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Schneider Electric Launches Solar LED Lighting Product In-Diya
Schneider Electric, the global specialist in energy management, Thursday launched In-Diya, an energy-efficient LED based Lighting System, to provide lighting to people living with no or unreliable electricity in India. In-Diya is a specially designed LED based lighting system that can operate on main supply and/or solar, and provides backup ranging from 8 - 15 hours for indoor applications, said the company. Jean-Pascal Tricoire, President & CEO, Schneider Electric, said, "In-...
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- South Asia
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Gen Y Entrepreneurs Bet Big on Clean-Tech Innovations
BANGALORE: It is not everyday that a young consultant at McKinsey & Co, one of the world’s largest management consultancy firms, trades in a job at the firm’s Seattle office for the rough and tumble of business in rural India. But that is just what John Howard did when he launched Duron Energy, a renewable energy company that has just started sales of solar-powered plug and play devices for lighting and battery ...
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- South Asia
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Small-Town Entrepreneurs Struggle for VC Funding
Bangalore: Gunjan Kumar’s business proposition is simple. The 28-year-old buys traditional art and craft products from artisans in villages and sells these in metro cities. Kumar started Amethia Apparelz and Co. in Patna 18 months ago with Rs6 lakh. In its first year, the firm earned Rs33 lakh in revenue and expects to end fiscal year 2010 with Rs1.65 crore. In another part of the country, Nafisa Radiatorwala’s start-up, Nature’s Glow, is clo...
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- South Asia
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Growing Interest: Why Banks Are Reaching Out to Rural India
In the western Indian state of Maharashtra, in the Mann Desh region, lives 39-year-old Lakshmi Shellar. She spends a typical day in the field tending to her crops; she also rears buffaloes and sells their milk in the village door to door. A widow since the age of 17, Shellar got in touch with Mann Deshi Mahila Bank, a cooperative bank in rural Maharashtra, a few years ago, where she learned the basics about banking products. Now she runs a financial literacy school by night, attended by 20 wo...
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- South Asia
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India’s Rural Inventors Drive Change
MUMBAI - Mansukh Prajapati invented a first-of-a-kind refrigerator that is made out of terracotta, works without electricity, costs US$53 and is selling in the thousands. It’s a sample of an innovation wave from rural and small-town India enriching the world with common-sense products. Anil Gupta, a professor at India’s premier business school, the Indian Ins...
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- South Asia
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Chennai Builder to Promote Affordable Apartments
CHENNAI: Owning a dream home for many a poor Chennaiite could soon become a reality with a leading builder, Khivraj Estates, all set to promote a low-cost residential project at Thiruvottriyur, 10 km from the city centre, at Rs 4 lakh per 269-sq ft studio apartment. The project will come up in an area where a 650-sq ft apartment costs at least Rs 15 lakh at present. Khivraj MD Ajit Chordia sa...
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- South Asia
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Mobile: Silver Bullet to Target the Non-Banked
After 62 years of Independence, the informal economy dominates 80% of India and half the below-poverty-line households still have no access to any kind of financial services. This will continue, unless radical steps are taken. A starting point is the bottom-of-the-pyramid people’s need for a basic financial service, viz. mobile money transfer (MMT). While almost all wage earners carry mobiles, not all wage earners will have a bank account. The mobile is the proverbial silver bullet....
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- South Asia
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