Artoo is an interesting social enterprise start-up that has caught our attention recently. Here is a excerpt from Artoo’s website: Artoo’s holistic software solution designed for field staff takes the entire process of data collection and workflows online. It will do away with the back and forth of paper, avoid innumerable delays, and drastically reduce [...]

It appears that the microfinance sector in India has received a mixed bag of news recently. First, the good news is that investment in the sector continues to appear robust. According to Microcapital.org, the The Michael and Susan Dell Foundation has taken an undisclosed equity stake in “BASIX Sub-K iTransactions Limited, the mobile payments unit of [...]

The 8th Microfinance India Summit 2011 will be held from December 12-13, 2011 at Hotel Ashok, New Delhi. The annual Global Event organized by ACCESS captures current debates, issues and challenges that a growing microfinance sector in India faces as it strives to reach the poor with access to financial services. Over the years, the [...]

Location: Kheda District (North of Kheda), Charotar, North of Surat, Valsad Status: Part-Time, Regular Expected Start Date: March/April 2010 Background:  Bhanu Narendra Joshi (BNJ) is establishing a innovative, novel approach to social business in order to carry out both microfinancing activities and health care medical record data-keeping in a coordinated manner.  We are seeking an [...]

Grameen Foundation announced, at the Microfinance Leadership Summit on Technology, the launch of Mifos® Cloud in India. Mifos Cloud is a hosted management information service delivered for a subscription fee to emerging poverty-focused microfinance institutions (MFIs) seeking to maximize sustainable growth. The cloud-based service supports more transparent business and social performance reporting and more secure [...]

This is the second part of a two-part interview of Dr. Tara Thiagarajan Madura Micro Finance, a company providing microfinance as well as knowledge and market opportunities through its microeducation and micromarkets products to 400,000 women in rural Tamil Nadu. The first part of this interview can be read here In one of your articles [...]

The ThinkChange India staff is committed to providing our readers with interviews with people we believe are at the brink of something special but have for the most part been overlooked by the mainstream media. Readers will be able to see other conversations under our TC-I Changemakers tag. In this edition of TCI-changemaker Badhri Jagannathan [...]

User Post The Srijan Financial Inclusion Forum 2010, scheduled for October 7-8, 2010 at the Hotel Taj Land End in Mumbai is an annual Intellecap initiative. This by-invitation two-day action agenda forum will focus on the roadmap for Indian Microfinance over the next decade as well as assess innovative technology interventions to catalyze greater financial [...]

The Economic Times is running a interesting seven part series on unconventional businesses. In their concluding edition, they feature the Chennai base start-up Vortex Engineering, which is building a low-cost ATM for rural India. The start-up was incubated at the Tenet Group at the Indian Institute of Technology, Chennai (IITM). Other Tenet incubated social enterprises [...]

Intellecap has released the 3rd edition of “Inverting the Pyramid” — its annual review of the microfinance industry. The focus of the report has changed each year to reflect the current questions being faced by practitioners, thought leaders and clients within the space. Last year‘s report aimed to address issues like scale and replication; this [...]