Poverty Is Unnecessary

Muhammad Yunus, founder of Grameen Bank, was nominated as one of the 25 most influential business leaders in the world along with Bill Gates, Steve Jobs and Alan Greenspan, etc.

In an interview with Nightly Business Report, Muhammad Yunus said poverty is unnecessary. Human beings are quite capable of taking care themselves. but we have created a society that denies some unfortunate people the opportunities.

This made me ponder: what is wrong with our society? Why are 80% of the world's population living in bad conditions, and proximately 1.5 billion people stricken by poverty (less than $1 a day)? It can’t be just because of the greed of the few and corruption of the governments….

Does this make us – who are fortunate to be in the 20% with reasonably good living conditions – feel responsible to do something about it?

Grameen Bank did something about it. It offers small amount of loans to very poor people, giving them means to generate income and work their way out of poverty.

Now the microcredit institutions are operating in more than 100 countries worldwide. Started with only $27, Grameen Bank has grown into a $5 billion fund with more than four million borrowers.

Poverty is unnecessary. Extreme wealth is also unnecessary.

microfinance, entrepreneurship, leadership, most influential

A Hundred Years to Grow a Person

A Chinese proverb says: “It takes ten years to grow a tree, but a hundred years to grow a person. (十年树木，百年树人。）” (that assumes the person can live for a hundred years :-)). Well, the moral is that growing a person is a long term process.

With China’s swift changes, one of the major challenges is the looming shortage of management talents. Although there is no dearth of entrepreneurial spirit (as everyone wants to be his own boss), not too many entrepreneurs have the vision and professionalism to grow their companies into world-class enterprises. There are hundreds and millions of small start-ups with 3-4 people, and mushrooming copy cats, very few have what it takes to become the luminaries of any kind - at least not in the short term.

In addition, long time top-down management style in China killed people's innitiative and creatitivity. One of my friends, who is the chairman of a major online gaming company, told me how his hair has turned white because he has constantly to give very specific instructions to his managers and employees.

For foreign investors who view China as the next Silicon Valley, it's important for them to set their expection right and adjust their investment strategies accordingly. In my view, the venture capitalists who will succeed in China in the long run are the ones who are willing to roll-up their sleeves and work with the entrepreneurs of their portfolio companies side-by-side, providing additional mentoring and coaching.

You can't really invest in a company without investing in people. One of the merits of venture capitalism is growing successful entrepreneurs. This is more true in today’s China. Remember: it takes a hundred years to grow a person.

management, talent, VC, leadership, China, investors

I Dream Things That Never Were

The biggest problem facing micro-entrepreneurs in developing countries is the inability to access the larger public market and its market information. They do not have efficient channels to reach customers. This creates a significant barrier for the working poor to rise from poverty.

Yet the world's poorest people are rushing to embrace mobile phones because of their apparent benefits. For examples, farmers and fishermen use mobile phones to call markets and work out where they can get the best price for their produce. Mobile phones are used to make cashless payments in some African countries.

In China, there are already 370 million cell phone subscribers, adding 5 million each month. Every year, there were about 300 billion SMS sent around the country, creating a billion dollar industry itself.

Imagine if micro-entrepreneurs can turn their mobile phones into income generating devices, imagine they can easily list their product information to large online markets without a need of computers, they can leapfrog the technological and social-economic gaps created by the "digital divide."

Yes, that's exactly what e-Mobilizer will do! e-Mobilizer leverages the pervasive cellular infrastructure and mobile technology to bridge micro-entrepreneurs and small businesses to the online marketplaces. It provides a single portal and gateway to allow micro-entrepreneurs to post their merchandise to online market sites via their mobile phones.

Our dream is to help millions of micro-entrepreneurs to advance in life. Our hope is, by so doing, to make the world a better place. "Some men and women see things as they are and say why; I dream things that never were and say why not?" - George Bernard Shaw

entrepreneurship, leadership, emerging_markets, mobile phones