Our presentation to CIBER went really really well. The principals were really excited about it, which made me even more excited about the project. We are going to India for basically all of December. (It's gonna be expensive!) But we are looking at the business side of giving every child in the world $100 in a bank account. the idea is that with this bank account people will be able to save money earn a return, get credit, gain financially literate, etc. So the key obstacle is the operating costs of servicing these bank accounts. The idea is to move everything to a branchless bank or an online bank account. People will be able to access these accounts through a phone or internet cafe. This opens up access to a huge set of the population that before would have been impossible to give them accounts.
Last month I heard Muhammed Yunus speak. Do a little search on him, he is pretty great. He is the guru on microfinance. So he gave us his encouragement for this project, but in the three minutes we got to speak to him, I don't think we got to give him our full explanation.
Someone else that I heard speak last year is the cofounder of Kiva. She is more along the microfinance lines along with Yunus but it all s in the same space. Here she is speaking on Ted.com
1 comment:
Just discovered your blog Brent and had to comment--this project you're working on sounds so great. What a positive way to apply your business & economics smarts. I have heard some amazing things about the work people are doing in micro-finance around the world, kiva, etc. Awesome you're going to India too--way to be!
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