CCI

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Three (yes, 3!) Exciting Upcoming Conferences!

Looking for interesting conferences to attend over the course of the next two months? Well, look no further! Below are three upcoming conferences that we recommend you attend – The Harvard Business School Social Enterprise Conference (March 1, 2009), The…

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Get the world’s best brains on your R&D team

Social enterprises are often searching for sustainable breakthrough innovations, but lack the resources to invest in large-scale research and development.  One creative, and increasingly popular, solution to this problem is open innovation.  The basic concept is to utilize the collected…

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StartingBloc Institute for Social Innovation – Boston 09

TCI had mentioned the StartingBloc fellowship earlier, and this past weekend, I had the opportunity to attend the Greater Boston institute at MIT Sloan and Tufts Fletcher School.  To provide some background on StartingBloc, the organization holds three institutes in Boston, New York and London,…

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Inching towards ending polio

The Final Inch is a documentary funded by Google.org and produced by Vermilion Pictures, chronicling the final stages of the global fight to end polio. A large chunk of the movie was filmed in India, given that the country is the final frontier…

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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…

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To Profit or Not to Profit

According to Mr Chu, “to roll back poverty rather than to merely alleviate it”, any solution needs to be able to reach massive numbers, deliver permanent results that can help many generations, provide continuous effort so it gets better and…

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A (micro)creditable partnership

India Post has inked an agreement with National Bank of Agriculture and Rural Development (NABARD) to facilitate micro-credit to women-run Self Help Groups (SHG) in eight states and north eastern states.

In this strategic partnership, India Post will lend the unparalleled reach it has…

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An F in Financial Inclusion

In a first of its kind survey, the Indian Council for Research on International Economic Relations (ICRIER) has released a study analyzing the level of financial inclusion currently in India relative to other nations. The results are unimpressive. The paper

ranks India…

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Stern words for climate change and development

Made famous by the epynomous report on climate change, Sir Nicholas Stern spoke recently on the need to reframe the climate change debate through the lens of development. He said that the two were tied at the hip. Here is the…

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Op-Ed: The Potential Marriage of Private Equity and Microfinance – Dysfunctional or Blissful?

The composition of the microfinance sector is becoming increasingly hybridized, as microfinance institutions (MFIs) morph into profit-making entities, and global financial institutions such as Citigroup, Inc. or HSBC Holdings become (unintended) vectors of poverty alleviation (refer to “Global Financial Institutions…