International
The February 2012 edition of Forbes Africa contains their list of Top 20 Start-ups in Africa. Check out the list below; do you agree with the listed companies; do you think some were missed out? Let us know in the Comments!
1. MXit.
Whilst I love to read
interviews with some of the world's leading female entrepreneurs right here on The
NextWomen, it is equally inspiring and heart-warming to hear stories of women
running much smaller enterprises in developing countries.
It makes me immensely proud to be a woman when I hear how some women are changing their lives and the lives of their families for the better running small scale businesses.
Today I wanted to share with you four success stories of female entrepreneurs who have managed to get their businesses off the ground with the help of Kiva.
Kiva is one of the most worthwhile causes on the planet right now. It is a non-profit organization that uses microfinancing, whereby lenders make small loans to support borrowers in need. Kiva connects these borrowers and lenders as a way to directly and continually fight global poverty.
The BOLT Women Small Business Owners - America's New Job Creators Infographic visually explains how female business owners have positively impacted job creation in the U.S.. More and more American women are taking their careers into their own hands and opening small businesses. Small businesses account for more than 99 percent of employers in the U.S.,and female ownership in small business increased more than 20 percent between 2002 and 2007.
She Takes on the World Founder Natalie MacNeil’s TEDx Talk about women as the largest block of untapped catalysts for tomorrow and how we can empower women to change the world.
Rising above
cultural stigma, increasingly women in Bangladesh are becoming
entrepreneurs, bucking the trend of consumer led small scale rural
business, increasingly running developmental businesses requiring professional
skills such marketing, sales and product development.
This would have been impossible if not for the massive success of microfinance.
When Monif Clarke initially launched her plus size clothing range in
2006, she would pitch her design ideas to the major retailers, only to be told
again and again that no-one would purchase her clothing: it was too trendy, too
colorful, too sexy and their plus sized customers weren’t that fashion conscious.
Y
Combinator, TechStars and 500 Startups have been attracting applications from
all over the world. But the US isn’t the only place for start-ups to get a
boost: Latin America too is experiencing a boom of accelerators and incubators.
Here are nine programs you need to know:
21212.com
Where: Brazil (Rio de Janeiro), USA (NYC)
It’s common knowledge that Google is one of the most desired employers in
the world. Yet, a startup project made the Brazilian MIT student Isabel Pesce Mattos drop out of both Google and
MIT. And it seems it wasn’t such a bad idea. The startup she joined is called Lemon, and reportedly raised no less than $10 million in
funding thanks to its receipt tracking app (see our review).
It’s not a story about luck or privilege; Isabel Pesce’s trajectory is a shining example of determination against all odds.
Unlike many of her fellow students, Isabel wasn’t raised to join a top American university. She only found out about MIT’s program for foreigners two weeks before the deadline, she remembers, laughing.
The NextWomen DWEN Interview Series continues with Jessie Paul, author of the book No Money Marketing, Founder & CEO of Paul
Writer, India's premier B2B marketing hub.
In addition to offering marketing advisory services, Paul Writer is India's largest peer-managed community of marketers.
Jessie was formerly Chief Marketing Officer, Wipro IT Business and Global Brand Manager at Infosys Technologies Ltd. As CMO of Wipro, Jessie managed the branding and marketing for Wipro's technology business worldwide.
We spoke to Jessie about how it feels to be a tech entrepreneur in a BRIC country; her golden rules of frugal marketing; and how entrepreneurs can increase their online presence.
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