our species depends on urgently
improving understanding of peoples across hemispheres- none more so than east-west; two thirds of humans live on the continent of asia with a few more per cent of the world's population living in what have emerged as the extraordinary productive hi-tech islands - japan, taiwan , hk, singapore. by the late 19th century all of the people on the asian continent had been colonised or had their trading systems blocked by western empires- primarly britain's. given this, we find it extraordinary valuable to study how 3 people from the orient travelled to the west and went on to change both hemispheres: gandhi
fazle abed

jack ma
below we look at how jack ma's first trip to the usa - seattle 1995 changed the world. he was then his city hangzhou's most popular english teacher- amazon's launch of ecommerce he returned to china to form a network with energetic youth and extraordinary investors including japan's hi tech billionnaire masa son and the silicon valley founder of yahoo jerry yang- how can ecommerce and efinance create the most jobs when china's web infrasucture arrives-?
Having become one of the world's biggest marketmakers, ma was tech city host of china's g20 2016 and at the un he was invited to become worldwide youth jobs adviser;in 2017 he announced that from 2019 september he would return full time to education- according to ma he couldnt see how to impact the 4 most vital social markets with commerce- this web tracks his progress as a return to full time education and his goal of celebrating how the sdg generation can change education , health, green markets, sports and arts markets

unlike ma, gandhi and abed travelled to britain in their teens - gandhi to study law in 1880s, abed to study engineering and shipping at glasgow uni of 1950s.--all three changed the livelihoods and sustainability of hundreds of millions of people in the race to end systemic poverty. unlike gandhi, graduate abed's 10 year spent ascending to become regional ceo of royal dutch shell gave him the perfect mix of engineering and admin experience to empower the poorest to nation build
AI foci of ali- I&V: QC; sec; ML; NLP; big data
https://www.jackmafoundation.org.cn/ welcome to digital silk road plus 6 youth Belt Road Maps ... Changing Education - the most exciting times to parent or grow up sustainably. Our old versions: EW , AU ...how can web maximise sme value and job creating education? -help welcomed in compiling top 100 alumni networks of alibabauni.com -UNited fintech & edutech & 17 goals-- notes on china's greatest educators ggv podcast limebike.. sinica -notes who's helping jos number 1 educator? Kenyann, Bangla girls Tsinghua, olympians-for-all, IR4-forhumans - rsvp chris.macrae@yahoo.co.uk

official alibaba (also notable apps - eg missing children )
*taobao university up to 100 million alumni in China - received training on how to taobao; as of 2017 established 1311 taobao e-commerce villages
*Damo Academy 1 2 started with 15 billion dollar investment by jack ma's as intercity top notch research on humanising livelihood advantages of major components of Industrial Rev 4 such as AI, blockchain, internet of things .. related IR4 at world economic forum: san francisco hub; wef summer china summoit
*gateway17 ma's 3000 citizens and leaders one day masterclass in ecommerce
*ma's personal mentoring (aka efounders) of first 100 entrepreneur chorts chosen with unctad and developing nations that have asked jack ma to help
+Aliresearch 1 tsinghua alumni network of Ying Lowrey's SME curriculum aligned to AliBaba model
Podcast Ant Finance

*hong kong 100 million dollar youth entrepreneur fund: AI webs 1 2 : Jumpstarter competition.-see also hk youth entrepreneur curricula YFS & MIT -- taiwan ma entrepreneur fund
*alibaba entrepreneur fund
*poverty funds 1 :: blockchain research china poverty association 1 - alibaba 0.3 revenue to green foundation 1
Breaking news 1 from


jack ma- when i first studied (e)commerce in states i was surprised to find that each market was dominated by 2 or 3 manufacturers- i decided to design china ecommerce to maxise small enterprise suppliers and local jobs

.ying lowrey is tsinghua's professor of small enterprises- her book alibaba way is eyeopening:

foreword by nobel economist edmund phelps, columbia....Alibaba uses information technology to enable mass innovation to flourish.and to improve the lives of the people

related tsinghua - innovation events
lowrey beijing coorindtaor of aliresearch whose dean at hq is Hongbing Gao

Ai in education
around grade 5 - a
around12th grade - about 50 podcasts and notes here
10th grade ai history from circa 1996?
15th grade ai earlier 2018 Kai-Fu Lee hope was us would lead ai discovery, china implementation
15th grade china top50 ai
15th grade 14 billion dollar uniciorn ai in china - wef 2018 review- speakers Speakers: - Dai Wenyuan, Founder and Chief Executive Officer, 4th Paradigm Data & Technology Co., People's Republic of China. - Huang Dinglong, Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer, Malong Technologies, People's Republic of China. - Wendell Wallach, Scholar, Interdisciplinary Center for Bioethics, Yale University, USA. - Wang Xiaoming, Director, Center for Innovation Strategy and Policy Research, Chinese Academy of Sciences, People's Republic of China. - Yuan Hui, Chairman, Shanghai Xiaoi Robot Technology, People's Republic of China.
.partners of ma &
..
*jack ma chairs cen 1- 2 = china's 50 most respomnsible businessmen - search curricula funds etc - location close to tsingua beijng

example founder of shanghai conglomerate fosun actively celebrates CEN, and partners in one of Jack Ma's universities at hangzhou and supports new york greatest yoth-led arts movement singforhope.com

co-sponsor: wise@beijing: Zhejiang Zhipu Foundation Founded by the six founding members of Alibaba Group, Zhejiang Zhipu Foundation supports rural education and promotes healthy and sustainable relationship between human and the society, as well as between human and the nature.
Guterres UN Digital Cooperation Panel #DigitalCooperation
The Panel is expected to raise awareness about the transformative impact of digital technologies across society and the economy, and contribute to the broader public debate on how to ensure a safe and inclusive digital future for all, taking into account relevant human rights norms.

Panel Members

Co-chairs

Panel members

  • Mohammed Al Gergawi (UAE), Minister of Cabinet Affairs and the Future, UAE
  • Yuichiro Anzai (Japan), Senior Advisor and Director of Center for Science Information Analysis, Japan Society for the Promotion of Science
  • Nikolai Astrup (Norway), Minister of International Development, Norway
  • Vinton Cerf (USA), Vice President and Chief Internet Evangelist, Google
  • Fadi ChehadĂ© (USA), Partner at ABRY Partners
  • Isabel Guerrero Pulgar (Chile), Director, IMAGO Global Grassroots and Lecturer, Harvard Kennedy School
  • Marina Kaljurand (Estonia), Chair of the Global Commission on the Stability of Cyberspace
  • Bogolo Kenewendo (Botswana), Minister of Investment, Trade and Industry, Botswana
  • Akaliza Keza Ntwari (Rwanda), ICT advocate and entrepreneur
  • Marina Kolesnik (Russian Federation), senior executive, entrepreneur and WEF Young Global Leader
  • Doris Leuthard (Switzerland), Head of the Federal Department of the Environment, Transport, Energy and Communications, Switzerland
  • Cathy Mulligan (United Kingdom), Co-Director of Imperial College Centre for Cryptocurrency
  • Edson Prestes (Brazil), Professor, Institute of Informatics, Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul
  • Kira Radinsky (Israel), Director of Data Science, eBay
  • Nanjira Sambuli (Kenya), Digital Equality Advocacy Manager, World Wide Web Foundation
  • Sophie Soowon Eom (Republic of Korea), Founder of Adriel AI and Solidware
  • Dhananjayan Sriskandarajah (Australia), Secretary General, CIVICUS
  • Jean Tirole (France), Chairman of the Toulouse School of Economics and the Institute for Advanced Study in Toulouse
The deliberations of the Panel will be supported by a small secretariat, co-led by:
  • Amandeep Singh Gill (India), Executive Director, Secretariat of the High-level Panel on Digital Cooperation (ex officio)
  • Jovan Kurbalija, (Serbia), Executive Director, Secretariat of the High-level Panel on Digital Cooperation (ex officio)
..
.
  • Patrick Bolton, Barbara and David Zalaznick Professor of Business, Columbia Business School
  • Markus Brunnermeier, Edwards S. Sanford Professor of Economics, Princeton University
  • Bengt Holmstrom, 2016 Nobel Laureate, Paul A. Samuelson Professor of Economics, MIT
  • Lars Peter Hansen, 2013 Nobel Laureate, David Rockefeller Distinguished Service Professor in Economics, Statistics, Booth School of Business & The College, University of Chicago
  • Preston McAfee, Most Recently Served as Chief Economist and Corp VP at Microsoft
  • Christopher Pissarides, 2010 Nobel Laureate, Regius Professor of Economics, LSE
  • Yingyi Qian, Distinguished Professor and Dean of School of Economics and Management, Tsinghua University
  • Alvin Roth, 2012 Nobel Laureate, The Craig and Susan McCaw Professor of Economics, Stanford University
  • Thomas Sargent, 2011 Nobel Laureate, W.R. Berkley Professor of Economics and Business, New York University
  • Michael Spence, 2001 Nobel Laureate, William R. Berkley Professor in Economics & Business, NYU Stern
  • Steve Tadelis, Professor of Economics, Business and Public Policy, Haas School of Business, UC Berkeley
  • Neng Wang, Chong Khoon Lin Professor of Real Estate & Professor of Finance, Columbia Business School
  • Shangjin Wei, Professor of Finance and Economics, Professor of International Affairs, and N.T. Wang Professor of Chinese Business and Economy, Columbia University
  • Wei Xiong, Trumbull-Adams Professor of Finance, Princeton University
  • Chenggang Xu, Quoin Professor in Economic Development, University of Hong Kong, Professor of Economics, Cheung Kong Graduate School of Business
..
the wicked problem of missing curricula youth most need- as jack says this is a huge problem; correspondenmce case posted may 2018: moreover we have atended many world bank youth summits where missing curricula have been pitched and everyone cheered the value but getiing each different nation to newly cetrtify suc new learning is a fools erand
-here part of a specific example- do you know a missing peer to peer curricula that needs similar linking in

I am staying at brac in bangaldesh my favorite girls education network in the world as well as largest ngo in wortld and partnership networkwe will see dean of james grant school of public health at brac university tomorrow- do you still have any message you wanted passed to brac about the peer to peer adolescent health program you and lancet have been building? we are mainly working with brac's overall education director as specified directly by sir fazle abed when i met him in qatar 2017 - sir fazle kindly gave a lot of his time to remembrance parties of my dad norman macrae at the japan embassy in dhaka in 2012more generally brac and jack ma started fin tech partnership earlier this month with brac's BkashSMS in bangladesh but for s asia (the whole 2 billion of china's neigbors particularly poorest girls on china south and south westren borders), for sustainabiliuty generation to scale and gain from these 2 superstars we believe partnering relations will broaden into looking at skills education ; we will be trying to form team both on bangladesh and china side to monitor this however fast or slow it goesmostofa has been working on bangladesh side for very long time- he also worked with modjtabia sadria then at aga khan in london while they were in london at time muhammad yunus was at his social business peak ; i believe modjtabia is now back in iran after some years with paul at monash? ( i didnt get to pauls grn summit in jordan 2006; i believe sadria did; i note that jack ma just made donation to queen of jordans education fund)

we are trying to invite any university student to form a club to see where is the nexus between what students most want to study practically and training that sir fazle and jack ma could mooc or otherwise maximally distribute to benefit livelihoods- togther the names of jack ma and sir fazle can be a top 100 web and top 1 web for open action learning- in branding terms this is easy as long as we quickly get all best friends of ma and abed signed up at one launch summit blessed by china and on the road to ma's sponsorship of huge expo at tokyo olympics

after 8 visits to beijing i am reasonably confident that we can get as much additional support as we want from tsinghua university in beijing (over there they know thgere are half a billion undre 30s and that china cant afford any youth left legless by mismatch between jobs and what colleges like examining-- ) additionally tsinghua with aiib is heavily into belt road pitches to india this year so education can be 2 for 1 so to speak
as long as both jack ma and sir fazle have approved a subject area as being one that needs development in this type 2 pee to peer or apprentice mode i believe we can help scale missing curricula

as you think you know i first met pauil komesdroff in 2004- i love everything he was trying to create volunteer expereinces abroad around monash and medics and cultural/arts translators;I hope we can find the right way to linkin monash as this idea gains momentum
coming soon at wechatuni : difficult questions like what happens when ai or robotic intelligence is inside your phone?
- world's largest market fund Yu'e Bao Sesame Credit score

Monday, November 27, 2017

fintech #BR2 #theeconomist

“Faster Than Cash”: An Interview with ftcash’s Vaibhav Lodha

September 26, 2018
By Editor
Last week, Mumbai social entrepreneur Vaibhav Lodha was in San Francisco trying to do Zeno one better by filling a finite schedule with an infinite number of appointments. A 2018 Asia Foundation Development Fellow, Lodha recently learned that his financial technology startup, ftcash, had been named the Asia-region winner for financial inclusion in MIT’s Inclusive Innovation Challenge. The regional winners will convene at MIT on November 8 for the awarding of four $250,000 grand prizes. On this day, we found him at The Asia Foundation’s San Francisco headquarters, participating in leadership training as part of his fellowship.
Photo/Amanda Bensel
Launched in Mumbai in mid-2015 by Lodha and two partners, ftcash (“faster than cash”) is a digital payment platform that allows micromerchants, long excluded from India’s banking and financial system, to manage their business transactions, establish their credit worthiness, and qualify for capital loans. The company was incubated by PayPal and is currently in a strategic partnership with MasterCard to provide merchant services globally. Lodha sat down with us to talk about his success.
When you founded ftcash in 2015, what was the problem you set out to solve?
I’ll give you an example. The newspaper vendor in my neighborhood has been trying to get a loan from a bank to grow his business for the last 25 years, but no one would give him a loan. And the reason the banks are not able to give a working-capital loan to someone like this newspaper vendor is, first, they don’t have enough data on him to figure out what his risk assessment looks like, and second, they’ve found it hard to acquire and service these kinds of really small micromerchants.
So, these people are “unbanked.”
Unbanked, yes. There are 60 million-plus of these micromerchants in India. Let me say that again: 60 million plus. We are trying to help them get access to capital and to provide them with a digital payment solution as well. When they use our payment platform, we get the data from their digital payment history, and based on that transaction history, we’re able to give them a capital loan, typically between $700 and $14,000. These are working-capital loans, so once they repay the first one they can get a larger-ticket loan the next time. The most critical part is that the repayment of these loans happens on the payment platform itself. They just need to make transactions on the payment platform, and the loan deductions happen automatically. So, it’s a seamless system, because they don’t have to think about repaying the loan on a daily basis.
How important are these small and medium enterprises in India’s economy?
They are the missing middle class in India’s economy, and we’re trying to make that middle class as big as possible so that they’re able to then live a much better life, because with financial inclusion comes also better nutrition, better healthcare, better education, and a sense of justice in the country as well.
How has adoption been so far?
We’ve been in operation for three years, and we’ve had phenomenal growth. More than 30,000 merchants are working with us. We are processing almost 72 million dollars a year in payment transactions. We have a 90-day delinquency rate of just 2 percent, which is much lower than the market standard, which varies from 5 to 10 percent in the segment, so we’ve been able to manage that risk really well. And apart from that, we have grown almost 30 percent month over month, which is a really good number. Now we are involved with a lot of international companies to expand globally as well, so that’s another option we’re trying to explore to see where we can go from there.
Is this a profitable business for ftcash?
Not yet.
But your plan is to become a bank, in effect?
A bank-without-being-a-bank. Our lending comes from financial institutions and banks. We do the acquisition of the merchant. We do the risk assessment, and we do the collections. So, the entire function of the loan is conducted by us. It’s just the disbursal to the merchant that we’re not doing: the financial institution transfers the money directly to the borrower. So, all the data is stored with us, and that’s the most critical part. We can see the transaction history before the loan is dispersed. We’re able to see a lot of data from the mobile phone. And when the collections are happening, we know how the merchant is performing, so we’re also able to keep a regular check on their financial health.
What has the MIT award meant for you?
We’re hoping that MIT can help us with artificial intelligence and machine learning for risk assessment, and we’re scheduling some meetings with professors and researchers to help us figure that out. Also, obviously, getting the recognition gives us a lot of validation that what we’re doing is on the right track.
What has it done for you to be an Asia Foundation Development Fellow?
It’s been an exciting journey. The most important part for me has been the leadership development: how do you convey a story and make sure that others relate and can connect with that story so that they become evangelists for your journey. I’ve seen so much support come in for our work over the last six months with the Development Fellowship. So many new opportunities have opened up. More importantly, I think as a cohort we have made friends for a lifetime.
Can you tell me another story about someone who benefited from using your technology?
Sure. There is one small vendor—he’s like a hawker on the street very close to where we work—and he was one of our first customers, three years back. He started using our payment system to get his cash flow to go better, because what used to happen was people would call him up and say, oh, I need these vegetables or fruits, please deliver them to my home. And typically, the household help would be at home and not the owner, and he would not get paid for a week, two weeks, sometimes even a month. When he started using our payment system he started telling his customers, okay, I’m sending you this digital payment link so please make a payment and then I’ll supply you this stuff. And not only did his cash flow improve, but his customer base became so large that he was eligible for a loan. And now he’s been able to grow his business to have an established shop and expand into other merchandise as well.
Vaibav Lodha is a 2018 Asia Foundation Development Fellow. The views and opinions expressed here are his own and not those of The Asia Foundation.