The Indira Gandhi National Open University(IGNOU) has launched a portal called Flexi-Learn in an effort to offer education over internet free of cost.

The launched portal is not yet complete, with only a handful of courses in  Library and Information Science, agriculture…

Over the course of this academic year, I intend to work alongside D-Tree and Dimagi on developing a sustainable deployment and scale-up model for CommCare, a mobile-based scheduling, monitoring, and referral application for community health workers (CHWs).  Through its “Safe Pregnancy” module,…

Question: Which manufactured consumer product has the deepest market penetration in rural India?

Answer: Matches

In fact, 97% of rural households purchase matches on a monthly basis. Matches are a unique product because of their high, constant demand and low price point.…

A few kilometers past Charminar, the heart of the old city of Hyderabad, Andhra Pradesh, an auto rickshaw stops in front of a quiet, non-descript gate. Across the road is the Falaknuma Palace, in the process of getting a major…

Editor’s Note: The following post is a collaboration between Adrienne Villani, a member of the Beyond Profit Editorial Team, and Semil Shah, a Principal at India Strategy Consulting, a boutique services firm that advises small and medium enterprises and global…

We’ve been ruminating lately on something that may ruffle a few feathers. It’s about the definition of social entrepreneur. Traditionally, an entrepreneur (the “mainstream” species) is a person who runs an enterprise or a venture. She is an ambitious leader, likely…

It is a dusty, sun-baked road that takes us to Singampet village in Mahbubnagar district, over a hundred kilometers away from Hyderabad, the capital of the southern state of Andhra Pradesh, India. The surrounding fields are bare, waiting for the…

Access For All

Sachin Malhan has been an entrepreneur his entire life, or at least he has felt like one. In 2003, knowing that corporate law was not his cup of tea, he started his first venture, and then his second, and…

Editor’s Note: Guest blogger Adrienne Villani is an Associate at Intellecap, where she is involved in the conceptualization and creation of content for Beyond Profit, Intellecap’s publication on social enterprise and social entrepreneurship, both in print and online. Trained as a demographer,…

The idea popped when I was reading this NY Times article on a federally funded program in the US where wireless carriers receive a subsidy to provide people under welfare with a mobile phone and 68 minutes of talk time each month!…