TC-I Week in Review

Here are the top 3 posts over the last seven days.

Santhosh’s discussion of cricket teams hiring the Washington Redskins cheerleaders find and train homegrown versions garnered substantial attention.
In second place, another post from Santhosh. This time he highlights the creation of the country’s first social investment management company.
In third place, an older op-ed written by [...]

Remote Blogging: Skoll World Forum 2008 — Points of Interest from Opening Plenary

Phil Hope, the Minister of the Third Sector in the UK spoke about the creating of a social stock exchange and its ability to promote transparency in the global social entrepreneurship field.
Karen Tse, of International Bridges to Justice spoke about the cross cultural challenges associated with being a social entrepreneur across borders, but also stressed [...]

Op-Ed: Microfinance revisited and its role in reaching the missing middle

Two weeks ago I wrote about James Surowiecki’s article in the New Yorker that brought forward the inherent limitations of microfinance to actually generate a substantial number of jobs in a developing country. Since then it seems as if I was not the only one (surprise surprise) to take notice of Surowieki’s conclusions and it [...]

Acumen and Hindustan Latex to provide country with micro-hospitals

In a joint venture, Acumen Fund and Hindustan Latex will begin the development of hospitals with 25-30 bed capacities throughout India to help address the dearth of low income maternal and child healthcare services.
To be labeled LifeSpring Hospitals, the venture will build upon the success of the phase I hospitals established since 2005 that have [...]

Some more BACO-bits of investing knowledge from Acumen

Previously, ThinkChange India posted on the Acumen Fund’s investing strategy. In that post, we pointed out how a major factor in the Fund’s decision-making process is the BACO, or best alternative charitable option.
Due to a comment posted in response to this article, Brian Trelstad chose to follow up with Acumen’s readers on the BACO’s limitations [...]

Acumen’s Investing Acumen

Brian Trelstad on The Acumen Fund’s blog posted an article going through how this fund is trying to establish criteria for the valuation of social ventures. The article highlights many of the difficulties that the fund faces when trying to create an entirely new investing model yet still remain sustainable financially.
Venture investing, as our [...]