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Seva and Grameen Partner on Eye Hospitals for Bangladesh
Seva and Grameen Bank are launching an unprecedented initiative to build a network of eye hospitals in Bangladesh, one of the world’s poorest countries where more than 650,000 people suffer from preventable blindness. In 2006, Seva staff and our partners from Aravind Eye Care Systems in India met with Yunus at Grameen headquarters in Bangladesh to further develop plans for what will be the largest single undertaking of its kind. "Basically, we’ll be taking our proven model ...
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- South Asia
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Nano Marks the Beginning of “Indian Century”
Even Tata Motors’ competitors are all praise for the nano. "It reflects India’s maturity in different fields," says P Balendran, vice-president, General Motors India. "Other countries and multinational corporations, who did not look at India seriously as an innovation destination, will view us in a different perspective." Advocates of the ’fortune at the bottom of the pyramid’ theory see it as a vindication of their views. "If you have a very large population which ...
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- South Asia
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Unleasing the Spirit of Enterprise
A fundamental characteristic of entrepreneurship is its capacity to generate employment, offer the promise of more income, and increase wealth. By doing so, it plays a pivotal part in providing individuals a platform from where they can aspire to a life in which their potential is realised. Over time, much of the developed world has risen to the challenge of crafting just such a platform, and the business corporation as we know it today is a critical component of this idea of advancemen...
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- South Asia
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Aravind Eye Care System among the World’s 50 Most Innovative Companies
In a 33-year quest to end blindness in India, Aravind has developed everything from cheaper intraocular lenses to a 20-minute cataract surgery that allows high volume at lower cost. ...
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- South Asia
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A Bright Idea that Helped India’s Poor
Harish Hande’s first installation of solar-powered lights in a rural Indian home was a stealth operation. The founder of Selco India, then a 26-year-old engineer, believed passionately that millions of Indians living in darkness at night could have their lives transformed by solar technology. But he needed a customer who could afford to pay the high up-front costs of solar lights and testify to their merits. In September 1994 Mr Hande asked a wealthy betel nut farmer in the southern...
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- South Asia
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Fighting Poverty – One Yoghurt at a Time
The west’s beleaguered banking system could learn a thing or two from an illiterate Bangladeshi villager called Sobi Rani. She is a Grameen Lady, one of the thousands of grassroots activists who are the bedrock of the Grameen phenomenon, which, with nearly 30 businesses, is probably the largest financially viable social enterprise in the world. The cornerstone is the Grameen Bank, founded 33 years ago by Muhammad Yunus, superstar social entrepreneur and 2006 Nobel Peace Prize winner. The ...
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- South Asia
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Rural India Snaps Up Mobile Phones
By Eric Bellman In the village of Karanehalli, a cluster of simple homes around an intersection of two dirt roads about 40 miles from India’s high-tech capital of Bangalore, Farmer K.T. Srinivasa doesn’t have a toilet for his home or a tractor for his field. But when a red and white cellular tower sprouted in his village, he splurged on a cellphone. While the way his family threshes rice -- crushing it with a massive stone roller -- hasn’t chang...
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- South Asia
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India to Follow $2,000 Car with $20 Laptop
The project, backed by New Delhi, would considerably undercut the so-called $100 laptop, otherwise known as the Children’s Machine or XO, that was designed by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology of the US. The Children’s Machine, which received a cool reception in India, is the centrepiece of the One Laptop Per Child charity initiative launched by Nicholas Negroponte, the computer scientist and former director of MIT’s Media Lab. Intel launched a simila...
- Region
- South Asia
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