2008
The shortest distance between a U.S. shopper and the product he or she craves: credit, preferably of the card variety.
For many Latin American consumers hoping to get their hands on a personal computer, the barrier is the same - or more precisely, it's the lack of credit.
"Really, nobody but a couple companies will finance consumers," said Peter Weigandt, head of Dell Inc.'s business in Latin America.
Dell and other computer makers are developing novel ways to tap into the rapid growth in Latin America and other emerging markets. In Mexico, Dell and Telmex launched a program five years ago that allows consumers to buy a PC, then pay for it in installments on their monthly phone bills. Because Telmex controls nearly all the phone lines in Mexico, Weigandt says, the program has had a very low default rate.
It's already launched in Kenya, Afghanistan and Tanzania. And now a mobile money-transfer service from Vodafone is to reach 40 million customers in India. Meanwhile, Microsoft Innovation Centres in Rwanda, Nigeria, Uganda and Morocco are set to provide aspiring business people with the technology to launch new products. And in India, personalised commercial information is being texted to the mobile phones of thousands of farmers in their own language.
These three groundbreaking initiatives were among those revealed at the Business Call To Action conference in May, when CEOs from some of the world's biggest companies unveiled plans designed to both fight poverty and boost business. Hosted by DFID and UNDP, the event also featured President Paul Kagame of Rwanda and President John Kufuor of Ghana. It is the start of a co-ordinated initiative designed to engage the business community with the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) by enabling poor people to access up-to-the-minute information, money and business expertise, as well as creating new commercial and employment opportunities. Big name companies who have already signed up to the Call for Action include Citi Group, Coca-Cola, Diageo, Microsoft, Thomson Reuters and Sumitomo Chemical. Within five years it is estimated that initiatives from these and other companies will save almost half a million lives, create thousands of jobs, and benefit millions of poor people across Africa and Asia.
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