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Former Lehman Banker Leads Social Ventures in China, Battles Dyslexia in Schools
China’s social entrepreneurship scene is not all that well known , but the Hong Kong-based Avantage Ventures is trying to change that by infusing the country with a hefty dose of capital and mentorship. The company is led by founder Yvonne Li, a former investment banker with Lehman Brothers, who has a particular zest ...
- Region
- Asia Pacific
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Investing In China’s Future One Student At A Time
For Calvin Chin , the road to higher education requires just a few hundred dollars at the right moment. Take Winnie, for instance. She was a senior at Guangzhou University when her father had to quit his teaching job because his eyesight started to fail him. He went back to working...
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- Asia Pacific
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Diamond Cab Picks Up Hong Kong’s Fledgling Social Entrepreneurship Scene
Social entrepreneurship is a relatively new phenomenon in Hong Kong--and one venture philanthropy startup, Social Ventures Hong Kong (SVhk) , has been at the forefront of the movement, with several investees under its portfolio focused on the elderly and disabled. The group’s newest project, Diamond Cab , officially launches next week. "Diamond Cab is the first branded, high-quality taxi servic...
- Categories
- Agriculture
- Region
- Asia Pacific
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China’s Top Social Innovators to Watch in 2011
By Calvin Chin I firmly believe that China will be a leader in social innovation. But while there is a tremendous amount of dynamism and energy in this newly emerging sector, ...
- Region
- Asia Pacific
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Can P&G make money in places where people earn $2 a day?
Despite the growing belief that the billions of poor -- what the late management thinker C.K. Prahalad termed the "bottom of the pyramid" -- can actually make up a viable economic market, most attempts to harness it have failed. Procter & Gamble ( PG ), a $79 billion (in sales) company better known for its middle- and upper-middle-class brands than for its low-end offerings, thinks there’s another way to re...
- Region
- Asia Pacific
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Harvard Business Review on Reaching India?s ?Vast Middle?
The meltdown of the microfinance industry in Andhra Pradesh, as we have noted carries big risks not just for an industry designed to serve the poor but for the entire concept that the poor can be profitable customers. That has been an emerging trend in management thinking about emerging markets in the last few years, in part because of the success of microfinance. But since these matte...
- Region
- Asia Pacific
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Facebook for Farmers: Technology Empowers China’s Rural Workers
China Mobile’s Nongxintong - or farming information service - launched four years ago. The company is currently focusing on expanding its delivery in China’s west and south-west regions. "Building the mobile network and covering most of the country’s administrative villages, we realised that there was only a network signal. In rural areas, this is not enough," explains Liu Jing, a local manager for the service at China Mobile. "It’s like havi...
- Region
- Asia Pacific
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Unilever Eyes Top and Bottom-end Segments in Developing Markets
SINGAPORE : Consumer goods giant Unilever wants to straddle both the top and the bottom of the economic pyramid in developing markets. This is part of its strategy to tap Asia’s growth potential, and compensate for the slack in its European and North America units. And to support this growth, Unilever has been making invest...
- Region
- Asia Pacific
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