Category Archives: micro-finance

Gates Foundation gets into Microsavings

Posted on August 1, 2008 | Leave a comment

The Gates Foundation has made some major investments in the area of finance over the past few years. Now, based on their findings and experiments, they are making a big push into the area of micro-savings. Traditionally rural finance has focused on providing micro-credit services to the poor. Only recently have some of the micro-finance organizations started extending their services to include savings and insurance. In most cases the issue has been local regulations and banking controls.

In a recent article in the Wall Street Journal – Giving a Lot for Saving a Little – the author points out several issues why savings schemes for the rural poor have not taken off. Among the issues identified:

Strict regulations on entities that hold deposits
Lack of remote branches that allow easy access to money
Too costly for traditional banks to provide services for the size of accounts Continue reading →

Prof. Yunus continues to speak on Social Business

Posted on July 30, 2008 | 1 comment

Prof. Yunus continued to speak about his vision of creating social businesses to help address some of the pressing issues facing us. He was hosted by the MIT-Bangladesh Students’ Association and Bhin-Golardho – a Bangla-centric group – during his visit to Boston.

He challenged the youth to start social businesses by saying. “I would like to say that while we at Grameen have done a few things, there are many causes that are waiting for you to take up”

You can read Ranjani Saigal’s write-up of his visit here on Lokvani

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Posted in micro-finance, Poverty, Social Business, Social Ecosystem, Social Entrepreneur, social Innovation, sustainable development

Tagged bangladesh, Boston, business models, grameen, micro-finance, microcredit, Poverty, Social Business, Social Ecosystem, Social Entrepreneur, Social Impact, social Innovation, womens issues, yunus

The New Philanthropy – New models for Social Impact

Posted on July 27, 2008 | Leave a comment

I had a great time attending the conference to celebrate the Golden Jubilee of my alma mater, IIT Bombay. The event was well attended with over 800 attendees and very well organized. It was fun catching up with some of my classmates after 30 plus years!

I had the pleasure of moderating a wonderful panel on “The New Philanthropy – New models for Social Impact” with four great speakers presenting a wide range of activities that their different organizations pursue in the social sector. The panelists were

Shari Berenbach, Executive Director, Calvert Foundation
Omer Imtiazuddin, Health Portfolio Manager, Acumen Fund
Lisa Nitze, Vice President, Entrepreneur 2 Entrepreneur Program, Ashoka Global
Linda Segre, Managing Director, Operations & Initiatives, Google.org

I have written a more in-depth article for Lokvani, but some of the key points were: Continue reading →

Boston Globe interview with Prof. Yunus

Posted on July 27, 2008 | 1 comment

Follow up to my post on Prof. Muhammad Yunus, Social Business and the Future of Capitalism. The Boston Globe published an interesting interview with Prof. Yunus while he was in Boston to speak at the MIT commencement. I have excerpted one of the questions below. You can find the rest of the interview in their article online at A really unconventional lender

You have a different view of how capitalism should work. How do you think capitalism should be reformed?

Capitalism is very narrowly defined in the way we practice it. You ignore everything else but money making. And by ignoring the other parts of human beings – concern for other people, concern about the planet, willingness to make a difference in the world – we’ve created a distortion. So I’m suggesting there’s not one type of business model, but two types. One takes care of making money, which can lead to happiness. The other happiness comes from the other type of business, which is to do good to other people. You cover your costs – it’s not charity. Charity money has only one life – once you use it, it goes. Use the money in a social business, then it has an endless life. It’s recycled. It never disappears.

Read the rest of the interview here.

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Posted in micro-finance, Poverty, Social Business, Social Ecosystem, Social Entrepreneur, social Innovation, sustainable development

Tagged capitalism, grameen, microcredit, MIT, Nobel Prize, Poverty, Social Business, Social Ecosystem, Social Entrepreneur, social Innovation, sustainability, sustainable development, womens issues, yunus

Prof. Muhammad Yunus, Social Business and the Future of Capitalism

Posted on July 11, 2008 | 2 comments

Earlier this year, Nobel laureate Prof. Muhammad Yunus was the invited guest speaker at MIT’s 142^nd commencement. In his prepared remarks to the students he outlined how he started microcredit thirty plus years ago from a simple desire to free villagers near his university in Chittagong from the penalizing interest that they paid to moneylenders.

Today his organization, Grameen Bank, has grown to cover 7.5 million borrowers in Bangladesh, 97 percent of them women. From this beginning he has expanded to provide services and products in a number of areas ranging from health insurance, to affordable cell phone service with Grameen Phone to renewable energy solutions through Grameen Shakti.

Drawing from his successes with these businesses, Prof. Yunus has refined an overarching social business philosophy that he recently published in his latest book “Creating a World Without Poverty – Social Business and the Future of Capitalism“. Continue reading →

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Posted in micro-finance, non-profit, Social Business, Social Ecosystem, Social Entrepreneur, social Innovation, sustainable development

Tagged capitalism, grameen, microfinance, MIT, Social Business, Social Ecosystem, Social Entrepreneur, social Innovation, sustainability, sustainable development, yunus