NextBillion.net - Development Through Enterprise - Telecommunications and IT

Drishtee: Rural Health Franchising

Rob Katz — Wed, 27 Aug 2008 10:01:18 -0400

One in eight people on the planet lives in an Indian village. That's 775 million people, about half of whom live on less than $1 per day.

To Drishtee and its founder, Satyan Mishra, these numbers aren't daunting; rather, they represent an incredible opportunity. Drishtee is franchisor that helps Indian entrepreneurs set up internet-enabled kiosks to provide basic services in their villages. (Full disclosure: Drishtee is an Acumen Fund investee; I work for Acumen Fund.)

Since 2000, Drishtee's network has grown to encompass nearly 1,900 villages, bringing goods and services to about 2 million customers.

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Sachs: Web, Mobiles Drive Economic Development

Rob Katz — Thu, 21 Aug 2008 10:15:27 -0400

The digital divide is beginning to close. The flow of digital information – through mobile phones, text messaging, and the Internet – is now reaching the world’s masses, even in the poorest countries, bringing with it a revolution in economics, politics, and society.

Extreme poverty is almost synonymous with extreme isolation, especially rural isolation. But mobile phones and wireless Internet end isolation, and will therefore prove to be the most transformative technology of economic development of our time.

Sustainability for ICT Offerings

David Lehr — Thu, 21 Aug 2008 09:41:31 -0400

A recent report, "Wireless Technology for Social Change: Trends in NGO Mobile Use," by the United Nations Foundation and The Vodafone Group Foundation highlights emerging trends by NGOs in the use of mobile technology to affect social change in global public health, humanitarian assistance and environmental conservation. While this report offers some great insights on how to use technology and telecom tools to address some of the world's toughest problems, it leaves out one of the most important challenges that NGOs, and most ICT for Development projects face; how toensure sustainability.

To shed some light on this tension, I spoke with Ken Banks, the founder of FrontlineSMS (a tool for mass text messaging) about sustainability and the choices he is currently grappling with. FrontlineSMS was initially funded by Ken's hard work, and more recently by the MacArthur Foundation, to fulfill his belief that "all non-profits, whatever their size and wherever they operate, should be given the opportunity to implement the latest mobile technologies in their work." Today, FrontlineSMS is free for non-profits and is being used by over 40 NGOs in programs around the world.

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Intel Chairman Urges Big Tech to Tackle Social Problems

Rob Katz — Wed, 20 Aug 2008 14:43:25 -0400

Intel once again has both dominance and momentum in the chip world, so when it opened its biggest conference of the year on Tuesday the company didn’t need to resort to chest thumping. Instead, it aimed to inspire.

Chairman Craig Barrett delivered the keynote address at the Intel (INTC) Developer Forum in San Francisco, an event that the company uses to rally the technology community behind its products and vision. But rather than take an us-versus-them view of the world, Barrett used the stage to urge technologists to use their skills to improve healthcare, education, global economic development and the environment. He also announced the Intel Challenge, in which Intel will give four $100,000 prizes to entrepreneurs with the boldest ideas in those areas.

eHealth: Transforming Global Healthcare Delivery

Al Hammond — Fri, 08 Aug 2008 08:40:48 -0400

I've been spending the week at one of a series of 8 conferences on eHealth, brainstorming with other entrepreneurs, venture capitalists, health informatics specialists, and policy experts. The setting could hardly be more lovely--the Rockefeller Foundation's Bellagio center looking down on the deep waters of Lake Como and looking up at the sheer granite cliffs of the Alps.

The scale of the scenery seemed to match the scale of our task, to figure out how to unlock the eHealth marketplace—that is, unleash entrepreneurship and market forces combined with technology—to provide better health care, or for many rural communities in developing countries, any health care at all.

The barriers are well understood. Very limited access to health care facilities in rural and many peri-urban areas. An absolute dearth of doctors, nurses, and pharmacists in rural areas. Low quality care—few diagnostics, widespread fake drugs. High costs for drugs, doctors, and hospital care that can bankrupt poor families. Can technology help—especially information and communications technology? And how to jump start its use in poor countries when even rich countries have not yet adopted systematic eHealth strategies?

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Market Movers: Mobile Banking for the Poor

Rob Katz — Tue, 05 Aug 2008 10:13:08 -0400

At a press conference this morning in Mumbai, mobile-banking company Obopay announced an alliance with Grameen Solutions -- an alliance with an extraordinarily ambitious goal. In ten years' time, the companies said, they would like to see 1 billion of the world's poor -- people living on less than $2 a day -- receiving banking services via their mobile phones. It probably won't happen, but it would be amazing if it did.

One Laptop per Child Lands in India

Francisco Noguera — Mon, 04 Aug 2008 23:34:58 -0400

The Indian government wasn't interested, so OLPC partners with Reliance ADA Group to bring computers to India's primary school kids.

By Nandini Lakshman

Nicholas Negroponte has found it tough going in India. For years as the head of MIT's Media Lab, the famed computer scientist promoted radical ways to use technology to transform society. His best-known idea is the One Laptop per Child (OLPC) program (BusinessWeek, 6/5/08), a plan to make a simple, $100 laptop that would create a digitally literate generation in the hardscrabble classrooms of emerging-market nations. The laptop, now dubbed the XO, is finally being mass-produced in China.

In 2001, the computer scientist came to India to promote the Media Lab, but failed to impress New Delhi. Negroponte clearly fell off the India map, when then-Information Technology Minister Arun Shourie dismissed his efforts as "pedagogically suspect" and wanted more accountability. When Negroponte's nonprofit One Laptop per Child foundation approached the Indian government in 2006, his project was again rebuffed by India's then-Education Secretary, Sudeep Banerjee (BusinessWeek.com, 8/16/06).

Innovations target South Africa’s Unbanked

Joseph Bornstein — Wed, 23 Jul 2008 10:43:03 -0400

In the higgledy-piggledy streets of Bethelsdorp, a sprawling South African township once designated for people of mixed race, what at first glance appears to be a colourful new youth movement is gathering strength. Adherents sport blue T-shirts and baseball caps and lug brimming satchels. They roam the streets, knocking on the doors of the township's shacks and simple bungalow homes.

In the anarchic days of the apartheid era such youths might have been "comrades" rallying local morale against the police. More recently they might have been members of a nattily dressed new gang. But they are not. They are salespeople for a mobile-telephone-based community-banking scheme.

"We are telling people how easy it is to have a bank account," says Antonio Loots, the community banker for Standard Bank, South Africa's largest bank, who cruises around the township in his ancient BMW overseeing the salespeople. "Places like Bethelsdorp are very remote from traditional banking structures. For an initiative like this to work it must have local input."

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MIT Launches Next Billion Network for Innovative Mobile Technologies

Manuel Bueno — Fri, 18 Jul 2008 16:08:53 -0400

Our regular NextBillion readers will already know that the MIT is one of the most important universities in the base of the pyramid arena. Some of their most important initiatives are the Legatum Center for Development and Entrepreneurship, stimulating bottom-up entrepreneurship fueled by innovations, and the Lemelson-MIT Awards, recognizing the impact that inventors can have on economic and social well-being.

In these and other cases, MIT's strategy has been to apply its engineering prowess to try to solve BoP problems in the shape of technologically-adapted inventions.

Now, MIT has launched a Next Billion Network to deploy innovative mobile technologies that can help people reduce friction in their local markets from the bottom up. This approach is based upon the belief (which I share) that mobile phones, by enabling increased connectivity, can offer new opportunities for low-cost, sustainable solutions in the BoP.

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Affordable SME Consulting Business Defies Convention

Joseph Bornstein — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 08:50:18 -0400

If one believes in the story of a relentless, meteoric rise, Bangalore-based Affordable Business Solutions or ABS as it is well-known, is just the right case in point. The quintessential trail blazer, true to its name, has achieved steady success in just a matter of four years since its inception, and strictly on its own terms. Co-founders, Srikant Rao and Ravindra Kini, recount their story, which abounds in interesting facets of the company's continued tryst with the SME.

Breaking the Mould: The SME Way
Setting up a joint business in 2004 was a conscious decision for the two friends, who decided to pool in their expertise in the industry and leverage it for their own venture. Recalls Rao in jest, "We plunged head-long into ABS to resolve a mid-life crisis. I am a sales and marketing person, while Kini has a finance and HR background; so our combined experience was quite vast and diverse."

After ruling out obvious business options like ITES and IT solutions for large enterprises, Rao and Kini started ABS. In a marked departure from the convention prevalent then, ABS was going to center itself on overall functional solutions for the SME market.

The duo had to counter ‘well-meaning' advice from various quarters that intended to deter them from the SME market, since technology would never be well-received there. The other obvious hurdle was the fact that the mid-size manufacturing industry in India was virtually over. The next evident question was, "Who actually would be ABS's clientele?" Recalls Rao, "We did not know any better, so we decided we would walk-in and meet prospective customers directly and have impromptu sessions with them to understand their needs, and then work out where we could add value."

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