125 Influential People and Ideas
Apr 01, 2007 
Categories: Bangladesh, Economics , Foreign Aid
Tags: Iqbal Quadir
The Wharton of Business honors Iqbal Quadir as one of its one-hundred-twenty-five most influential alumni.
125 INFLUENTIAL PEOPLE AND IDEAS
Spring 2007
IT ALL STARTED RIGHT HERE.
We invite you to celebrate 125 years of management education through the stories of 125 influential alumni and faculty in this special Wharton Alumni Magazine.
Wharton was founded as the first collegiate school of business in 1881. That innovation was the spark that ignited a succession of innovations — the first business textbooks, the first research center, the first MBA in health care. Today more than a thousand colleges and universities around the world offer business majors. One-quarter of all undergraduate degrees in the U.S. are awarded in business. And Wharton continues to introduce new programs and new learning approaches, and to disseminate new knowledge.
In the past 125 years, business has become the engine that drives economic growth, improves quality of life, fosters global exchange, and creates opportunity. And Wharton fuels that engine.
Thus the true story of Wharton isn’t just what happens on campus — it’s the story of how our alumni and faculty influence the world through their actions and ideas. It’s the story of how they have created value and advanced knowledge, withstanding the ups and downs of markets, careers, and lives.
Since its founding, the School has graduated nearly 100,000 business leaders. If we told each success story, we would fill 850 of these magazines. Our 200-plus current Wharton faculty alone would require more than one issue.
We are proud of the impact of the Wharton alumni and faculty — individuals who have elevated disciplines, developed economic models, influenced capital markets, spread prosperity, and built companies. Together, these stories create a picture of the diversity, sweep, impact, and influence of Wharton over the past 125 years.
BROUGHT PHONE SERVICE TO THE
BANGLADESHI POOR
IQBAL QUADIR, G’83, WG’87
THE IDEA for GrameenPhone came to Iqbal Quadir during an afternoon of on-the-job frustration in 1993. His investment banking office’s computer network had failed, stymieing his efforts to work. As he sat there, he recalled another wasted day in 1971 when he was 13 and living with his family in a rural village in Bangladesh to escape a war that was ravaging the big cities. Since there were no phones, his mother sent him to a nearby village to fetch medicine. He walked eight miles only to find that the pharmacist was gone for the day and he had wasted the day walking. All for the lack of a telephone to call ahead.
Sitting in front of his disconnected computer in New York City 22 years later, a realization dawned: If connectivity meant productivity, then it must be a weapon against poverty.
That started the wheels turning on an amazing micro-lending partnership that eventually would bring 200,000 phones to Bangladeshi villages through GrameenPhone, serving 80 million people with an average of 400 people using each of those phones.
Today, GrameenPhone has become a tremendous financial success. A group of Americans who backed him originally collectively put in $1.65 million and got $33 million back eight years later selling their stake. In addition to the 200,000 phones distributed to villagers, GrameenPhone installed another 6 million throughout Bangladesh. Competitors have added an additional 4 million units since the government issued its licenses, and growth should double again soon.
Selling his own shares in GrameenPhone made Quadir financially independent, and he’s using that status to build other socially conscious ventures. He created a foundation in America dedicated to development in Bangladesh.
And Quadir himself is never far from his next big idea. Currently, he is working to install mini power plants that use cow manure as fuel to provide electricity.
