[TC-I Call to Action]: Total Immersion Programme in Finance and Development Summer Internships

The Centre for Development Finance (CDF) announces some very exciting internship opportunities for this summer.  If you’re looking for something more long term, word has it that CDF will likely be releasing postings for BoP related full time positions in the coming weeks… check back for more information!

Total Immersion Programme in Finance and Development (TIP/FD) – Summer 2009

CDF invites internship applications for the Summer 2009 IFMR “Total Immersion Program in Finance and Development (TIP/FD).”

Description of the program follows and application requirements follow below and in this CDF TIP document, and to apply please use the following link.

The TIP F/D provides undergraduate and graduate students interested in microfinance, development finance, and economic development an opportunity to gain hands-on experience in working on issues relating to access to financial services for urban and rural poor in a developing country. Interns will participate in a structured, two-week course directed by leading researchers, IFMR Centre Research Associates, and practitioners from the Indian government, microfinance institutions (MFIs), and NGOs. The course will be followed by eight weeks of work on a CDF projects which will consist of either field-based research, policy/sector wide studies or data analysis.  Past interns have completed stand-alone projects or worked to initiate, implement, and scale-up existing projects or pilots at the Centre.

The list of summer internship projects can be found online here and in this CDF Project Descriptions document. Interns may also be placed on another of CDF’s ongoing projects.

Internships are unpaid, although CDF will assist with housing and food or provide a small stipend of up to Rs 10,000/month toward living expenses. All interns are encouraged to obtain funding to cover international travel and personal expenses during the internship period.

This year, the TIP/FD will take place between June 8 and August 14, 2009. Applications will be accepted until April 15, 2009, although we encourage interested applicants to apply as soon as possible to ensure the best matching of interests and skills.

Positions of Particular Interest to the TCI Readership:

Nokia poised to help farmers to expand its rural base

Nokia is about to launch a set of “Life Tools” to be embedded in its mobile phones in an effort to expand its base into rural India. These Life Tools cater to the needs of the rural community with information on three different sectors namely Agriculture, Education, Entertainment. On agriculture, the Life Tool is likely to offer updated information on weather and market prices for the farmers produce on the mobile phone in the farmers native language.

As the old proverb goes, a picture is worth a thousand words. Nokia’s datasheet on Life Tools provides an easy-to-understand picture. Evidently, this tool is developed not just to penetrate into rural India, but rather to the “rural world”.

If my everyday observation is any testimony, Nokia seems to have a wide user base at the lower economic sections of India, and this tool can be an excellent vehicle for informational empowerment of the rural Indian community. However, given that the rural buy is likely not going to buy these phones off a Nokia Priority Showroom, how Nokia is going to market this tool so that the buyer buys a low cost Nokia phone for its Life Tools rather than its ruggedness, ease of use or longer life would be an interesting point to observe. This may also be the crucial factor that may determine the tool’s success.

Quiz: India’s most Innovative company?

Here is the quiz:  Which of the following Indian organizations made it to the Fast Company’s list of 50 most Innovative companies in the world?

1. Infosys
2. Wipro
3. Dr. Reddys Labs
4. Aravind Eye Care System

The answer is 4. Aravind Eye Care System! Its remarkable. Aravind is the only Indian organization in the Fast Company 50 list and shares the honors with many other with others like Google, Cisco, Intel, Apple and the Obama Campaign (Yes, you heard me right!)

Below is the excerpt from Fast Company:

The network of not-for-profit hospitals and vision centers performs 300,000 eye surgeries each year — 70% for free — using broadband connections to on-call doctors in city hospitals for instant diagnosis. Camps in rural areas screen thousands of patients weekly. “We are going from village to village to provide eye care to the unreached,” says Aravind’s chairman, Dr. P. Namperumalsamy. Aravind won the 2008 Gates Award for Global Health.

Well, the folks in the Indian media need to take note. We have never seen Aravind in the list of India’s Most Innovative Companies in the past (where it rightfully belongs)

Click here to see our previous coverage on Aravind.

A Mighty Way to Light Up Rural India

MightyLight, a product created by Cosmos Ignite Innovations, is reaching 15,000 children, thanks to an effort by eBay.  Since children are unable to study at night without a light source, the MightyLight is a way to improve education, among other issues.  eBay employee Anna Sidana and her nonprofit One Million Lights were key drivers in this gift.  MightyLight, according to an IndiaWest article, has many benefits.  The product is:

a solar-powered LED light that is eco-friendly, robust and built specifically for rugged conditions. It can withstand falls on hard surfaces and water or dust without being damaged. The Mighty Light produces ~500 lumens of clean white light versus ~10 lumens of light from a kerosene lamp. Other benefits of the solar light extend to health and the environment with no harmful carbon emissions.

Cosmos Ignite Innovations itself is an interesting venture, as it is a partnership between Cosmos Energy in India and Ignite Innovations in the US.  With millions of people in rural India still using kerosene, the potential for scaling up the environmentally safe and affordable light is substantial.

UFV-CRRID partnership promises grassroot-level business development

Indian Express and Abbynews.com report that University of the Fraser Valley (UFV), Canada and The Centre for Research in Rural and Industrial Development (CRRID) have signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) to “empower the rural entrepreneurs of North India.”

“India needs entrepreneurs at the grass roots level, and our partnership with CRRID allows us to fuel business start-ups and the development of SMEs outside the city centres, in the areas that need it most,” said Professor DJ Sandhu, UFV President’s Advisor.

A quick look at the university’s website to find out what the nature reveals some of the ways means of intervention this partnership will possibly employ.

…for example, students enrolled in UFV’s BBA degree at SDCC will be able to work with research faculty at  CRRID to implement projects aimed at uplifting businesses involved in such industries as agriculture and agrifoods.

In a way this partnership is similar to Tata International Social Entrepreneurship Scheme (TISES), a partnership between TATA sons, UC Berkely and Cambridge University.

Back to the drawing board? — A harsh look at microfinance

To start, I want to say that my mind has been racing despite sleep deprivation and jet lag since I touched down in Mumbai at 0135 IST this morning. This is the first I have set foot in India since 2005 and thus my first visit since the inception of TC-I, which makes the experience all the more exhilarating. But on to the post …

In the past, I have criticized microfinance’s shortcomings, particularly with regard to its inability to actually stimulate significant job creation. However, I also have recognized that despite its downfalls, microfinance still serves as a useful tool in the arsenal of a poverty alleviation strategy.

Now, microfinance has come under more scrutiny, as opponents argue that this financial product actually hurts the interests of the poor and that it can lead to the romanticization of the bottom of the pyramid, creating dangerous consequences. These new arguments further support my point that microfinance is relative to other approaches not an effective tool in combating poverty.

(IFMR) Trust Me

Editor’s note: In addition to being informative, this post also outlines what IFMR Trust is looking for in potential hires. If you would like to see that immediately, go after the jump.

Before Thanksgiving break I had the pleasure of sitting down at an informal roundtable with Dave Wallack, Senior Vice President of People to learn more about IFMR Trust‘s ambitious plans to provide financial inclusion to every person in India. Chaired by Dr Nachiket Mor, who is also the President of the ICICI Foundation for Inclusive Growth, the Trust’s mission is to “ensure that every individual and every enterprise has complete access to financial services.” In order to accomplish this goal, the Trust is looking at a rather unconventional business model that where the non-profit parent oversees multiple self-sufficient for-profit silos in various financial sectors.

The three ventures that the Trust has currently launched are the IFMR Trust Holding Company (ITHC), the IFMR Trust Advisory Services (ITAS) and the IFMR Trust Guarantee Company (ITGC). Each venture has a specific and distinct goal. The ITHC aims to build a network of Kshetriya Gramin Financial Services (KGFS) that will serve as low-cost, paperless branches providing access to financial products. According to Wallack, the goal is to have one of these branches for every 10,000 people or 2,000 households. Wallack emphasized the feasibility of such scale is due to the incredibly low-cost structure of each branch. By being completely paperless, transaction costs is on the scale of 20-30 rupees as opposed to $20 dollars. Wallack self-titled the initiative as the Starbucks of microfinance, as they are able to provide loans at only 11.5%, far less than the typical 20-30% charged by traditional MFIs.

The ITAS’ charge recognizes that microfinance is merely a stopgap or defensive measure and that more aggressive financial services will be needed to enable true inclusion. In order to do this, the ITAS has structured as essential a private equity firm and with the aim of raising $150 US. Utilizing this capital, ITAS will look at 14 different supply chains that reach the rural population and figure out ways of improving and fixing them through investments in operating companies along the product cycle. These investment strategies, organized as Network Enterprises, will operate in a for-profit fashion with the belief that the quest for profits will seek out the most efficient and effective ways to address the supply chain breakdowns.

One example is the current gap that exists between urban labor demand and rural supply. After some preliminary research, ITAS discovered that the major hurdle was that rurual workers could not afford to live anywhere in the city for their first 2 weeks, because they had yet to been paid. In order to resolve this ITAS partnered with a local temporary housing and staffing company in order to provide that stopgap housing for these workers.

Finally, the ITGC will focus on providing much needed debt capital to small and medium size enterprises throughout India to truly enable them to grow. Here, the organization is partnering with many existing financial providers to roll out their offerings more aggressively.

Face-to-Face with Comat technologies

TC-I Fundwatch has recently reported a Rs. 60-crore investment by Omidyar Network and Unitus Equity Fund (UEF) on Comat technologies, a profitable social enterprise doing business with the rural poor.

The CEO of Comat technologies Sriram Raghavan recently talked to NASSCOM Emerge Blog and offered some good insights into Comat’s success in becoming a profitable social business.

Sriram’s answer to one question explains the business model of Comat technologies succinctly.

Q. Your own business is built around the Rural Business Centres. What exactly are these?

SR: It is a very simple concept. The rural business centre is primarily an access point for rural citizens, where we use technology to deliver different kinds of services – only those that help improve the quality of life in villages. We don’t want to sell soaps and consumer goods.

I’ll give you two examples. Take government certificates such as birth, death, land and property related papers. If you have to get one from the taluk or the district office, you have to go to that particular office, wait in a long line and follow cumbersome processes. We deliver it to the village directly – it takes about five minutes for the same cost, i.e., Rs. 15 per certificate. This makes a very big difference to the rural consumer.

The other area we are in is education. There are teachers in rural areas, but the quality of education is very poor. Our centres bring live classes from best teachers in cities who broadcast their lessons online, much like the erstwhile UGC programmes. Except that here, we have two- way interaction and the students and teachers can speak to each other.

Sriram Raghavan also shared a few of his experiences with rural consumers that can come handy to a new social enterprise venturing into the villages.

In a typical agrarian set up, income generation is a twice-a-year cycle – unlike in urban areas where we earn monthly salaries.  It is important to bear this in mind as you have to position your product around this insight.

With a turnover of Rs.55 crore while improving the lives of about 10 million rural inhabitants, there should be little doubt about the success of this unique business model. But the best aspect about the venture is that it has identified one critical handicap of the Indian villages and working successfully towards eliminating it. Better said by the man himself.

All these years, rural India has been isolated; they have been “informationally disabled”. It is now time for a change and we want to ensure that.

Update: Envirofit is taking it up a notch

Not long ago, we had written about Envirofit, a company that manufactures and sells clean burining high-efficiency cookstoves to consumers in India.

Nextbillion reports that they have already sold 10,000 stoves and are ramping up production quickly. Of course, its a drop in the ocean, but definitely a great start. Congrats!

TC-I Call to Action: Net Impact Fellows Program

The Net Impact Fellows Program is a 12-month part-time fellowship for two individuals dedicated to using the power of business and a network of like-minded individuals to change the world. Fellows will help Net Impact scale its impact internationally with a specific focus on India, China, Brazil and Western Europe. [Thanks, Nitin]

Soundbites from Nancy Barry, former President and CEO of Women’s World Banking

Last night I had the good fortune of sitting in on a talk given by Nancy Barry, a pioneer in the field of creating private, market-based solutions to poverty alleviation for women across the globe. Her talk was very powerful and on many points, spot on accurate in my opinion.

A veteran of the World Bank, she was the second president of of Women’s World Banking from 1990 to 2006. In the fall of 2006, Nancy started launched Nancy Barry Associates–Enterprise Solutions to Poverty, which works with major corporations, emerging entrepreneurs, and leading business schools to build business models that engage low income producers as suppliers, distributors and consumers of products that build income and assets. Simply put, her views come from a career of practice knowledge and her points should be taken with great seriousness.

Below are some highlights from her speech, which was titled “Microfinance and Beyond: Enterprise Solutions to Poverty,” and some of my own disagreements.

TC-I Fundwatch: Omidyar Network and Unitus invest Rs. 60 Crore in Comat Technologies

The market for double bottom-line investments in India is becoming hotter and hotter. Interestingly, its not just the microfinance institutions who are attracting the capital. We reported earlier in TC-I about MokshaYug Access, securing $2 million in funding from Unitus and the ISB based SME fund set-up by Google.org in partnership with Omidyar Network and Soros Economic Development Fund. 

This time it is Comat Techonologies, a Bangalore based social enterprise dedicated to providing easy access to essential information and transformational services to Rural India. Comat just secured Rs. 60 crore in funding from Omidyar Network and Unitus Equity Fund (UEF): 

Creating a road to the City – and better living?

[Story Source: Livemint] [More information: Ejeevika Website]

A startup incubated by Rural Technology and Business Incubator (RTBI), a society established under IIT-Madras,  plans to connect people living in rural areas with job opportunities presented by urban explosion – and make money out of it.

ejeevika HR Pvt Ltd, started by Richa Pandey Mishra, follows a simple business model:

Identify entrepreneurs through village council heads, non-profits and self-help groups(SHGs)

Offer them a franchise – a franchise requires one to invest on a couple of personal computers, a broadband connection and power backup – which entails an investment of around Rs 50000

Franchisees identify potential candidates who are trained by ejeevika as per clients’ requirements

ejeevika aims to:

Bridge the labor shortage in high growth industries by providing skills to rural youth, increasing employment opportunities in the rural space and thereby increasing individual and community income.

At present, ejeevika is imparting training on retail sailes to youth in the districts of Tirivallur and Cuddalore in Tamil Nadu. Going by its founder’s claims, ejeevika plans to train and find jobs for some 200,000 people in the next couple of years through a network of around 1,000 franchisees in the rural districts of India. An idea like ejeevika is a potent way to tap and channelise the potential of rural youth.

At the same time, there are a few questions we need to raise and find answers for. Last year was a landmark year for rural to urban migration – for the first time urban population overtook that in rural areas. What is and should be the ‘policy of the government’ and ‘our thinking as citizens’ – is such large scale urban migration desirable? Especially when most of our cities do not plan for such an inflow. Will urban migration have an affect on agricultural production? Will it lead to a reduction in our green cover?

Thumbs up, thumbs down for Microfinance

Thumbs up: Obopay and Grameen Solutions partner together to provide microfinance services to clients. The initiative will be called the “Bank A Billion Initiative.”

The premise of the project is to provide access to basic financial services through cell phones, reducing the need for costly personal contact between financial institutions and their customers. The initiative hopes to take advantage of the rapid spread of cell phones in developing areas, especially in areas without access to microfinance services.

Thumbs down: Hot off the heels of their decision to stifle mobile banking services, the RBI has now increased the capital adequacy requirements for MFIs, which have concerned many of them in the field.

The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) recently tightened capital adequacy standards governing microfinance institutions (MFIs) in India, and several local MFIs worry the change may lead to the need to raise additional capital and increase interest rates.

[TC-I Changemaker]: NComputing makes $70 PC for the Poor

The ThinkChange India staff is committed to providing our readers with interviews with people we believe are at the brink of something special but have for the most part been overlooked by the mainstream media. Readers will be able to see other conversations under our TC-I Changemakers tab.

Last week, Vinay sat down (via webcast) with Stephen Dukker, Chairman & CEO of NComputing , a company that has developed a low-cost, robust virtual pc platform that enables numerous workstations to be run on a single desktop machine. While the company originally intended to
take corporate visualization products like VMWare head on, Dukker and the rest of the management team recognized early that their inexpensive architecture would be ideal for the developing world as well. Predicted by some to be the next Google, the company has positioned itself to explode in India. Dukker took the time to speak with TC-I about the unique features of NComputing’s platform.

Editor’s update: At the writing of this interview, NComputing had just hired Raj Choudhury, formerly at BEA India, as Country Manager for India. Full story can be read here.

Vinay Ganti: Thank you Stephen for taking the time to speak with me and the TC-I community today. Let’s start out at the beginning, what exactly has NComputing set out to do?

Stephen Dukker: To break it down to its simplest point, we are offering the world a $70 PC. We have developed a means for profitably providing a computing workstation for $70 each that includes all of the necessary virtualization hardware and software – a price point we believe will finally make access to computers a reality throughout the globe.

VG: Wow, $70 for a PC seems rather incredible, especially given how much attention the One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) has gotten for reaching the $100 price point (NOTE: that was their goal, they are selling for $177 FOC China). How exactly does NComputing manage to provide a PC for only $70?

SD: NComputing effectively leverages the continuing trend of increasing processing power of the everyday desktop computer. A typical $700 desktop found in a home has effectively become as powerful as a mainframe. With 3Ghz of power and multiple gigs of ram, these computers usually utilize less than 1% of their processing capabilities. In essence, many desktops waste their capacity and as a result waste energy.