Featured businesses
Grameen Bank
Grameen Bank provides loans to the poorest of the poor in rural Bangladesh, with no requirement for collaterals and no interest. 97% of shares of Grameen Bank are owned by the borrowers themselves.
The main incentives for people to repay the loans are that groups of villagers borrow together and act as co-guarantors, and a recipient who repays her loan qualifies for another, larger one.
Brac
BRAC has set up 16 social enterprises addressing community needs and providing jobs to many. Its flagship social enterprise is the retail outlet Aarong Craft Shops in Bangladesh, reaches more than 65,000 artisans. Its dairy business, BRAC Dairy, collects milk from 54,000 marginalized farmers and has 20-30% of market share. With the profit, BRAC can offer free education programs to build skills and training for decent jobs in growth sectors.
G Adventures
G Adventures offers authentic adventure tours in a responsible and sustainable manner. All aspects of the tours are crafted to boost the local economy (meals, accommodation, handicrafts, transport, experiences) and sometimes include visit of social enterprises created by their NGO arm Planeterra. An annual contribution also goes to Planeterra.
Samasource
Samasource provides hands-on services to digital companies to enrich and label their large datasets. Being data-driven is key for a digital business to succeed today. Samasource is a non-profit, the entirety of revenues generated are reinvested to scale the impact.
Samasource uses a proprietary technology platform, the SamaHub, that breaks down large-scale digital projects from clients into smaller tasks for workers in developing countries or refugees to contribute. This is called microwork. These workers are trained in basic computer skills for a few weeks at delivery centers with which Samasource partners, and paid a local living wage for their labor.
Waste Concern
Waste Concern collects organic waste and send it to food processing centers to turn it into compost for horticulture and agriculture. Waste Concern makes money by selling compost such as fertilizers to farmers and enterprises. The firm employs impoverished citizens to collect organic waste. This involves creation of several small-scale enterprises in different neighbourhoods, which acts as part of a de-centralized waste management model. Their operations include house-to-house waste collection, composting of the collected waste by sending them to the composting plants and marketing of the compost and recyclable materials to interested buyers and businesses.
Too Good To Go
Too Good To Go is an app which uses a geo-targeted map to show users the restaurants closest to them with leftover food available for collection at special time, at great price. Too Good To Go sells food that they buy from the stores at a great price. Stores make extra cash on food that would have otherwise cost them to throw out. Customers win by getting a great value meal – collecting tasty food at a reduced price.
There is the option for the user to donate £1 alongside his purchase, which will go towards providing a meal to someone who needs it.
Alison
Alison currently offers over 1000+ online courses across certificate and diploma level. Alison is a MOOC (Massive open online courses). It invites publishers to share courses on the platform. It makes money through advertising (on their website), merchandise (T-shirt) and the sale of Certificates and Diplomas, should a graduate choose to buy one. Cost is highly reduced compared to usual schools (cost of building, staff…). Through the online pay per click advertising revenue model, Alison has founded a business model whereby ‘learners in the developed countries are essentially paying for those in developing countries’ while providing the learning materials for free.
The Global Citizen
Organization of academic co-curricular programs such as camps and debate to provide students to teach students about important global issues (environmental preservation, social justice, law, polics, public health) and skills like public speaking, persuasive oratory, diplomacy techniques, independent learning methods, research, writing and many more. The Global Citizen also offers public speaking workshops, coding classes, as well as interview and university admission preparation courses through its subsidiary company the Impressionist.
Common Service Centers (CSC)
CSC are physical facilities for delivering Government e-Services to rural and remote locations where availability of computers and Internet is negligible or mostly absent. Services provided are essential public utility services, social welfare schemes, healthcare, financial, education and agriculture services. For example, they can book railway tickets online or pay their electricity bill online through these facilities. Some facilities also provide banking services, and training to make rural people digitally literate.
Maya Apa
Maya Apa is a virtual platform that anyone anonymously can access any time, providing counselling and answers to queries on daily life issues including health, psychosocial and legal matters.
Once a question is asked, it is redirected to the profile of relevant experts and the answer appears within a maximum of three hours.
Jana
Jana provides free internet to people in emerging markets. Users in emerging countries can download the mCent app from their phone and start to earn data by trying out sponsored apps. For every megabyte spent within the sponsored Amazon app, for example, Jana will credit the user with an additional megabyte that they can use for anything. It’s an ad-sponsored internet.
Visit.org
Visit.org is an online platform to nonprofits and community-based travel organisations be found by travelers.
Maharishi Institute
Maharishi Institute is the world’s first self-funding university. Following a « Learn & earn » business model, this university from South Africa offers education and jobs via their call centre to allow students to pay for the tuition. Education includes self-development programmes which develop students holistically.
Google provides free access to information, traning, tools and events, for everyone. Their vision is to “Organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful”.
Duolinguo
Duolingo SOLUTION A platform (web and app) offering free language courses for all. The app uses game concepts like unlockable levels (lessons) and points and high scores to motivate you to learn a language. BUSINESS MODEL There are two parts to Duolingo's brilliant...
Lenddo
Lenddo can predict an individul’s credit risk or “willingness to pay“ based on non-traditional data derived from an applicant’s social data, psychometric data and online behavior. The solution reduces the high cost of credit assessment and verification for lenders and help millions of applicants with little to no credit history gain access to credit.
Fair Warung Balé
Fair Warung Balé is a restaurant in the heart of Ubud, Bali. It gives back 100% of its profits to the Fair Future Foundation and its Free Health and Medical Care programs. 1 meal = 2 free medical treatments. Their profit also funded their pediatric hospital building.
Choba Choba
Sale of premium Swiss chocolate. Choba Choba has a unique business model : the cocoa farmers are shareholders of the company. They participate in the decision making and the benefits of the company. Also, 5% of the sales are allocated to the Revolution Fund and transferred to the communities in direct payouts and in the form of shares.
Reality Tours & Travel
Tours in slums and local villages in India. 80% of the profits from the tours fund the company’s sister NGO Reality Gives which supports education programs for the slum and villages communities.
Soko
Sale of luxury jewelry, ethical fashion, offering high quality, contemporary design paired with handmade techniques and sustainable materials. Artisans retain 25-35% of revenue while industry standards is 2-3%. Virtual factory using mobile phones to coordinate over 1,300 independant artisans into a demand responsive manufacturing model. They receive purchase orders, manage inventory and delivery, and get paid directly on their mobile phone. A cloud system is matching demand with available capacity. This business model reduces waste, time and costs, offering a lower price to the consumer and higher wage to the producer. Soko sells to over 400 international resellers, and directly to 10.000 online consumers.