Women Together: Incentivising Savings
Mahila Milan means “women together” and provides a decentralised vehicle for the empowerment of women via leadership roles and advocacy alongside its pivotal daily savings collection.
iBoP Asia’s Frontiers: Charting the future of S&T innovation for the poor in Southeast Asia
A bicycle-powered paper shredder that can be used to make environment-friendly charcoal. A new way of processing waste cooking oil that turns it into cheap fuel for vehicles. A web-based system that allows small-scale fishers to access marine data using mobile phones. These are just some of the promising devices that will be showcased, along […]
Prepaid pricing plans and the financially savvy BoP buyer: A discussion
Rural grocery shop, South Africa January 2008 While putting together my post on demanding BoP customers today, I came across this snippet from an article titled "Getting to know the sophisticated prepaid user" from The Philippines (one of the field locations for the user research documented on this site). Its a quote attributed to the […]
Traditional moneylending – informal, flexible, trust based and changing fast
As Microfinance Grows in India, So Do Its Rivals is the title of a recent WSJ article by Ketaki Gokhale which begins so, The practice of making tiny loans to poor people, or microfinance, was supposed to help drive traditional village moneylenders from rural India. Instead, traditional moneylenders, who typically charge high interest rates, are […]
Introducing Meena Kadri
New Zealand born Meena Kadri has an undergraduate degree in Anthropology and a Masters in Design. She has taught at design schools globally, notably for two years at the National Institute of Design in India. She currently resides in New Zealand from where she explores the intersection of communication, culture and creativity via her research […]
Savings Circles
Bishi schemes are a kind of Rotating Savings and Credit Association (ROSCA): informal and voluntary local savings clubs which has a long history in India and elsewhere in the developing world.
Coping Strategies as Food Prices Soar
Surging food prices are being widely reported in India this month. I’ve been asking female informants and neighbours at Dharavi how they are managing the pressure on household expenses.
Banking on Trust
Following up on the Reserve Bank of India announcement to allow small shops and phone kiosks, etc to handle basic services on behalf of banks – I directed questions around potential receptivity amongst Dharavi residents.
Island Life
Shankar Jadhar’s friends describe him as an “all-rounder”. The 40 year old Dharavi resident is married with 5 children and lives close to the traffic island which he has laid unofficial claim to, from where he conducts his business.
Indian Banking Widens Reach
Yesterday’s Times of India pointed to a development by the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) to extend its services. It has yet to be seen how this initiative will be taken up by BoP users both rurally and in urban neighbourhoods not currently not served by banks.
