Grameen

Category: Microfranchise

• AppLab Indonesia wins Global Telecoms Award for Best Mobile Application Innovation

  
  

  Congratulations to the AppLab Indonesia team!

  Together with our partners, Qualcomm Wireless Reach®, Ruma and Bakrie Telecom, the AppLab Indonesia team was awarded the Global Telecoms Award for the Best Mobile Application Innovation on June 7th in London.  This is well deserved recognition for the considerable investment of time, energy and creativity of the AppLab team, led by Farid Maruf in Jakarta and guided by Sean DeWitt in our Washington, D.C. office, who over the past several years has worked tirelessly to create our technology innovation hub in...

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• First Village Phone Operator graduates from AppLab Indonesia Solutions for the Poorest program

  
  

  Grameen Foundation’s AppLab Indonesia, in partnership with Qualcomm’s Wireless Reach initiative, and social business PT Ruma, operate a mobile microfranchising program to provide the poor and poorest with business opportunities based on the mobile phone.  Currently the micro franchisees sell mobile phone airtime credits to their customers.  Most poor people start their micro-franchise with $11 for working capital.  For the poorest of the poor this can present a challenge.  Grameen Foundation designed a program to enable the poorest to participate in the mobile...

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• Update from AppLab Indonesia – Serving the Poorest

  
  

  Jason Hahn is Business Development Manager ICT Innovation, at Grameen Foundation Seattle.

  UPDATE: 04/06/2011 We just released a case study on using Grameen Foundation’s Progress Out of Poverty Index (PPI) with PT Ruma to help them ensure they reach their goal of working with the poor and poorest.  You can read the case study here. 

  In addition to the Grameen Foundation’s AppLab activities in Ghana and Uganda we are also very proud of our AppLab Indonesia and the innovative work we do there in conjunction with our local social enterprise partner, PT Ruma. ...

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• Village Phone Operators are Trained to be KerjaLokal Agents

  
  

  Ross Jaax is Program Manager, Grameen Foundation Indonesia.

  On April 28, AppLab organized a training of 20 VPOs in Tangerang, Western suburb of Jakarta, on becoming Agents for KerjaLokal, a blue collar job search service that can be accessed via the mobile phone.  The 20 new Agents will participate in our initial pilot testing of the KerjaLokal micro-site and the supporting algorithm to match job seekers with jobs they desire.

  We distributed 20 Huawei 6100 QUERTY phones that have a WAP browser.  During the pilot, Agents will sign-up job seekers using the...

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• Harvard Business School Students Assist AppLab Indonesia

  
  

  Ross Jaax is Program Manager, at Grameen Foundation Indonesia.

  We are being assisted this week by a crew of Harvard Business School (HBS) graduate students who have volunteered to assist Grameen Foundation and its sister social enterprise in Indonesia, PT Ruma, on developing business plans for some new pro-poor products. The HBS students will spend 2 weeks in Indonesia. During that time, they will review and further develop the business model for the AppLab-sponsored jobs market application, Kerjalokal.com.  Their recommendations will fit into Grameen...

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• AppLab in Indonesia: New Beginnings

  
  

  Ross Jaax is Program Manager, at Grameen Foundation Indonesia.

  As we get underway with our application development in Indonesia, we are looking at those Applications that will assist people in the informal job sector, the source of livelihoods for most poor Indonesians.  The informal sector encompasses the lower end of the labor market, for those those working as maids, gardeners, drivers, and other day laborers. It also includes millions of small and medium entrepreneurs (SMEs) who engage in such businesses as selling snack food and sundries from roadside...

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