MIT alum Alex Hornstein is the newest of the Scale-Ups fellows. From his latest blog about his current work in the Philippines: "My company, tinyPipes, is a solar utility company for unelectrified homes. We install solar panels that act like pre-paid cell phones for energy. Users buy "load" on a panel by making a payment via mobile phone or at a local store, and the panel gets a signal over the cellular network to unlock for a certain amount of time to deliver energy to the user. Read more.

From Suprio Das: "Soon Zimba will start working with a micro-entrepreneur (ME) based business model. Just as we have gone through several iterations of the technology before we came up with the current design we know that we will also have to go through several iterations of our business model. We have identified and trained two possible MEs who would maintain Zimbas in the field and collect payment from the communities using Zimba." Read more.

Twelve students worked on design projects for social ventures in the Scale-Ups fellowship program: 1) improving manufacturability and performance of the Wecyclers waste collection cart in Lagos, Nigeria, 2) improving manufacturability and reducing cost of the Zimba chlorine dispenser in West Bengal, and 3) reducing cost and improving usability of the PortaTherm typhoid diagnostic in rural Nepal. The three ventures were delighted with the students' work and hope to implement many of their ideas! Read full blog.

The MIT Scaling Development Ventures conference brings together exciting perspectives from the international development and business communities to examine the best way to bring poverty-alleviating solutions to market at scale. Session I is titled "Appropriate Solutions to Real Needs." Session II focuses on "Partnering for Scale." Session III focuses on "MIT Alumni Making Scaling up Innovation." And don't miss the MIT student poster session! Conference details here.

D-Lab Scale-Ups is pleased to announce that Paul Polak, widely regarded as the father of market-centered approaches to development, will deliver the keynote address at the Scaling Development Ventures conference. Paul is the author of Out of Poverty, and The Business Solution to Poverty (2013 with Mal Warwick), described by Bill Clinton as "One of the most hopeful propositions to come along in a long time . . . original, ambitious, and practical." Read more.

Nancy Wimmer will deliver a talk entitled, "The Art of Rural Business." Nancy's recent book, Green Energy for a Billion Poor - How Grameen Shakti Created a Winning Model for Social Business, describes for the first time how an entrepreneurial rural energy service company started from scratch and after 17 years became a world leader in off-grid solar energy and is helping to guide entrepreneurs in developing countries and university students. Read more.