Archive for May, 2008

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Thoughts on Acumen Fund’s Water Breakfast

Saturday, May 31st, 2008

Can you imagine a world in which water is so scarce, it has to be transported to your community via a government-operated train or if the only safe way for you to consume your morning glass of water is via a dirty pond with a 12-inch long filtering straw? Believe it or not, for billions of people across the world, quick fixes like these are their everyday reality.

1.2 billion people lack access to safe drinking water; 2.4 billion lack access to improved sanitation (UNEP). Adrien Couton, Acumen’s Water Portfolio Manager, cited these statistics and others at Acumen Fund’s Water breakfast this week. Despite such sobering numbers, I came away from the breakfast with a sense of hope that even though there is no silver bullet, we are getting closer to understanding how to address the complex issue of water.

Adrien first discussed the need to move beyond our strong inclination that the latest and greatest technology will solve all of our problems. A perfect example is Water Health International (WHI), an Acumen Fund investment since 2003. Water Health International recognized that just because they had a proven technology didn’t mean the poor were going to buy their water.

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Posted in Our World | No Comments

Can a Hospital Be a Breakthrough Innovation?

Wednesday, May 28th, 2008

LifeSpring Mother and ChildLifeSpring’s maternity hospital outside of Hyderbad, India, is full of surprises. While the building is simple, and the maternal services they offer are low cost, the facility is immaculate and the quality of care is world-class. Expectant mothers dot the waiting room, along with their mothers or mothers-in-law, who do most of the talking. New babies gurgle, smile, cry and sleep. The energy in the halls is palpable.

I first visited LifeSpring on Mother’s Day, where, as part of a free vaccination offering, the hospital sat new mothers and their families for photographs. Later that week, I visited with LifeSpring manager Anant Kumar and Acumen Fund Fellow Tricia Morente.

LifeSpring addresses a powerful and daunting problem. Fewer than half of Indian women are cared for by a skilled attendant during childbirth, and the chances, over a lifetime, of an Indian woman dying due to complications in pregnancy and childbirth are 1 in 70.

Mr. Ayyapan, the Chairman and Managing Director of Hindustan Latex Limited – a large Indian public sector company - and his team created LifeSpring to address this problem. Acumen Fund then joined in as a 50/50 joint venture partner to help take the concept to scale.

Lifespring’s maternity care hospitals offer a low-cost alternative to public clinics, which are free but often low quality. At LifeSpring, expectant mothers pay 1500 rupees (about US$35) to deliver a baby. This price point seems to make sense, and Mr. Kumar told us that the mothers typically decide based on quality of service, and the fathers based on price. The opinion that prevails will often depend on the education level of the mother.

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Posted in On the Ground, Remarkable People | 2 Comments

A Beacon of Hope

Tuesday, May 27th, 2008

Editor’s Note: New contributor Noor Ullah is a Portfolio Associate based out of Acumen Fund’s Pakistan office. Before joining Acumen Fund, Ullah served as a consultant for the World Bank, and as a business development consultant for a number of multinationals and private enterprises. He holds a B.A. from Lahore University of Management Sciences.

Sehat FirstLast month, Sehat First (“sehat” means “health” in Urdu) opened its doors to patients for the first time in the village of Chasma Goth, a peri-urban area of Karachi. In the first two days, they treated over 22 patients and had sales over 3,000 Rupees! One of the patients at the clinic remarked, “You are all angels, sent to answer our prayers.”

Sehat First is a new social enterprise that provides quality health consultation and pharmacy services to lower income communities. Each clinic provides health consultancy services to patients using an e-sehat (health) tele-consulting application that remotely links up doctors and specialists with their patients via internet in the poorest of the poor suburbs of Karachi.

Despite challenging conditions, Shahida Saleem, President of d.o.t.z technologies, is up-beat that the Sehat First outlets will help create a more healthy community together with ensuring financial sustainability for the enterprise. Such enterprises provide critical services to impoverished communities in Pakistan, where there is a substantial need for cost-effective, high quality healthcare at the bottom of the pyramid.

With Acumen Fund’s support, Sehat First has the potential to transform the delivery of healthcare to a population who previously did not have access to such services. Acumen Fund’s assistance will help the enterprise increase outreach and expand into more communities in the months and years ahead.

Posted in On the Ground | No Comments

Update for Spring 2008

Friday, May 23rd, 2008

In case you missed it, Acumen Fund just issued its quarterly newsletter for Spring 2008. It includes highlights from Jacqueline Novogratz’s recent trip to Pakistan (the full journal from her visit can be found here), as well as announcements of new investments and updates on existing ones. As you can tell, 2008 has been an active year thus far — stay tuned for lots more to come.

Posted in Acumen News | No Comments

Will Acumen Invest in Biofuels?

Wednesday, May 21st, 2008

With all the talk of rising oil prices and the potential of biofuels, I’m asked almost daily: When will Acumen invest in biofuels? Usually, the inquiry is more specific: When will we invest in jatropha based biodiesel in East Africa?

Acumen has looked at (and is considering) several opportunities, but we have found that there are some very challenging questions around the impact of biofuels that are almost impossible to answer. For example, jatropha is often touted as a biofuel “superplant,” as it appears to survive in marginal, semi-arid land of which there is plenty in Sub Saharan Africa. But the amount of oil that the plant yields increases dramatically (and may only provide significant economic returns) if the plants are irrigated. So where will jatropha really be grown, and what will it displace? If the land is otherwise useful, are we just creating crop substitution, adding to the global food crisis, and failing to reduce carbon emissions?

How will the cultivation work on the ground? Many of the proposals involve investor-owned plantations. Again, how will this land be procured, how will the local community be integrated into the process, and what are the local environmental impacts of introducing a new species?

Lastly, where will the fuels end up? The global commodity market is amazingly efficient, and the highest prices for biodiesel today are in Europe, as are the refineries that process the extracted oil. With this in mind, I ask myself: Are we back to a model where poor countries export natural resources and occupy only a small part of the value chain with little local value added?

We’re still trying to understand these issues, and are having lots of conversations on what’s going on. We’d like nothing more than to find the entrepreneur that has begun to address these challenges into a plan for a viable business.

Posted in Acumen News | 1 Comment

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