The e-commerce giant’s
Rural Taobao platform has
set up service centers in
over 30,000 villages across
China to help rural mer-
chants sell online. In 2018,
sellers in China’s most impoverished regions
sold $8.9 billion worth of goods through
Alibaba channels, and in the first half of
2019, the total value of goods sold from
those regions surged 80% higher than in
the same period last year. Alibaba’s Taobao
Live—a booming video-streaming platform
on which hosts make sales—has pledged
to teach 1,000 rural sellers how to market
themselves through video and aims to push
an additional $440 million worth of rural
produce through the platform this year.
Open-heart surgery: $3,500.
Endoscopy: $14. Narayana
offers medical care at prices
that boggle the American mind.
The health care group, which
has grown to 24 hospitals
(all but one in India), makes
treatment affordable in part
by being judicious with skilled
workers’ time: Senior surgeons
swoop in for just the most
challenging part of a procedure
and so perform roughly four
times as many surgeries as a
U.S. doctor would. (They also
hit quality metrics comparable
to those in the U.S.) Narayana
sees 2.5 million patients a year;
it brought in $409 million in
revenue and $9 million in profit
in its past fiscal year.
Education may be the great
equalizer, but access to it is
hardly equal. That was what
Luis von Ahn discovered grow-
ing up in Guatemala, where
endemic poverty kept many
from learning how to read
or write. So von Ahn, a serial
inventor and MacArthur “ge-
nius” grant recipient, teamed
up with a fellow computer
scientist at Carnegie Mellon
to create Duolingo—a free,
ad-supported app that makes
it surprisingly easy to learn
any of 36 languages on one’s
own in a short time. Lessons
are intuitive, brisk, and game-
like—which explains why
28 million people actively take
its courses each month.
Illumina’s technol-
ogy has made ge-
nomic sequenc-
ing faster and
cheaper —which
can literally save
lives. An example:
Stephen Kings-
more, CEO of Rady
Children’s Insti-
tute for Genomic
Medicine, notes
that babies with
rare genetic disor-
ders can now have
their genomes se-
quenced in just 20
hours —so treat-
ment can be deliv-
ered within days
rather than weeks.
Poet makes the
most of an ear of
corn. The world’s
top producer of
biofuels turns the
crop into ethanol,
but it has also en-
gineered uses for
that process’s by-
products, reduc-
ing waste on mul-
tiple fronts. Those
include a dense,
nutrient-rich ani-
mal feed and Jive,
an asphalt “re-
juvenator” that
makes roads less
temperature-
sensitive and
more durable.
The huge retailer
is helping custom-
ers use electronics
more sustainably.
Best Buy trains
employees to pro-
mote energy-
efficient models
across all its prod-
uct lines. It’s also
fighting e-waste:
Since 2009, it has
recycled 2 billion
pounds of con-
sumer electronics
at its more than
1,000 stores and
kept tons more
out of landfills by
offering repairs
and trade-ins.
Money stress and
mental-health
challenges can
all too easily am-
plify one another.
Lloyds has in-
troduced a ser-
vice that offers
counseling to cus-
tomers, helping
them save money
by avoiding inac-
tion and mistakes.
The bank has also
trained some 500
staffers to be in-
ternal mental-
health advocates,
helping colleagues
cope with their
own hurdles.
NO. 33
Narayana Health
Rethinking surgical
care and bringing
down its price tag.
BENGALURU
NO. 36
Duolingo
Teaching languages
to the masses with
a free app.
PITTSBURGH
37
NO.
An e-commerce initiative drives
billions in sales to merchants in
impoverished areas.
HANGZHOU, CHINA
A Digital Bridge
Across China’s
Rural-Urban Divide
Alibaba
NO. 35
Illumina
Lifesaving
shortcuts in
gene testing.
SAN DIEGO
NO. 34
Poet
Putting every
husk and
cob to use.
SIOUX FALLS, S.D.
NO. 32
Best Buy
Shrinking the
electronic
footprint.
RICHFIELD, MINN.
NO. 31
Lloyds
Banking Group
Working for
peace of mind.
LONDON
A Rural Taobao video host live-streams from a farmer’s
home in China’s Jiangxi province.
COURTESY OF ALIBABA GROUP
