Social Entrepreneurship

Incorporating Sustainability into Management Education

2012-01-19T14:52:00.002+05:30

Some thoughts, in no specific order:

Make socio-environmental concerns and ethical fibre a non-negotiable part of admissions filter. If the primary reason why a student is joining an MBA course is to land up with a lucrative job, mere two years of teaching cannot change that mindset.

Review program syllabi and course structure to align them to sustainability goals. For instance, a large number of courses in the management school syllabi focus on enhancing and managing “financial wealth”. This focus needs to be balanced by (1) highlighting the positive or negative impact the financial wealth creation had on society and environment, and (2) with equal number of courses (if not more) which focus on enhancing “social capital” and ”environmental capital”.

One of the reasons, perhaps, why students fail to appreciate the socio-environmental issues as impacting businesses, is because there are very few academic social science inputs in the course-work. While “Economics” (which provides a grounding in enhancing financial wealth creation) is taught, there is no “social science” dept., which provides a grounding in subjects like Sociology, Anthropology, Political Science, etc. This is particularly important in India, where increasingly most students come with a science/ engineering degrees, and increasingly solving business problems requires grounding in social science disciplines.

Learning happens not just in classrooms, but also through living experience in the campus. What students see around them, in terms of how the institute is managed, can be a powerful learning message. Therefore, if the institutes themselves use green technology (solar power, rainwater harvesting, etc.) and recycle paper, books, etc., that itself will be teaching sustainability by example.

Similarly, the institutes can themselves become example of “inclusive development” by promoting positive discrimination in their internal practices.

Management schools can run allied community and environment-based programs, and make engagement by students a part of learning (perhaps evaluation, too) for the students.

Introduce compulsory internship with a social/development sector organization part of the program structure. This would expose them to other options for careers which are more inclusive in approach and focus.

WomenChangeMaker Fellowship 2012

2011-11-08T13:27:00.003+05:30

WomenChangeMakers Fellowship focuses on identifying, supporting and connecting social entrepreneurs who head established, successful organizations that work for women’s empowerment, address systemic gender inequalities and positively transform society. WomenChangeMakers provides its fellows with access to professional resources and partners (E.g. consultancies and training by Booz & Co., Mercuri Urval, Ogilvy and others); with financial support (e.g. a yearly stipend over the three-year support cycle) and with connections (e.g. fellowship, mentorship, partnerships and attendance to key professional meetings), with the goal to enable social entrepreneurs to scale up and to replicate their projects and, ultimately, to increase their impact. For more information, please visit www.womenchangemakers.org.

The first two WomenChangeMakers’ Fellows were selected in Brazil in 2011.

We are now seeking nominations from India and would like you to recommend suitable candidates you think will meet our criteria. These are (all inclusive):

Women’s empowerment and progress: candidates head a innovative and confirmed project for the empowerment women, creating an enabling environment and/or lifting the barriers to women’s emancipation; they are active in one of the following areas: access to education and training; access to health care or improvement of health services for women; promotion of women’s social and political leadership; protection of women’s dignity and integrity and prevention of sexual and other forms of targeted violence; access to economic independence and empowerment.

Inflection point: candidates are at an inflection point, that is, their programs have been proven and tested as successful and efficient. They are at a level where they have a need to scale or replicate and grow. The selected fellows have been awarded recognition by cornerstone institutions in the field of social entrepreneurship, including Ashoka, the Schwab Foundation, the Skoll Foundation, Avina etc.

Systemic change: project ideas address the root causes of targeted problems, rather than its symptoms. They have a strong, systemic impact demonstrated by the number of women’s lives changed, in a durable way; as well as an impact on legislation at regional, national or international levels. At the same time, they should prove to have had an impact in the collective mind and social doings of the communities they act upon.

Entrepreneurship: WCM looks for individuals with a proven track record of entrepreneurship, a vision and the determination to reach it by any means.

Leadership: WCM identifies role models for their communities. Social entrepreneurs empower people in their networks to become changemakers.

Personal values are measured based on the deep and consistent commitment to equal rights and opportunities between men and women.

Ethical fibre and integrity are investigated through thorough due diligence and evaluation of entrepreneurs' track record.

Independence from government and secularity.

Please send your nominations to the devashri.mukherjee [at] gmail.com by November 30th, 2011.

Also, do pass the nomination letter around to appropriate networks and persons. I thank you very much in advance for your support and remain at your service for further information.

With Best Regards,

Devashri

Devashri Mukherjee
Consultant India
WomenChangeMakers
Mob. +91-9 8 1 9 7 0 7 9 6 0
Skype: devashrimukherjee

3rd National Conference on Social Entrepreneurship @ XLRI (Jan 28-30, 2011)

2011-01-04T15:57:00.009+05:30

XLRI Jamshedpur is organising the 3rd National Conference on Social Entrepreneurship during January 28-30, 2011.

The theme of this conference - Youth, Development & Social Entrepreneurship - aims:

to create a platform for the youth (young professionals, students and the "novice") to explore social entrepreneurship,

to help them to understand the nuances, challenges and opportunities in this field, and

to showcase some of the young social entrepreneurial ventures.

The conference is designed around the following broad themes/ sessions:

The Challenge

Youth, Volunteerism & Social Entrepreneurship

Challenges of Being a Young Social Entrepreneur

Opportunities

Creating Markets for Marginal Producers

Promoting Livelihood & Employment

Leveraging Technology for Social Development

Sustainable Models for Underserved Markets

Getting Started

Options for Funding & Investments

Supporting Eco-System for Social Entrepreneurs

In addition, the design also includes ‘break-out groups’ to provide opportunity and space to facilitate focused interaction among the participants and the resource persons.

Participation Fee::

Download Registration Form

Profiles of Speakers/ Resource Persons:

Anirban Gupta
Co-Founder & Executive Director
Dhriiti

Anirban Gupta is the co-founder of Dhriiti - an endeavor to promote and protect Small and Medium Enterprises (SME) and to build and create a spirit of entrepreneurship amongst the next generation of Indians.

The core idea behind Dhriiti is to address the the urgent need and potential that is present in the rural and semi urban communities in India. Dhriiti works on the premise that if this potential can be exploited properly, it can yield tremendous results in the form of thousands of highly competitive small enterprises. Correspondingly, it focuses on the youth, and helps them promote small industries by equipping them with modern tools of management and technology.

Anirban holds a bachelors degree from Delhi University, and is an alumnus of Xavier Institute of Management, Bhubneshwar (Rural Management Program). He joined Development Alternatives under their Leaders of Tomorrow Program from campus. He has also worked as a journalist, and with FODRA, a grassroot level NGO working in north east Delhi.

Anshu Gupta
Founder Director
GOONJ
Ashok Fellow

Anshu Gupta founded Goonj in 1998, an organisation which recycles anything that is discarded as an urban “waste” into a resource for others in the rural and calamity-hit areas.

Goonj collects about 20,000kg of clothes every month across India, and turns them into something useable for the very poor - clothing, bags, sanitary napkins, etc. - and reaches them to the needy across 20 states. Goonj achieves this by running collection drives (called ‘Vastradans’) in urban India where people donate clothes which they do not use anymore, but which are in good condition and can be worn. The clothes are processed and sorted in centres run by Goonj across the country. The processed clothes are then channelized through grass root NGOs and provided either free or under the ‘clothes for work’ scheme.

Anshu Gupta is an alumnus of the Indian Institute of Mass Communication, and Masters in Economics. Anshu Gupta is an Ashoka Fellow and Ashoka Global Ambassador. For his work, he has been the recipient of Changemakers Innovation Award 2004 & 2006, World Bank’s Development Marketplace Award 2007, NGO of the Year Award 2007, etc.

Ashraf Patel
Co-Founder
Pravah
Ashoka Fellow

Ashraf Patel is a co-founder of PRAVAH, and the current Director of PRAVAH Learning Voyages, which offers real world learning opportunities to youth facilitators and organisations.

PRAVAH works towards promoting youth development and active citizenship. PRAVAH directly intervenes with adolescents and youth and also provides institutional and capacity-building support to youth engaging and youth-led organizations.

Ashraf is a post graduate in Human Resource from XLRI, an Ashoka Fellow and a trustee of the National Youth Foundation. She is also a working group member appointed by the Youth Ministry to make recommendations for the XIth plan.

Dr Ashwin Naik
Co-Founder & CEO
Vaatsalya Healthcare Systems Pvt Ltd

Vaatsalya is India's first hospital network focused on Tier II and Tier III towns. Vaatsalya provides affordable healthcare services to thousands of families across Karnataka through hospitals in Hubli, Gadag, Bijapur, Mandya, Raichur, Hassan, Mysore, Gulbarga and Shimoga. Aavishkaar was the first investor to come on board at idea stage, followed by Seedfund and Oasis Fund.

When Dr. Ashwin Naik, 36, came up with the idea for Vaatsalya Healthcare in 2004, his dream was to get young doctors to come to small-town India. It was also the key to the success of his rather unique business model: world-class healthcare for rural and semi-urban consumers at rock-bottom prices.

Deep Joshi
Founder, PRADAN
Member, NAC &
Magsaysay Awardee ‘09

Deep Joshi is the co-founder of PRADAN (Professional Assistance for Development Action) which is the largest and most professional NGO in the country. He served as its Executive Director till '08. PRADAN was recognised with the India NGO Award 2006.

For his work Deep was awarded the Ramon Magsaysay Award 2009, and was honoured with Padma Shree in 2010. Deep is also a member of National Advisory Council, and advises GOI on poverty alleviation strategies.

An MTech from MIT (USA) and an MBA from Sloan School (MIT), he has worked with Ford Foundation before returning to India in early 80s.

Inir Pinheiro
Managing Director & Co-Founder
Grassroutes

Inir Pinheiro is the Co-founder of Grassroutes, and has a combined interest in rural development and sustainable livelihoods.

Grassroutes creates platforms for urban communities to experience authentic village experiences and reconnect with their roots and for the village communities to access and avail of sustainable livelihood opportunities thus conserving their way of life, cultures, biodiversities and knowledge systems. Grassroutes is working towards establishing a network of over 200 village tourism destinations across India, where tourism is owned, managed & run by the local village communities. For its work, Grassroutes was recognised with Villgro's Wantrapreneur Award - Start-Up category '1.

Inir is a Post Graduate in Rural Management from XIM, Bhubneshwar, with over 5 years of varied work experience ranging from fund raising to rural tourism.

Kaushalendra Kumar
Founder
Knids Green Pvt Ltd/ Samriddhi
Ashoka Fellow

Kaushalendra is the Founder and Managing Director of Knids Green Pvt Ltd.,

Knids Green Pvt. Ltd. works towards reorienting the vegetable supply chain to reduce wastage, price spread, lead time of vegetable to reach the customers and customer transaction time. It has developed the unique model whereby both marginal vegetable growers and the vendors are organized in a formal way so that operation can be scaled up to a level where they can become a dominant force. Samriddhii, a brand promoted by Knids Green Pvt Ltd & Kaushalya Foundation for professionalizing and organizing vegetable supply chain of Bihar connects around 5,000 farmers from the villages in Patna, Nalanda, Ara and Jehanabad district with more than 500 vegetables vendors from Patna.

Kaushalendra is an MBA from IIM, Ahmedabad, and was the MTV-Youth Icon '08, and the winner of Wantrapreneur Award - Early Growth Category, '10.

Manisha Gupta
Co-Founder/ Director
Start-Up!

Manisha Gupta is the Co-Founder and Director of launched Start Up! - a social venture which aims to demystify the business of "getting started", and partners with social entrepreneurs to incubate innovations, sculpt models, forge connections and raise resources to enable launch of new ideas and ventures.

Manisha has over 17 years of experience in the fields of media, development and social entrepreneurship. She worked in Ashoka: Innovators for the Public, a global organization that launches social entrepreneurs. At Ashoka, she served as the country representative of India, and later as the International Director for a program on youth entrepreneurs. Manisha was part of the team that launched the Social Entrepreneur of the Year Award in India - an initiative of the Schwab Foundation, Nand and Jeet Khemka Foundation and UNDP. She has authored a book on ChildLine, India’s largest Child Rights movement. Manisha has served as strategic advisor and consultant to several social entrepreneurs and their social enterprises.

Dr Nalini Gangadharan
Chairperson - Trustee
CAP Foundation

Dr Nalini Gangadharan is the Promoter @ Chairperson of CAP Foundation, and a development professional with over 2 decades of experience in change management, scenario development, institutional building and resource mobilization for non-profits both in terms of funding, as well as technical and networking support.

CAP Foundation imparts vocational and employability training to underprivileged and out-of-school youth. Apart from facilitating learning, these courses also enable the youth to acquire life skills needed for a positive education-work-life balance. It to provides education and life skills to a wide range of difficult-to-reach groups of disadvantaged youth through community based programmes spread across India, Nepal, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh.

Nalini is a gold medalist from Madras University, and has earlier served as the Executive Director, Dr. Reddy's Foundation. Across her career, she has been responsible for path–breaking development initiatives, such as Clothes Bank, Livelihood Advancement Business School (LABS), Child & Police (CAP) Project, Teen Channel program for Linking Learning and Livelihood, Ek Mouka Employability Training (Workforce Development Initiative), etc.

Neelam Chhiber
Managing Director
Industree
& Co-Founder
Mother Earth

Neelam Chhiber is co-founder Industree, a social enterprise, and of the retail brand, Mother Earth, which together work on building up the production base, enabling artisans to become owners of their enterprise.

Neelam’s efforts have aimed to build a the strong production and marketing platform that provides high-quality artisan-made products. By connecting rural producers to urban markets, it drives producer incomes upwards, increase potential of ownership in their own enterprises, which in turn will drive efficiency. The ventures work with a group of SHG's who invest their own working capital in their enterprises and who are provided assured orders, new designs, along with access to improved infrastructure, working capital, and business development skills.

Neelam is an Industrial Designer from National Institute of Design, Ahmedabad, with more than 2 decades of hands on experience providing design, technical and marketing solutions in natural fibre and hand crafts. She is also an alumnus of Social impact International, as well as Global Social Benefit Incubator , Santa Clara University, USA.

NK Chaudhary
Founder Chairman
Jaipur Rugs Company

N K Chaudhary is the Founder-Chairman & Managing Director of Jaipur Rugs Company Pvt. Ltd, which specialises in hand knotted rugs. He also serves as the Trustee of Jaipur Rugs Foundation - an initiative for planning activities and actions to develop and empower the weavers to improve their standard of living.

Jaipur Rugs was founded in 1978 with just two looms and nine artisans, and has evolved into one of India’s largest carpet exporters to25 countries across the world. It supports 40,000 artisans across 10 states in India. By elevating their status from mere wage earners to become business owners, it provides better ways to artisans, especially women below poverty line to earn more and lead a financially empowered life.

Among many recognitions, NKC and Jaipur Rugs have been a recipient of ‘Sankalp 2010 Award’, 'Best SME Corporate Social Responsibility' by Business Today & Yes Bank, 'Indian Achievers Award for Business Excellence' by Indian Achievers Forum, ‘Corporate Social Responsibility Award’ by FICCI (2010), etc.

Pooja Warier
Director
UnLtd India

Pooja Warier is the Co-founder and Director of UnLtd India that finds, funds and supports start up social entrepreneurs in India.

UnLtd India is a seed fund and incubator for social entrepreneurs, which works with early-stage social entrepreneurs to help them to accelerate their progress, develop as leaders, and prepares their high-impact organisations for scaling and further investment. By engaging with almost all other investors and support organisations, UnLtd offers entrepreneurs a complete ecosystem of seed funding, incubation support and co-working space with which to launch their ventures.

Pooja has a Masters in social work from the Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai, and is also the Co-founder and Director of Journeys for Change that inspires leaders and social entrepreneurs to create more impact through learning from some of world’s most exciting change makers. Previously she worked with a range of organisations and initiatives like the World Social Forum & M.V. Foundation.

Priya Naik
Director
Samhita Social Ventures

Priya Naik heads Samhita Social Ventures, a social business that aims to provide social organizations with access to funds, people, knowledge, networks and customers. Earlier, Priya had co-founded The Spark Group, an education company that delivered affordable education to low income communities.

Samhita is a philanthropic initiative of the Nadathur Trust, founded by N.S. Raghvan, founder and former Joint MD of Infosys. Samhita, which means 'collective good', aims to create an enabling ecosystem for social organizations, donors, volunteers, service providers and other support organizations. Though it is meant for all stakeholders in the social sector, it primarily focuses on providing greater visibility, more resources and a support system for social organizations.

Priya started her career in Accounting at Arthur Andersen in Mumbai, and has worked as a consultant with the International Finance Corporation in Africa. She has a Masters in Economics from Yale University, USA, a Masters in Public Policy from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, USA and a Masters in Commerce from Mumbai University.

Rajiv Khandelwal
Director
Aajeevika Bureau
Ashoka Fellow &
Schwab Social Entrepreneur ‘10

Rajiv Khandelwal is the Co-Founder and Director of Aajeevika Bureau, which is among the first attempts in north India to provide support services to the millions of unskilled laborers and migrants who seasonally move across the country in search of work.

Headquarterd in Udaipur, the Aajeevika Bureau provides identity, skill training, placement, counselling and social security to rural youth at the threshold of migration and helps them become more successful and secure as they shift away for work from villages into urban markets. As a strategy the Bureau works with migrants at their rural source and also in their urban destinations. The Bureau also provides specialised micro finance service for rural migrant workers as well as has a robust vocational training and placement programme for migrant youth.

Rajiv holds a bechelor’s degree from Delhi University, and post-graduate degree from Institute of Rural Management Anand (IRMA). He has earlier worked Centre for Environment Education. In 1998 Rajiv had also launched, Sudrak, a field research and advisory agency, which contributed to nearly 50 projects in various technical and advisory capacities. For his work, Rajiv was felicitated by Schwab Foundation with Social Entrepreneur of the Year Award ’10.

Ramakrishna NK
Co-Founder & CEO
RangDe.org

Ramakrishna NK is the Co-Founder and CEO of Rangde.org, which is a peer to peer lending platform, which leverages technology to to lower the cost of microcredit and reach out to under-served communities.

Rangde.org provides an online platform where the borrowers pay interest rates that are fair and the social investors can make a meaningful difference to other people's lives. Through a network of committed field partners and social investors, Rangde.org enables access to micro-credit to the underserved communities, thus creating a positive impact on business, education, health and environment of the borrowers’ communities.

Ramkrishna is a BTech from Nagarjuna University, and started his career with Satyam Computer Services. Subsequently, he served as Principal Consultant with Vignette Europe Ltd, and with IFMR Trust as Vice President (Technology)

Saloni Malhotra
Founder and CEO
DesiCrew Solutions Pvt Ltd

Saloni Malhotra is the Founder and CEO of DesiCrew, "a non-urban, socially motivated" enterprise, which provides IT enabled service centers in rural areas, employ and train local people to meet the back office demands of clients. With a social mission driving the business, DesiCrew focuses on generating wealth in the rural economy rather than extracting wealth from the rural areas. DesiCrew services span industries, geographies and multiple Indian languages/ dialects. Our back office services cater to verticals such as Insurance, Market Research, Internet & Mobile, E-Governance, and the Social Sector. It currently employs over 130 people across 6 centers in Tamil Nadu.

Launched in 2007, Saloni's work with DesiCrew has been featured in leading newspapers and magazines across the globe such as BusinessWeek, BusinessToday, The Economic Times, Fast Company, The Hindu, etc. She was nominated for BusinessWeek's Asia's Youngest Entrepreneurs, MTV Youth Icon 2008, E&Y Entrepreneur of the Year 2008 and was also facilitated in the presence of the President of India by the CII.

Saloni is an engineer from the University of Pune, and started her career in an interactive media start up, Web Chutney in Delhi, before founding DesiCrew.

Sandeep Farias
Founder & Managing Director
Elevar Equity

Sandeep Farrias founded Elevar Equity “to provide equity to entrepreneurs who challenge discrimination, help them prove their business model, establish the right governance, and raise additional capital to grow.”

Elevar Equity is a leading global growth investor focused on the underserved four billion at the base of the pyramid in developing countries. It provides equity capital to entrepreneurs providing microfinance, financial and other services to customers at the base of the economic pyramid in emerging markets. Elevar invest in ventures which focus on customer, innovation, growth, and profitability combine to create opportunity and prosperity in local communities. The Elevar philiosophy revolves around investing for social and economic returns: returns based on open access for everyone to life changing services.

Sandeep has an integrated law & arts honors degree from the National Law School of India University in Bangalore, India, and has worked with Nishith Desai Associates, before venturing into world of microfinance and investment. Prior to co-founding Elevar, he founded Unitus’ India operations in 2004, and also served as its Chief Innovation Officer at Unitus, test piloting ideas and projects on a global basis shaping Unitus’ long term strategy. He also serves as a Director of Madura Microfinance and has served as a Director of Ujjivan and Comat Technologies. In different capacities, Sandeep has represented or advised organizations such as Google, Amazon, Ashoka, Singapore Telecom and IL&FS Trust Company.

Solomon Jaya Prakash
Founder
LabourNet & Maya Organic
& India Country Director
Ashoka: Innovators for the Public

Solomon JP has an engineering background and began his career in the electro-chemical processing industries. He later worked in Europe for an international youth exchange organization. Back in India in 1989, Solomon founded MAYA with a focus on children’s rights and the eradication of child labor. They work with the state government of Karnataka to recruit parents and communities across slums and villages to take ownership of public schools.

In 1992, he developed a youth-at-risk training workshop for those living on the streets of Bangalore, a program adopted later by many other organizations. In 1996, Solomon created a common platform for numerous children’s rights groups to come together and campaign against child labor. MAYA also developed an education reform program, which operates in several thousands of schools in the states of Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh. In 2004, Solomon spun-off MAYA ORGANIC, a network of collective enterprises run by the working poor, which produce competitive, market quality products. MAYA Organic facilitates each business’ engagement with the mainstream market, enabling it to negotiate, make a profit, and thereby benefit the whole group. In 2005, Solomon founded LabourNet, meant to create and enhance job opportunities for the informal sector service workers in urban areas. LabourNet connects jobs and workers, improves work systems at job sites, encourages skill development, and provides access to social security. He was elected as an Ashoka fellow in 2006.

In February 2010, Solomon JP joined the Ashoka team as the new Country Director in India.

Tarun Agarwal
Promoter-Director
FINO FinTech Foundation

Tarun Agarwal is Director Promoter of FINO Fintech Foundation, a Section 25 company, which is a national level BC for FINO (Financial Inclusion thru Technology Oriented solutions).

FINO is a technology start up incubated by ICICI Bank& promoted by IFC. The organisation provides a combined technology-and-distribution channel to the banks to enable a rapid reach-out to the under-banked populations of India for identifying and enrolling new customers in geography of bank’s choice, as well as supporting subsequent transactions for these customers. It promotes sustainable livelihoods for the rural poor and underserved classes by helping them become economically self-reliant, through the provision of Financial and Insurance services and technical assistance in an integrated and sustainable manner.

Tarun Agarwal is an ICWA, and holds a post-graduate diploma in Financial Management from IMT Ghaziabad and an MBA degree. Prior to FINO, he has earlier served a Chief Manager (Business Development), SBI and as Chief Manager (Agriculture Technology Group), ICICI Bank.

Vijay Pratap Singh Aditya
CEO
EkGaon Technologies
Ashoka Fellow

Vijay Pratap Singh Aditya is a development professional with hands-on experience in institution development, development research, communication systems and grassroots networking. He has considerable experience in developing systems and platforms for enabling enterprise support. He co-founded Ekgaon Technologies where he serves as the Chief Executive Officer.

Ekgaon Technologies focuses on affordable and appropriate open source software solutions, and designs and develops technologies and information systems to meet the needs of developing communities. As more and more companies compete for the “bottom of the pyramid” markets in rural India, Ekgaon’s technological solutions force private companies to compete fairly and offer better services to their rural customers. In return, Ekgaon’s platform offers these companies the aggregated consumer information they need to develop stronger and cost-effective products and services. Ekgaon Technologies’ work has won a number of recognitions and awards, which include NASSCOM Social Innovation Honours 2010and Dell Small Business Excellence Award 2009.

Vijay is an Electrical Engineering Graduate with a Post-Graduation in Management from the Indian Institute of Forest Management, Bhopal.

Vijay Shukla
Partner – Investments
Setu Ventures

Vijay Shukla is the Co-Founder of Setu Ventures, a firm that provides professional and financial assistance to early stage companies and entrepreneurs, and has over 15 years of industry experience (with Steel Authority of India, E&Y and GlaxoSmithKline). Vijay specializes in the areas of strategy, business development, consulting and engineering, and is interested in the areas of value creation, technology, entrepreneurship and education. He is a ‘parallel entrepreneur’ and has earlier co-founded Eduvisors, India’s largest education sector focused business consulting and research services company, and ValueFirst, India’s leading enterprise mobile data services company.

An engineering graduate from IT-BHU and MBA from XLRI, he has mastered the ‘art’ of evaluating business strategies and organizational processes through his career with working in the domains of public sector, entrepreneurship, information and mobile technology, FMCG and management consulting services.

Vineet Rai
Founder & CEO
Aavishkaar India Micro Venture Capital Fund
Ashoka Fellow

Vineet Rai is a founder and the CEO of Aavishkaar – a micro venture fund which seeks to nurture and initiate creative thought processes at the grassroots level and convert them into thriving enterprises.

The primary focus of Aavishkaar is to effect change by promoting growth of grassroots ideas and enterprise. Rural entrepreneurs face an uphill task of crossing the first threshold of taking an idea beyond the point of an experiment into a successful business. Even limited resources, in terms capital, business knowledge and a certain degree of hand-holding, applied at the right juncture go a long way in transforming local ideas into sustainable businesses. Aavishkaar provides such resources to transform nascent rural and semi-urban ideas into coherent business entities by funneling resources at the point and time where they can be most effective.

Prior to Aavishkaar, Vineet was a founder and the CEO of GIAN, an incubator for rural innovations and ventures based in Ahmedabad, Gujarat. At GIAN, he was responsible for identifying, evaluating, nurturing and launching grassroots innovations based micro level enterprises for poverty alleviation. Vineet holds a Post-Graduate diploma in Forestry Management from Indian Institute of Forest Management, Bhopal.

Vishal Talreja
Director Founder
Dream A Dream
Ashoka Fellow

Vishal Talreja is the Co-founder & Director of Dream A Dream, a venture which empowers children from vulnerable backgrounds by developing life skills while at the same time sensitizing the community through active volunteering leading to a non-discriminatory society where unique differences are appreciated.

Dream A Dream is a professionally-run Public Charitable Trust, and provides children from vulnerable backgrounds with non-traditional educational opportunities designed to allow them to explore, innovate and build important life skills. These life skills are fundamental to child/youth development and to the successful transition into adulthood and becoming fully functioning and productive members of our society. It works through partnership with 9 NGOs, 1200+ volunteers, and imparts life-skills - interpersonal skills (e.g., teamwork, communications, negotiation and coping skills), cognitive skills (e.g., decision-making, problem solving and critical thinking), creativity, confidence, self-awareness and a passion for learning – among children from marginalized communities.

Formerly an investment banker and venture capitalist, prior to founding Dream A Dream in 1999, Vishal worked with Xerox and co-founded an investment bank, Technology Holdings. Vishal is an Ashoka Fellow and also sits on Boards of many organizations including UnLtd India, ITIHAS and Bangalore Cares.

Details of the Conference are also available at:
http://3rd-se-conference-at-xlri.blogspot.com/

..some thoughts on Social Entrepreneurship

2010-12-04T21:49:00.004+05:30

About a month back, I was in Bangalore, and gate-crashed in into a friend's home to lounge around for about a week. Abhijit Bhaduri is a dear friend - a multi-faceted person who carries an author, singer, manager, actor, etc., all in one single body... and a blogger too at http://abhijitbhaduri.com

One side-benefit of staying with him was being featured on his site for this piece on Madhukar Shukla on Social Entrepreneurship

Abhijit: In a Business School environment, the focus is on the economic motive aka the profit-motive. What prompted you to initiate a course on social entrepreneurship?

Madhukar Shukla: Let me start with a qualifier about this term “business school”. This is a rather recent conversion of what were traditionally described as “management schools”, i.e., educational institutes which teach people how to create value by managing resources more efficiently and effectively – whether in business or in other social settings. By equating ‘management’ only with ‘business’, we tend to limit the vast array of roles which a management professional can play in the society. After all, almost 92-93% of India’s employable manpower, which accounts from almost 60% of our GDP, lies outside the for-profit organized business.

In that sense, my starting this course and other activities related to social entrepreneurship in XLRI is not really a radical departure from the core purpose of any management school or professional – though, yes, it does seem out-of-synch with the contemporary understanding of what management is all about.

For me personally, it was also born out of the realization that if management professionals have to ‘create value’, then in contemporary India, the critical managerial challenges lie out there in the larger society, not within the corporate boundaries. In today’s India, we need genuine management solutions to address larger societal problems.

Let me give some examples to illustrate what I mean:

Take GOONJ, a social enterprise organization which collects, sorts, and repairs 50-tonnes of reusable clothes from middle-class homes in Indian cities every month, and reaches them to the poor in the interior villages across 20 Indian states. Its per-unit cost of reaching a single piece of clothing to any part of India is less than a Rupee.

Or take SELCO India, which provides solar lightning solutions to rural masses at affordable price by financing the product through microfinance options; or Vaatsalya Hospitals, which provides state-of-the-art high-quality healthcare to semi-urban towns at affordable price; or Samridhi, which provides sustainable livelihoods to vegetable growers and milk-producers by providing them with easy market-access and better returns for their produce.

There are thousands of such examples of social enterprises which utilize managerial skills to make a real difference in the lives of people and society. Unfortunately, these stories and cases rarely become a part of the management education curriculum, and therefore, young management professionals never come to know about these options. One of the key objectives of the social entrepreneurship course was to provide exposure to such examples and options to the students.

Abhijit: Does the social enterprise need to run differently than the conventional for-profit organizations?

Madhukar Shukla: Oh, yes, in a number of ways! Firstly, there is the basic difference in the purpose of the organization itself. The for-profit organizations, obviously, exist to make profits – whereas the primary purpose of social enterprise is to make a social impact by solving critical societal problems. Since the purpose itself is different, the organizational processes and systems to achieve the purpose need to be different. One critical difference emanates from the question: who are the key stake-holders in the enterprise? Whose interests does the enterprise primarily serve? As compared to the for-profits, who primarily serve interest of the promoters or shareholders, for the social enterprises, the responsibility is to the community they serve.

Secondly, it is easy to measure profits, and therefore the success (or failure) of the commercial ventures. However, measuring social impact is not so very easy – I mean, it is very difficult to answer the question if one has made a difference in the life of people. Moreover, often the impact of social venture becomes visible only after many years. For instance, if Pratham’s Read India Program made more than 30mn children literate during last 4-years, its actual social impact – did it make them more productive? more socially aware and responsible? – can be assessed only after many years when these children grow up.

Abhijit: Do you notice something different among people who become social entrepreneurs? Are they motivated by different drives?

Madhukar Shukla: At least in my experience, in terms of their capabilities and qualifications, the social entrepreneurs I have met are just like any other entrepreneur. They possess an entrepreneur’s sharp sense in identifying a gap – an underserved “market” – and then designing innovative solutions to meet its needs. For instance, it is a common knowledge that urban middle-class households often find it difficult to locate qualified workmen (e.g., plumbers, masons, maids, carpenters, etc.), for odd domestic jobs; on the other hand, workmen with these skills spend inordinate time looking for jobs. Solomon JP, an Ashoka Fellow, saw an opportunity in this gap, and founded an online exchange, LabourNet, which connects the work-men with their prospective clients.

Similarly, like any entrepreneur (and unlike a typical manager) their ways of approaching issues is different; they seem to start by identifying what they want to achieve, and then working backward to mobilize resources to reach that goal. In doing so, they seem to have an innate ability to learn and self-correct as they move towards their goals. This makes them quite open to look for new opportunities. I still recall talking with the founder of a venture which works to rehabilitate the children of sex workers. When I asked her about her “fund-raising strategy”, she laughed and said, “oh, we decide what we want to do to make a sustainable impact in the lives of these kids – and then for funds, we pray!“ On probing further, she cryptically commented, “Well, in our case, so far the decisions have always preceded the resources!” I have found this stance across almost all social entrepreneurs I have known.

However, what does differentiate social entrepreneurs from others (including the commercial entrepreneurs) is the depth and intensity of their active engagement with larger society. The key-word is “active engagement”. While many of us feel strongly about social issues, mostly our concern does not get translated into specific actions. For social entrepreneurs, their concern about social issues is an over-arching factor which determines their actions. This also gets translated into a strong sense of accountability to the communities they serve.

Abhijit: How valid is the hypothesis that if the social enterprises scale up, they suffer from the same challenges/problems which the large for-profit organizations suffer from?

Madhukar Shukla: Well, ‘yes’ and ‘no’! – depending upon how we interpret the term “scaling up”. If it refers to scaling up of the enterprise, then obviously, like any organization, it will face the growing-up pangs like any for-profit venture.

However, in the social entrepreneurial space, scaling-up has another meaning too. Since the purpose of social venture is to make a social impact, perhaps it makes more sense to think about scaling-up of the “impact” rather than that of the “enterprise”. Social ventures actually scale-up the impact by creating a successful model which can be replicated by others. The success of Grameen Bank is not so much that Prof Md Yunus created an organization which could scale up to serve millions of poor in Bangladesh; rather its success was in developing and demonstrating a model for financial inclusion, which could be replicated by thousands of social entrepreneurs across the world.

Abhijit: Do you see that for-profit and social models merging together in time to come?

Madhukar Shukla: At least in India, with such a huge BoP (Bottom of Pyramid) “market”, this overlap between the for-profit and not-for-profit social ventures already exists. In the recent years, we have seen regular commercial banks foraying into rural areas to provide micro-credit, FMCG companies creating and marketing products for the rural masses, or telecom companies offering schemes which people with limited income can avail. Conversely, there are also a large number of social ventures which are for-profit – some registered as Section 25 companies, but also many as Private Limited Companies.

However, in spite of this increasing convergence between territories of the for-profit and not-for-profit models, my own hunch is that at least in India, the for-profit model will not be able to completely replace the not-for profit social ventures – at least not for many decades to come. My reason for saying this is because the for-profit models rely on existence of a “market” – i.e., a reasonably sized segment of people who can pay for a service or a product. In contemporary India, however, 837mn or 77% of the population lives on a daily income of less than Rs 20/day – and thus, a large proportion of population still remains outside the “market”. Or it offers profit margins which would make a commercial venture non-viable. That’s why the social ventures will continue to retain their relevance and separate identity.

Grassroutes: Developing Villages through Rural Tourism

2010-11-18T19:48:00.004+05:30

When OutlookBusiness covered Grassroutes - a rural tourism venture founded by an XIM, Bhubneshwar graduate, Inir Pinheiro - it desicribed it as:

"The venture, named Grassroutes, hopes to transform nondescript villages, near the metros, into viable tourist destinations; viable for him and beneficial to the villagers with increased livelihood opportunities."

Social Venture Angel Investors/Incubators @ XLRI, Nov 15-16

2010-11-11T20:08:00.005+05:30

My course on Introduction to Social Entrepreneurship is coming to an end in a week on Nov 16th, when the groups will be presenting their social venture plans.

I have invited Sonali Singh, Director, Start up!, and Vijay Shukla, Co-Founder, Setu Ventures to assess and give feedback on their plans. The previous day - Nov 15th - they will also be interacting with class to share what the angel investors look for in a plan.

Sonali Singh is Director with Start up! - a venture which aims to demystify the business of "getting started", and partners with social entrepreneurs to incubate innovations, sculpt models, forge connections and raise resources to enable launch of new ideas and ventures.

Based out of bangalore, Sonali has worked for 10 years with corporate and civil society sectors of India. She did her post-graduation at National Institute of Fashion Technology, and worked with garment industry in production management. She then went to pursue her second post-graduation in Personnel Management and Industrial Relations from XLRI Jamshedpur, and began her career in human resouces (HR) at Citibank. She later joined Accenture where she worked for over five years in various roles. In her last role, apart from leading the HR function for more than 1,200 employees in India, she was also India lead for Policy and Employee Relations.

In early 2008, Sonali decided to switch careers and undertook a couple of short-term projects with CSOs before joining Comat, a Bangalore-based social enterprise for a short time. In April 2009, she joined Start Up! as full-time director.

Vijay Shukla is the Co-Founder of Setu Ventures, a firm that provides professional and financial assistance to early stage companies and entrepreneurs, and has over 15 years of industry experience (with Steel Authority of India, E&Y and GlaxoSmithKline), and specializes in the areas of strategy, business development, consulting and engineering, and is interested in the areas of value creation, technology, entrepreneurship and education. He is a ‘parallel entrepreneur’ and has earlier co-founded Eduvisors, India’s largest education sector focused business consulting and research services company, and ValueFirst, India’s leading enterprise mobile data services company.

An engineering graduate from IT-BHU and MBA from XLRI, he has mastered the ‘art’ of evaluating business strategies and organizational processes through his career with working in the domains of public sector, entrepreneurship, information and mobile technology, FMCG and management consulting services.

from small beginnings... what makes a social entrepreneur?

2010-09-23T20:58:00.004+05:30

Ever since, I got interested in the field of Social Entrepreneurship (which is quite recent in life), I was fascinated by the small beginnings from where some of the life/world-changing social ventures started.

Describing the beginning of SEWA, Ela Bhatt once wrote:

"In 1971, migrant women working as cart-pullers in the city’s cloth market came to me in TLA, where I had started my work life working for textile mill workers of Ahmedabad. The women who lived on the footpath, were seeking help for better living conditions. Next month came the head loader women of the same cloth market, feeling agitated about very low rates of payment (30 paise per trip carrying the bale of cloth from a wholesaler to a retailer). They felt exploited by the traders. Then followed the used garment dealer women in search of credit facility... That was 1971. Some of these urban, poor, self- employed women workers came to the meeting that I called in a public garden where we formed our trade union (1972). We called it the Self Employed Women’s Association, SEWA."

Similarly, David Bornstein described how Grameen Bank was born out of Mohammad Yunus’s chance meeting with Sufiya Khatun who would work hard to make bamboo-stools throughout the day, and yet earn just about 2 cents:

"… When Yunus asked why her profit was so low, she explained that the only person who would lend her money to buy bamboo was the trader who bought her final product - and the price he set barely covered her costs.

(Yunus) wanted to see if there were other villagers in similar circumstances… and compiled a list of forty-two people whose capital requirements, in order to buy materials and work freely, added up to about $26.00.

Through the years he would recount that story hundreds of times… "I felt extremely ashamed of myself being part of a society that could not provide twenty-six dollars to forty-two able, skilled human beings who were trying to make a living."

Likewise...

Delhi-based GOONJ, which collects about 40,000 k.g. of garments every month, and reaches them to the needy across 20 states, started in 1998 when its founder Anshu Gupta was struck by the bundle of garments lying unused in his almarah: “Here we are, a young family of two adults, new home-makers for just three years, not wealthy by any means and we have 67 pieces of good, usable garments we don't want any more. Yet, but for the disaster we wouldn't be giving them away."

AID (Association for India’s Development), which has 36 chapters in USA and operates more than 100 projects in 18 Indian states, started with a modest proposal by its founder K Ravi to his friends to contribute $10 to start a school in some Indian village.

The idea of providing affordable solar electricity to rural poor came to Harish Hande, the Ashden Award winner founder of Selco India, when he visited the Dominican Republic as a part of his Master’s thesis. Today, Selco has more than 30,000 installations and 25 service centers.

The Rickshaw Bank was conceived when veterinarian Dr Pradip Kumar Sarmah asked his rickshaw puller how much money he makes, and found that even after 16 years, he did not own the rickshaw, earned a paltry Rs. 25/day, and had to pay half his earning as rent.

Child Rights and You (CRY) started when 25-years old Rippan Kapur and 6 of his friends, sitting around his mother’s dining table, contributed Rs.50/- each to create a fund that could “do something for the underprivileged Indian child”. Today, it has grown into one of the largest child rights movement in the country.

…the list goes on.

What also puzzled me was that people who started these ventures were ordinary individuals. They had limited means and modest backgrounds. What stimulated them to create/do something significant was also just a commonplace occurrence, similar to myriad situations which we all encounter in our lives.

And yet, there was “something” they had, which allowed them to transform an everyday experience or act into sustainable ventures which could create major social impact.

So, what was that “something”?

As I learned more about such social entrepreneurs (be meeting them and reading), even their field of work may have been different (e.g., tribal and rural development, primary education, women empowerment, micro-credit lending, etc.), five qualities seemed to be common across them:

a. Belief in possibility of change and human potential
Underlying their efforts was the optimism that despite adversities and lack of resources/support, it is possible to create large transformations in a social system. This optimism is supported by a belief in the human potential – their own and of those others who are focus of their efforts - to make such changes happen. Ela Bhatt, for instance, was driven by the firm belief that even the poor illiterate women have a vision of personal change, and the capacity to make it happen.

Similarly, Harish Hande’s vision of reaching solar power to poor communities was based on the conviction that poor can afford, pay for and maintain technology.

It was this optimism and certainty that allowed them to envision futures that can be created by leveraging on this human potential for self-empowerment.

b. Inspired Pragmatism
While the underpinnings of their motivation was an internal need to create ‘social value’, to ‘do something for the marginalised’ or to ‘contribute back to the society’, etc., they did not adopt any charitable model to address the social issues. Their effort was to develop a model of “business” which was sustainable, and therefore, scalable. As Prof Yunus once explained his approach to eradicate poverty:

‘…I wanted to give money to people… so that they would be free from the moneylenders to sell their product at the price which the markets gave them …. (I charged interest because) I thought if you do things in a businesslike way, then the project can become as big as you want it to because you are… not dependent on anybody.… This is not charity. This is business: business with a social objective, which is to help people get out of poverty.’

c. Capacity to Reframe Problems as Opportunities
Perhaps, what distinguished them from most of us was their opportunity-orientation. Their actions do not start from the decision about how best they can deploy the resources that they have; rather, they start from the issues need to be addressed, and then work backward to identify the resources that are needed to solve those problems, and innovate opportunities for generating those resources.

Consider, for instance, the Delhi-based Salaam Baalak Trust (SBT), which provides education, meals, boarding facilities, information on basic hygiene, counseling and medical help, and rehabilitation to around 3500 street- and platform- children each year. To partly finance its activities, SBT innovated the “guided street walks”, which are conducted by the street children. Not only this helps in humanizing the interface between the street kids and the social elites, it also provides a source of income to them and SBT.

d. Heightened Sense of Accountability to Those Served
The ventures they created were, of course, based on a deeply felt sense of obligation and accountability to the constituencies they served. There was an ethical impetus which guides their actions. But there is another, more important rationale for this sense of accountability.

Unlike the business entrepreneurs, markets do not work well for social entrepreneurs in providing a feedback on their actions. When one is in the “business” of creating social/environmental value, it is difficult to evaluate – and monitor - the intangibles such as social improvements, public good (or harm), or benefits for the marginalized, etc.

To offset this inefficiency in the environment in which they operate, they developed mechanisms to assess the needs of the communities which they aim to serve – and the extent to which their efforts and actions make an impact in meeting those needs. Wherever possible, they design market-like feedback mechanisms that reinforce their accountability to their constituencies. SEWA, for instance, developed a unique methodology to monitor its impact by asking 10 questions related to its twin goals of providing ‘full employment’ (including income and social security) and ‘self-reliance’ to its members.

e. Ability to Work Across Boundaries
They built not just the organizations, but also a collaborative network across different stakeholders in the issue (e.g., local population, state machinery, technology partners, micro-financial institutions, donors, etc.). Selco India, for instance, tied up with micro-finance agencies to provide credit to their customers/ beneficiaries; Goonj works through more than 100 grass-root organizations across the states to deliver need-based garments; and, CRY works with more hundreds of NGOs to reach the resources to those who need them, etc.

What perhaps made their ideas and actions sustainable was their ability to collaborate, to create networks, to share ideas, resources and credit with others to increase the sense of ownership in that network.

After all, as Harry Truman had said long time back:
“It is amazing what you can achieve if you don’t care who gets the credit”

*****

Social Entrepreneurship Course: Term-Break Internships

2010-08-20T16:53:00.004+05:30

Last year when my course on "Introduction to Social Entrepreneurship" grew into a 2-term course, it threw open a new opportunity to provide the students a short internship/attachment with a social venture during the term-break.

The purpose of the internship/attachment was to give them a ground-level feel of ventures in this sector - their learning came through their interactions with the functionaries and staff, by visiting the project sites and interacting with customers/beneficiaries; if they could do a short field project (though the time was limited - just about 7-10 days), that was invaluable.... and then when they returned, we shared the stories and learned from each other.

This year too, the 35 participants of the course have identified their areas of interest and we could find social ventures (for-profits, not-for-profits, NGOs), which are willing to host them for 7-10 days.

Here is the list:

Bhumi (Hyderabad)
http://bhumi.in/
BHUMI is a "Center for learning transformational Grass Roots Leadership" fuelled by a vision to create an equitable and strife free society by grooming transformational leaders who will bring about large scale, holistic and sustainable transformation.

Biotech India (Thiruvantpuram)
http://www.ashdenawards.org/winners/biotech
Getting rid of waste, both food and human, is essential to hygiene. But waste is also a cost-effective and sustainable source of fuel. Since 2004 Biotech-India - the recepient of the Ashden Award for 2007 - has improved the lives of hundreds of thousands of people in Kerala, Southern India and saved several thousand tonnes per year of CO2 simply by getting rid of waste.

Children's Rights in Goa (Goa)
http://childrightsgoa.org/
Children's Rights in Goa (CRG) is involved in child protection and the advocacy of children's rights. CRG is dedicated to the goal of improving the status of children in Goa. It strives to create awareness about the rights of the child and is committed to protecting children from sexual abuse and all forms of exploitation.

Conserve India (Delhi)
http://www.conserveindia.org/
Born of a desire to reduce India's rubbish mountain, improve energy efficiency, and help some of Delhi's poorest out of the city's slums, Conserve India achieves all this by turning plastic bags into high fashion.

Desi Crew Solutions Pvt Ltd (Chennai)
http://www.desicrew.in/
DesiCrew Solutions Pvt. Ltd - winner of Sankalp 2009 Award and recepient of the Manthan Award - is a rural BPO company, incubated by RTBI of IIT- Madras. By setting up IT enabled service centers in rural areas, it provides meaningful livelihood to educated people of rural & semi-urban India.

Financial Information Network & Operations Ltd. (FINO) (New Delhi)
http://www.fino.co.in/
FINO - winner of Global Financial Times "banking at the bottom of pyramid award" - provides electronic banking technologies to enable financial institutions (FIs) to serve the under-served and the unbanked sector and also to service the technology requirements of entities engaged in servicing the bottom of pyramid customers.

Health Management and Research Institute (HMRI) (Hyderabad)
http://www.hmri.in/
HMRI is a nonprofit organization working towards improved access and quality of healthcare services for all. HMRI leverages state-of-the-art information and communication technologies and modern management practices to transform healthcare delivery by creating the world’s largest integrated digital health network.

Mirakle Couriers (Mumbai)
http://www.miraklecouriers.com/
Mirakle Couriers - winner of Helen Keller Award 2009 and recepient of Echoing green Fellowship 2008 - is a courier company with a difference; the venture provides livelihood to deaf people from underprivileged background, while providing professional service to some of the well-known corporate clients.

Palsa Pally Unnayan Samity (Mushirabad)
http://www.karmayog.org/ngo/PPUS
PPUS is an NGO which works to develop poor rural communities in the Murshidabad District to promote communal harmony, gender equity, and neutralisation of caste, creed and religion. It does so by by providing healthcare and education, and facilitating active community participation in self-governance, .

Pratham (Patna)
http://www.pratham.org/
Pratham is the largest non governmental organisation working to provide quality education to the underprivileged children of India. Pratham was established in 1994 to provide education to the children in the slums of Mumbai city. Since then, the organization has grown both in scope and geographical coverage.

Pravah (New Delhi)
http://www.pravah.org/
Pravah works with adoloscents and diverse groups like youth organizations and institutions to impact issues of social justice through youth citizenship action. Its programs aim to promote internalisation of social orientation and regard for common spaces, and to develop socially responsible decision makers of the future.

Priyasakhi Mahila Sangh (Indore)
http://psmssm.org/
Priyasakhi Mahila Sangh promotes development and livelihood activities for the underprivileged of the society. The organisation specifically works with women to strenghten women SHGs in rural and urban areas of different districts of Madhya Pradesh

Project Why (New Delhi)
http://www.projectwhy.org/
Project Why is a New Delhi (India) based non-profit organisation engagedin education support and life skill enhancement of slum children and their families. It works to create a model whereby quality education support in underprivileged areas can be provided by pooling community resources.

RAICO (Ranchi)
Some RAICO Products
RAICO is a young start-up, which works with 350 rural women of Jharkhand, and uses and enhances their skills to make and market designer hand-woven, hand-embroidered apparels and artificial jewelery.

Rang De (Chennai)
http://www.rangde.org/
Rang De is a non profit entity which aims to make low cost microcredit a reality for people to whom even ‘traditional microcredit’ is unaffordable. It does so by enabling individuals to become online social investors, and brings microcredit and online lending to the forefront, thus bringing down the cost of microcredit

Sasha (Kolkata)
http://www.sashaworld.com/
Sasha is the not-for-profit marketing outlet for more than a hundred groups of craftspersons and producers from all over the country. Apart from marketing, Sasha also involves itself in the formative stages of craft groups. Sasha works with these groups to revive crafts and develop new designs and techniques.

SOS Children's Villages India (Bawana)
http://www.soscvindia.org/
SOS Children's Villages is a non-governmental social organisation, which provides family-based long-term care, education and development of orphaned and abondoned children through its "villages".

Ujjivan (Bangalore & Delhi)
http://www.ujjivan.com/mission_goals.htm
Ujjivan is an micro-finance organisation - with 500 branches in urban and rural India - which provide financial services to the economically active poor, to enable them to lead a ‘better life’. It also participates in a holistic approach to poverty reduction through a partnership with Parinaam NGO by collaborating with institutions focused on childcare, education, health, vocational training, community development, shelter and disaster relief.

URAVU (Wayanad)
http://www.uravu.net/
URAVU provides livelihood to the marginalized and economically disadvantaged social groups, especially the traditional artisans, women and the indigenous people, through end-to-end bamboo-processing and producing eco-friendly handicraft products.

Women’s Interlink Foundation (Kolkata)
http://www.womensinterlinkfoundation.org/
WIF is a Kolkata-based organisation which works with disadvantaged women, children and communities (specifically with sex-workers, abondoned and trafficked children and women) to provide them with access to basic amenities and societal resources, and empowers the to improve their quality of life.

Hamara Footpath: Restoring Childhoods

2010-08-14T11:44:00.004+05:30

Mumbai-based Hamara Footpath is a community effort taking responsibility for its city and for its children who are deprived of their childhood on the streets. It engages engage volunteers to educate children living on the streets through creative, fun and participatory methods.

Read more about them here.

Or, better still, if you are in Mumbai, and want to support what they are doing, participate in their "Fashion Street" initiative on Aug 14-15, 2010

Click on the image to view the details

Driving the folkswagon

2010-07-25T13:18:00.003+05:30

Kalamandir started with "a vision to foster necessity and accessibility of arts and aesthetics in our day to day social life. Countering the mono culture, the venture looks for a creative, dynamic and diversified environment for the young minds among tribes and non-tribes of Jharkhand - who are fiull of finer senses."

In doing so, it has not only revived the dying tribal arts, but also now supports 2500 families, and has built up a "social business venture" with a turnover of Rs.1crores.

This story about Kalamandir was published a few months back:

It was a visit to the workshop of an impoverished stone sculptor in 1980 that chiselled out Amitava Ghosh's mission in life. The young banker and amateur theatre artist had just arrived in Jamshedpur, then a part of Bihar. Three decades on, villagers in the Singhbhum-Kolhan region hail him as the man who has revived four dying art forms, bankrolling a clutch of struggling artists, providing livelihood to 2,500 families, and inspiring hundreds to live by their art. "I met this sculptor named Guntha Laik on a visit to Chandil village. He had lost his house and farmland to the Subarnarekha dam project," Ghosh said. Moved by his plight, Ghosh started making regular trips to Chandil to explore ways of aiding Laik. "I tried to help him with funds, but couldn't do much."

The failure haunted Ghosh, then a 21-yearold fresh out of Kolkata's Scottish Church college, for years. His chance for redemption came in the mid- '90s, when he learnt about the dying tribal metal art of Dokra. "I visited Chakulia's Bend village to meet the last surviving Dokra artist. Phatik Rana had recently given up the trade to earn his living by working in farms," said Ghosh. "It was depressing to see an artist working the plough."

It took Ghosh five years to goad Rana back into his trade. Today, Rana is recognised for his skills - his products fetch him up to Rs 9,000 per month - and he is an icon for a generation of younger artists. In his village alone, more than 100 youngsters now make Dokra and earn almost as much as Rana does.

Ghosh also walked an extra mile for Kedar Nath Sahu, the Chhau dancer of Saraikela. The art, once the toast of tribal performances at the Rashtrapati Bhavan and stages in China and Russia, tottered on the brink of extinction while Sahu himself was plunged in poverty. Ghosh got Sahu to draw up a blueprint for a profitable revival of the mask dance. In 2001, he organised the first Chhau Mahotsav - the pivot on which the dance made a turnaround. Ghosh subsequently set up the State Chhau Centre at Saraikela to lend institutional support to the artists. Sahu, meanwhile, went on to bag the Padma Shri in 2004.

Ghosh took up another challenge - the revival of Firkal, a traditional war dance. He trained Potka village's womenfolk to make products from grass and bamboo to support their dancer husbands. Over the last four years, more than 500 wives have coaxed their men to perform Firkal and leave the earning to the women.

How I became a social entrepreneur? - The "Dream a Dream" Story

2010-07-11T13:08:00.006+05:30

Vishal Talreja, an Ashoka Fellow, founded Dream A Dream in 1999 at the age of 20. The venture seeks to empower children from vulnerable backgrounds by developing life skills and at the same time sensitizing the community through active volunteering leading to a non-discriminatory society where unique differences are appreciated. Over the years, Dream a Dream has enhanced the lives of about 3000 children from vulnerable backgrounds and engaged over 1500 active volunteers who represent an increasingly sensitive community.

Here is the story of "how I became a social entrepreneur" from the horse's mouth:

...and what Dream a Dream does, and How:

5 Social Entrepreneurs @ XLRI - what did we learn?

2010-07-09T22:53:00.011+05:30

A follow-up on the previous post

So here we had two interactions - "On Becoming a Social Entrepreneur" & "Issues in Social Engagement" - with 5 people with a "track-record" for their engagement/contribution to make a social impact on July 7th:

someone who started with 67 clothes in 1998, and built and organisation which now collects, sorts and reaches 50,000kg of wearable clothes to villages in more than 20 states across the country

someone who started with an idea and an internet "pledge-campaign" and built the largest public library in the state

someone who started with running a vocational training in a local college for students, and has now scaled up to run 20-odd centers which provide employability skills training in the region to the less-privileged and get them into mainstream...

someone who started with an intention to "give back to the society" and has helped the local community to start many initiatives

someone who started with a turnover of Rs.4000/- in 2001 trying to provide livelihoods to rural communities, so that he can help preserving the local tribal art, and now has an organisation with a turnover of Rs.1 crores

So what did we learn?!!

The best I could think was to invite the students of the ISE (Intro to Social Entrepreneurship) class (including me:) to send their short description of take-away from these interactions...

(and ...though we had a gathering of more than the 35-odd class size in these 2-sessions - those not in the course.. some actually not even from XL:) - and they would have taken their learning with them)...and much of our life-changing learning is 'implicit" than "explicit"...)

...here is a compilation of our take-aways - what we learned - which I could get from some of those 35+... what they (and I) remembered and learned from the interaction

----

"I never even knew how many e's are there in "entrepreneurship" when I started. I was just following an idea I was passionate about."

If you have to think about jumping into the social sector, then you're probably not ready for it.

If you start early, you have more time to make mistakes and learn from them... There is no escaping from making mistakes, if you want to become an entrepreneur.

Entrepreneurship is like proposing a girl. You need passion, guts and you need to be crazy enough to do it.

India has huge population, therefore huge number of problems., therefore solutions required for those problems will be huge, therefore social entrepreneurs required for solving the problems will be huge in number.

Think big but act small. Every action, big or small, shall eventually help in scaling up. Don't allow the overall vision to hamper your daily progress.

Teach poor children who cant pay their school's fee. Feed the hungry every year (around 500-1000 people), atleast twice during festivals. Doing these things doesn't require much time, doesn't require you to leave your job (for which we have also worked hard) and doesn't deplete you of your hard earned money much. It doesn't make you famous, but it will make a difference!!

Every one wants to be an Entrepreneur first and then think about social cause. 1.2 million NGO's (that's what I heard, I think) and numerous entrepreneurs and still the country's not improving. Lets be dedicated to the social cause not to our cause.

Stop Talking Start Doing

"Dont try to solve India's or world's problems. Start by solving problems which you see around you."

Somehow gave me a feeling that entrepreneurship lies in the "possible domain" and not the "impossible domain"...

Try to get rid of "Escapism": today I have to pay my education loan, tomorrow I have to pay my housing loan and so on.... this is a trap from which a person would not be able to come... act now, and if one is passionate about his idea, then in a period of year or so, he would definitely find some way to overcome his other liabilities.

Where there is a will there is a way

"Yes, you need to pay the 'education loan' when you get a job. If you jump into entrepreneurship, why start with an assumption that you won't be able to pay it after a year?"

Think big but there is no harm in starting small... Don't let the hurdles stop you.. they will be taken care of once you jump in! .. You learn to improvise...

"We are country of volumes , problems are in volume, solutions required are in volumes and people required to address these problems are in volumes"

I have never understood entrepreneurship - forget what is "social entrepreneurship"... In a way, we are all social entrepreneurs; I think the only entrepreneurial act is proposing to a girl - it has risks, hope... sometimes even a "business plan" :)

No matter what one's way of doing good is (profit or non-profit), as long as the end result remains 'good', the value of the effort always justifies the effort....in whatever form it be.

One major learning I had, about being a social entrepreneur is that, it’s a matter of following what you really want deep inside... if you recollect, every speaker mentioned about ‘giving back something to the society’, and getting a mental satisfaction... I think most people have that urge, but are plainly not bold enough to leave our comfort zone and to do something that challenges your foundations. And there lies the difference between being mediocre and being someone who can bring a change in the lives of at least a handful of people, at the same time making it sustainable for yourself. Only once you get out of that zone, & start doing something which gives you inner fruits ( internal satisfaction-which i think, only money can never bring in ) and initiate or be part of a change for good, you will understand that by helping the society- I’m helping myself like never before... All these leads to an understanding that, Social entrepreneurship is – ‘helping others to help yourself’

Most of us don't want to leave the comfort zone of security(money, family etc). Though to some extent moving into Social Sector can test you in these aspects but with a viable model one can easily overcome this. Sujit and Anshu makes one feel that if not now, then when. There are lots of opportunities to be tapped and market is huge. :-) enough for everyone to accommodate to make a mark and contribute.
Everyone can start in their own small way.

---------

and of course, we also had the inauguration of "Udaan"- XLRI's Children's Public Library after the sessions :0))

Social Entrepreneurs to visit XLRI - July 7th '10

2010-07-06T18:23:00.006+05:30

7th July is going to be an eventful day at XLRI Jamshedpur.

We have two discussions - "One Becoming a Social Entrepreneur" and "Issues in Social Engagement" scheduled with with some of the most committed social entrepreneurs of different hues and "models". They are for-profit, not-for-profit, volunteerism-based, hybrid models... but have one common base: Their purpose is to create constructive and inclusive social change.

Somewhere in between, we will also inaugurate the Children's Public Library, Udaan, which SIGMA has created for the kids of our maintenance staff and domestic helps... actually for all campus kids (and we hope that this becomes a replicable model for various colonies, campuses, housing complexes)...

...and we top it with the first meeting of the "core group" to discuss the 2nd edition of "Jamshedpur JoyFest - The Joy of Giving Week 2010" (Sept 26- Oct 2, 2010) in the evening.

So, who all are the social entrepreneurs visiting XLRI?

Amitava Ghosh
Founder/Director, Kala Mandir,
Jamshedpur

Kala Mandir works to preserve and promote tribal arts in Jharkhand by creating local communities, and providing them with sustainable livelihood options through micro-enterprise development, market-linkages, education, opportunities for eco-tourism, etc.

Anshu Gupta
Founder/Director, GOONJ
New Delhi

GOONJ works with the issue of clothing, and recycles anything which is discarded as urban waste into resources for others, and works across 20 states. The venture has been internationally recognized for its work and has been the recipient of Changemakers Innovation Award 2004 &2006, World Bank’s Development Marketplace Award 2007 and NGO of the Year Award 2007.

Ronny D'Costa
Regional Governer, Rotary International

Rotary International has been a fore-runner in promoting constructive social engagement and volunteerism across different sections of society. As a committed Rotarian, Ronny has been instrumental in the implementation of a number of projects, e.g., rainwater harvesting, clothes bank, healthcare, education and literacy, etc.

Santanu “Sunny” Bhattacharya
Founder/Director, Technable Solutions Pvt Ltd,
Kolkata

Technable Solutions Provides employability skill training to youth, and runs about 20 centers in WB and North-East. For its work, Technable Solutions was selected as the finalist for the Sankalp Awards 2010, and was awarded the Social Enterprise Leadership Award (International) by Social Enterprise Alliance (USA).

Sujit Mahapatra
Founder/Director, Bakul Foundation
Bhubneshwar

Bakul Foundation works to promote education, volunteerism and social engagement among youth. The Bakul Library, is the largest public library in Orissa, and is supported entirely by volunteers. It campaigns to promote environmental consciousness, art, etc. have received wide recognition.

SAATH: Creating Inclusive Cities

2010-07-04T09:50:00.005+05:30

Healthcare, slum education, micro-finance, youth and women’s employment… Ahmedabad-based SAATH has myriad programmes to improve the lot of the urban poor. In some way, its initiatives can be likened to a complex web that touches every corner of their lives. “This web is not to trap, but a mechanism to uplift the urban poor,”...

SAATH utilizes market-based strategies to create inclusive societies by empowering India's urban and rural poor.

SAATH's integrated approach brings all services that a poor community could need together in one centre, simplifying life for Bottom-of-Pyramid Indians....

Also read this article...

Bakul Foundation Children's Library

2010-07-03T21:37:00.013+05:30

I had visited this place last year, when I was doing my annual round of learning from the social ventures who work on the ground, and make a difference.... A friend of mine in XIMB had suggested that I should visit Bakul Foundation in Bhubneshwar, and gave me the address and the contact... a library for those who can't afford books!

It was an amazing experience!.. to meet the co-founder, visit the place, meet and talk to the kids from under-privileged/under-served background (bastis, slum, etc.), for whom this place was like a window to the world beyond they had ever known... some who came to the place could not even read, but would still look through the books, since they had photographs of places which perhaps existed only in their dreams...

...I flipped through the "Children's Community Story Book", where one person adds to another's incomplete story... experience the 'joyful learning' (a phrase which cropped in my mind then) ambience of the place...

I also met some of the volunteers - from young students who were preparing for an entrance test (but just loved to read out the books to kids who wouldn't be able to read the alphabets) to some foreigners who would love to tell these kids fairy-tales of their country... (and Sujit told me that many of them,, when they went back to their home countries, sent the entire set of fairy tales)

As this article Pioneering Library Sparks Volunteerism describes the place:

Over the last decade or so Satya Nagar in Bhubaneswar has morphed from a sleepy residential area to a commercial hub. When you go straight down the road from the brash, new Big Bazar in the area you hit a reasonably sized, unremarkable two storied house numbered 16 that is painted white and looks as boring as any other house on the lane. But you cannot miss a signboard that is essentially a piece of carved and painted wood that says ‘Bakul Sishu Paathaagaara’ (Bakul Children’s Library) in Oriya.

A small gate leads you into a space that looks as unlike a library as you can imagine. Of course there are books all around; but you have pictures of joyous monkeys playing on the walls and every inch of the walls painted cheerfully with one motif or the other in soothing bright colours.

But the physical aspect of the library is perhaps the least unusual thing about it. The Bakul library is one of the largest children’s libraries in the state of Orissa. It houses more than 8,000 books (primarily in Oriya and English, and some in Hindi) as well as multimedia and other educational material. There are no user charges for reading and referencing in the library, and there are no formalities involved in terms of becoming a member till now. Any child can drop in and read. Lending of books has not started, and a small fee might be levied as and when it starts. The library is run by the Bakul Foundation, with Dr Jatindra Nayak, Professor of English Literature, Utkal University as President, and is managed by volunteers Sujit Mahapatra and Satyajit Puhan with help from Puspalata Sethi and others.

A pledge campaign - "Donate Books, Build a Library" - was launched on the Internet by the trio of Satyajit Puhan, Sujit Mahapatra, and Ayushman Sarangi on the Orissa Day, 1 April 2006. Puhan is a young development economist and one of the founders of the Film Society of Bhubaneswar, Mahapatra is a Ph D scholar of English Literature at Delhi University and Sarangi is a computer engineer at Adobe. The campaign site was www.pledgebank.com/bakul-library. The goal was to mobilize a thousand people who would directly contribute (either with cash for a book or directly with a book) to set up a library, initially focusing on children and youth in Bhubaneswar. The deadline to get 1,000 supporters as well as to set up the library was the 1st of April 2007....

But Bakul Foundation is more than a library initiative. It is about volunteerism and engagement with society, e.g., the Bakul Art-Fest '09 one of the notable feature of that was the "Wall of Peace" which was painted by artists, college and school students and the general public...

..about creating environmental awarenessthrough innovative means, e.g., by gifting saplings on birthdays, child births, and weddings so that people will have an emotional connection with the gifts and therefore take responsibility for nurturing and caring for them: "We are not thinking of a mere event or activity. We are attempting to create a sub-culture around tree plantation, where trees can become a part of the everyday lives of people... We are trying to introduce an emotional connection between people and trees."

One Person's Trash is Another Person's Treasure

2010-07-01T09:33:00.003+05:30

Waste Ventures transforms the way municipal garbage is handled in developing countries into a more environmentally and socially friendly process based on market mechanisms. Uncollected garbage is mostly collected by wastepickers who make a pittance from recyclables and face many health issues. Waste Ventures provides technical assistance to social organizations that work with waste pickers to transform them into waste picker corporations. It provides them with a triple bottom line blueprint (fee-for-service collection, recycling, composting, monetizing carbon credits, and creating biogas) and then assist the transition of the organization’s capital to the waste pickers themselves.

Sun King Solar Lanterns in Rural India

2010-06-29T23:24:00.006+05:30

Mayank Sekhsaria is a young man who returned from the US with a dream: "honest, high-qualilty solar lights could change lives" in rural India. Today, GreenLight Planet's small and relatively inexpensive solar lamps, Sun King, are used by over 100,000 villagers.
More info at: http://www.greenlightplanet.com/

The Rags-to-Riches Story of Sarathbabu

2010-06-29T22:40:00.004+05:30

When 27-year old Sarathbabu graduated from the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedaba, he created quite a stir by refusing a job that offered him a huge salary. He preferred to start his own enterprise -- Foodking Catering Service -- in Ahmedabad....

some excerpts from his story...

"I was born and brought up in a slum in Madipakkam in Chennai. I have two elder sisters and two younger brothers and my mother was the sole breadwinner of the family. It was really tough for her to bring up five kids on her meagre salary.

As she had studied till the tenth standard, she got a job under the mid-day meal scheme of the Tamil Nadu government in a school at a salary of Rs 30 a month. She made just one rupee a day for six people.

So, she sold idlis in the mornings. She would then work for the mid-day meal at the school during daytime. In the evenings, she taught at the adult education programme of the Indian government.

...

By the end of the second year, there were many lucrative job offers coming our way, but in my mind I was determined to start something on my own. But back home, I didn't have a house. It was a difficult decision to say 'no' to offers that gave you Rs 800,000 a year. But I was clear in my mind even while I knew the hard realities back home.

Yes, my mother had been an entrepreneur, and subconsciously, she must have inspired me. My inspirations were also (Dhirubhai) Ambani and Narayana Murthy. I knew I was not aiming at something unachievable. I got the courage from them to start my own enterprise.

Nobody at my institute discouraged me. In fact, at least 30-40 students at the IIM wanted to be entrepreneurs. And we used to discuss about ideas all the time. My last option was to take up a job.

...

Reservation should be a mix of all criteria. If you take a caste that comes under reservation, 80 per cent of the people will be poor and 20 per cent rich, the creamy layer. For the general category, it will be the other way around.

...Take my case, I didn't have any system that would make me aware of the IITs and the IIMs. But I will be able to guide my children properly because I am well educated. I got the benefits of reservation but I will never avail of it for my children. I cannot even think of demanding reservation for the next generation."

***
Read the full story here

From fields to a BPO in 6 months

2010-06-29T22:28:00.002+05:30

15 May 2010 - Tikli, Haryana (WFS) – Just six months ago, Puja, 18, and Bimla Devi, 35, spent their day cooking meals, tending to cattle and working in the field -- the everyday routine of village women across Haryana. Never in their wildest dreams had they imagined that they could one day be sitting in an office working away furiously in front of a computer.

Today, this is the remarkable reality of hundreds of women in Tikli and Aklimpur villages. Their agrarian way of life has not changed – they still cut fodder for their cattle and clear the cow dung -- but they are now equally adept at using a computer. They work in a business process outsourcing (BPO) centre which has set up shop in the heart of their village. A first-of-its-kind women-only rural BPO in India, this centre was started by 'Harva', which stands for harnessing value of rural India.

Read More...

Landscape of Social Entrepreneurship in India

2010-06-26T19:48:00.002+05:30

Below is the presentation during the 2010 Research Colloquium on Social Entrepreneurship at Said Business School, University of Oxford (June 22-25, 2010)

Landscape of Social Entrepreneurship in India - Madhukar Shukla

Social Enterpreneurship in India - Historical Antecedents

2010-06-09T22:02:00.005+05:30

Well, finally I have started keying-in my understanding of Landscape of 'Social Entrepreneurship" in India... It is an arduous task to make sense from some 50-odd inputs (open-ended questionnaire responses and telephonic interviews) from the stakeholders in the sector - social entrepreneurs, funders/investors, foundations, etc. -... Hope I will succeed in making sense of this in a manner which contributes to the space...

This is what I could key-in today about the Socio-Cultural Milieu & Historical Context - the roots of what is called now "social entrepreneurship" (my understanding being: an initiative to make a social impact - in India...
(this being the 1st part of a very very long paper which - insha-allah - I will be able to unleashed on unwary public in the coming week :)

any feedback is most welcome!
----

To understand the contemporary status of social entrepreneurship in India, it is important to appreciate the socio-cultural and historical context in which it exists. Various studies have highlighted that in Indian psyche one’s place in the society has a moral perspective, in which one’s duty towards the others/ society plays a significant role. Chakraborty (1987), for instance, found that the orientation of ‘giving’ and the need to fulfill one’s duty towards the society (as opposed to fulfilling individual needs) is deep-rooted in Indian social values and identity. Similarly, McClelland (1975) found that Indians have a social achievement motivation, which is characterised by a desire for contributing to the collective well-being and achievement of super-ordinate goals.

Historically too, these values have influenced India’s rich history of social action, volunteerism and philanthropy. This fact is also manifested by the history of legal status of voluntary sector organisations (NGOs, NPOs, CBOs, etc.) in India. As long back as in the 19th century, the then government of India had enacted two separate acts – the Societies Registration Act, 1860 and the Indian Trusts Act, 1882 – which were aimed to regulate and to provide legal status to not-for-profit entities which existed for the benefit of the society. The Societies Registration Act of 1860, for instance, was specifically created to provide legal status to:

“…societies established for the promotion of science, literature, or the fine arts, for instruction, the diffusion of useful knowledge, the diffusion of political education, the foundation or maintenance of libraries or reading rooms for general use among the members or open to the public, or public museums and galleries of paintings and other works of art, collection of natural history, mechanical and philosophical inventions, instruments or designs.”

Similarly, the Indian Trusts Act, 1882 was created for charitable entities which could have been established for a number of purposes, including the poverty alleviation, education, medical relief, provision of facilities for recreation, and any other benefit to the general public. The enactment of these two acts shows that by that time, such organized efforts had reached a critical mass which large enough to necessitate creation legal framework to recognize their existence.

Interestingly, the Indian Independence Movement during the first-half of 20th century, led by leaders like Mahatma Gandhi, also had the idea of social transformation embedded in the very concept of freedom. It was actually more than just a struggle for political freedom against the colonization by the British Empire. The notion of freedom promoted by the forefathers of the country had a strong element of developing an empowered grass-root society (Gandhi’s gram-swaraj – self-rule which percolates down to remote villages), and a strong focus on developing social leaders who can facilitate the growth of self-sufficient village-level community organization, who can empower their stakeholders. Gandhian doctrine of ‘trusteeship” (i.e., business is trustee, not the owner, of the wealth of the society) focused on the economic equality and empowerment of the society. It influenced not only a large number of industrialists of the time (even large ones such as the GD Birla and Jamunalal Bajaj), but also became a guiding principle of many large social ventures (e.g., SEWA, Lijjat, etc.) in the post-independence India. Even after India gained independence in 1947, the idea of developing an empowered society was carried forward by many of Gandhi’s followers (Vinoba Bhave, Baba Amte, Jai Prakash Narain, etc.), and influenced many youth to join the development/social sector.

In the early years of independence too, the developmental policies of government of India envisaged and invited participation of non-governmental organizations and voluntary agencies to support the state-sponsored programs through its Central Social Welfare Board, National Community Development Program, National Extension Service, etc. (ADB, 2009). Over the years, India witnessed a rapid increase in the voluntary sector grass-root organizations, which were seen as development partners of the state for grassroots interventions for poverty alleviation, education, livelihoods, civil liberties, environment, health, etc. The Sixth Five-Year Plan (1980-85), in fact, formally recognized the role and importance of the voluntary non-governmental organizations, and listed nine areas for their participation in development:

Optimal utilization and development of renewable source of energy, including forestry through the formation of renewable energy association at the block level
Family welfare, health and nutrition, education and relevant community programs in the field
Health for all programs
Water management and soil conservation
Social welfare programs for weaker sections
Implementation of minimum needs program
Disaster preparedness and management (i.e. for floods, cyclones, etc)
Promotion of ecology and tribal development, and
Environmental protection and education.

A decade later, in the Eight Five-Year Plan, the participation of voluntary organizations was further enhanced by envisaging their role in drawing development plans through rural appraisal and by involving the local community. Since 1991, when structural reforms were implemented under Govt of India’s New Economic Policy, the partnership of voluntary sector agencies with the state has become relatively diminished and muted. Nevertheless, the sector continued to play a significant role broadly in the following:

Policy planning and implementation of government programs.
Monitoring the impact of development programs initiated by the government
Policy advocacy to influence state’s development programs, and
Capacity building of the grassroots community, and of governmental agencies

A study by Srivastava and Tandon (2002) for the Society for Participatory Research in Asia (PRIA) throws some revealing insights about the nature and magnitude of the proliferation of Non-Profit voluntary organizations in India. The survey found that:

There are 1.2mn Non-Profit Organisations in India, which engage nearly 20mn people as paid employees or on volunteer basis.
However, 73.4% of these organizations were very small with one or no paid employees; in contrast, only 8.5% had more than 10 paid employees.
While 26.5% of these NPOs were religious in nature of their activities, the rest were secular bodies focusing on social development issues such as education, healthcare, community development (it must also be noted that in India – like elsewhere in the world – the religious institutions also work promote social development activities).
The estimated receipts of funds by these NPOs was Rs.179bn (1999-2000). However, 80% of this was generated from local activities, community contribution and donations; among these 51% were self-generated, while 12.9% came from donations – and 7.1% from loans.

This historical and socio-cultural backdrop to voluntary initiatives – by individual and group - to make a social impact have some significant implications for social entrepreneurship in India, which will be discussed later in the paper.

---
OK, this is a draft only...

Landscape of "Social Entrepreneurship in India" - Need Help!

2010-04-30T21:40:00.003+05:30

Hello folks!

Need help... I am trying to explore the landscape of Social Entrepreneurship in India (I am using the term "Social Entrepreneurship" in its broadest sense, viz., "entrepreneurship to make a social impact").

Specifically, I am seeking answers to the following from those who work in this space (social entrepreneurs/ social investors/ funding agencies/ CSR foundations/ support organisation/ social business venture, etc.):

In the Indian context, are there any specific local conditions/issues (e.g., social, political, economic, legal, etc.), which facilitiate (or hamper with) social entrepreneurship? Also, in your experience, do the are there any significant ways in which Indian social entrepreneurial ventures differ from those in the more developed countries?

Are certain social entrepreneurial 'models' - and targetted areas of social impact - more relevant to India, and more likely to succeed?

Are there any conditions, specific to India, which facilitate (or hamper with) the long-term sustainability and scalability of social enterpreneurial ventures?

If you are social entrepreneur/ funding agency/ social investor/ CSR foundations/ support organisations, etc., operating in India, I will be grateful for your response

Alternatively, if you know any of the above, please pass this request to them

The responses can be sent to:
madhukar [at] xlri [dot] ac [dot] in

These inputs help be a great help to me to refine my own thoughts and in finalising the research problem.... And needless to say, I will be happy to share the preliminary findings based on these inputs

Thanks a ton!

Development through Charity?

2010-04-13T11:26:00.002+05:30

Over the last couple of decades, globally, social sector has emerged as a fast growing field aimed to create societal/economic value on a sustainable basis. According to some reports, it is also perhaps the only sector that is creating gainful employment worldwide.

It is therefore, not surprising that recent years have witnessed an increasing flow of resources, in terms of professional talent and funds, to this sector. An indication of this emerging trend was the donation of $37bn by Warren Buffet to The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, which made headlines across the globe. Corporate philanthropy, it appears, has come to age. In a way, such developments indicate a healthy and increasing collaboration between the private/corporate donors and social sector not-for-profit organizations.

Heartening as this trend is, it also has some wider implications for development, which often get ignored and need consideration.

Firstly, social sector has traditionally attracted sincere individuals whose personal values and ideologies motivated them to “do something” for the marginalized segment of the society. It is this commitment, which sustains their efforts, even in the face of failure and adversity.

Easy availability of large funds (which the donor has already committed to spend though not-for-profit organisations), on the other hand, also has the potential of converting the social sector into a “money-spinner” for those who are merely looking for a secure source of employment and income. The phenomenal growth of the number of organizations registered under the Foreign Contribution Regulation Act (FCRA) during last decade or so, is an indication that this may already be happening.

Secondly, most of the private/corporate initiatives have their own pre-set agenda, schemes and methodologies for development initiatives. For the social entrepreneurs, this reduces the scope of “collaboration” to merely roll-out of these initiatives. In a way, this makes the role of the not-for-profit organizations to merely that of “contractors” to these schemes.

While there is nothing inherently inappropriate in helping and partnering in the roll-out of a developmental scheme, the top-down nature of these initiatives can (and often does) make them vulnerable to many undesirable consequences. Often such blanket initiatives neglect the local issues, and divert the attention to more symptomatic solutions. For instance, a drip irrigation scheme may be advocated as a solution, while the actual local problem is the lowering ground-water level due to its extraction by commercial interests. Similarly, an AIDS prevention program can neglect that the larger causes of death are due to hunger and not disease. Often these initiatives can (and do) also become the vehicles for dumping of obsolete technologies and harmful drugs, or even in empowering non-democratic power-structures at the grass root level.

Lastly, and more importantly, these widely, and often overly, publicized funding (by private donors, or corporate under their CSR initiatives) inadvertently and unfortunately create a myth that private initiatives can replace what is otherwise the duty of democratically elected government. In a way, by perpetuating this impression, in the public mind, they tend to absolve the governments from their responsibilities. This is an unfortunate (even if unintended) consequence, since the very purpose of social sector initiatives is to strengthen the democratic processes at the grass root levels.

****
Note: I had written this article for a magazine "Small Change" a couple of years back. Unfortunately, the magazine does not exist now (though not because of my writing for it :0)

DesiCrew Solutions - A Social Enterprise by Saloni Malhotra

2009-12-25T00:37:00.004+05:30

DesiCrew Solutions Pvt. Ltd is a rural BPO company, incubated by RTBI of IIT- Madras. Founded by 26-year old, Saloni Malhotra, the venture sets up IT enabled service centers in rural areas, employ and train local people to meet the back office demands of clients.

The DesiCrew story is of a rural BPO pioneering a new vision for stimulating inclusive growth in India. With a decentralized business model providing competitive outsourcing solutions to clients and meaningful employment opportunities, the company has established a technology driven, profit making social enterprise.

more information at:
http://www.desicrew.in/

Dr Harish Hande, MD & Founder, SELCO @ XLRI Jamshedpur

2009-09-18T21:21:00.003+05:30

On August 11th '09, Dr Harish Hande, Founder and MD of SELCO India, was in XLRI and addressed the XLRI's "CEO Forum" and the class of "Introduction to Social Entrepreneurship".

These excerpts from his talk are an insight about how to design product and servies for the "Bottom of the Pyramid"

About Dr Harish Hande & SELCO India:

Dr Harish Hande isa graduate from IIT Kharagpur in Energy Engineering, andan MTech and PhD. in Energy Engineering from the University of Massachusetts, USA.

SELCO INDIA, a social venture to promote sustainable technologies in rural India. With its headquarters in Bangalore, SELCO has 25 branches in Karnataka and Gujarat. Today SELCO INDIA has installed solar lighting systems in over100,000 households in the rural areas of these states.

For his outstanding work on promoting sustainable energy for rural & under-served markets, Dr Hande was honoured with the Ashden Award for Sustainable Energy 2005 and Tech Museum Award 2005. Harish has also received the world’s leading green energy award from Prince Charles in 2005. In 2007 SELCO INDIA won the Ashden Outstanding Achievement Award.He is also the winner of the Corporate Responsibility 2009 Award by Financial Times (London).

In 2008, Harish Hande was chosen by Business Today as one of the 21 young leaders for India’s 21st century. In mid 2008, India Today named him one of the 50 Pioneers of Change in India.

Room to Read

2007-08-15T11:54:00.000+05:30

Another story of small beginnings and social innovation
(specially, if one thinks of the millions of books that people sell off or throw away, just because they don't need them any more... because they have read them over and over again, becauase kids have grown up, because exams are over...)

The Room to Read story begins in 1998 with Founder & CEO John Wood. In 1998, John was an overworked Microsoft executive looking for the quiet solitude of a trekking vacation. While backpacking in the Himalayas, John met a middle-aged Nepalese man who invited him to visit a school in a neighboring village. Hoping for a chance to see the real Nepal, rather than his tourist's trek, John agreed. Little did he know this short detour would change his life forever.

The man John met was a Nepalese "Education Resource Officer." However, John soon discovered that despite his huge heart and tremendous work-ethic (traveling mountain passes on foot to visit his schools), this man had very little resources to offer the schools in his charge. At the school John came face to face with the harsh reality confronting millions of Nepalese children - there were almost no books. John was stunned to discover that the few books they had - a Danielle Steele romance, the Lonely Planet Guide to Mongolia, and a few other backpacker castoffs - were so precious that they were kept under lock and key... to protect them from the children!

As John left the village that day, the school headmaster made a simple request: "Perhaps, Sir, you will some day come back with books." His request would not go unheard. After returning from his trek, John emailed friends to ask for their help in collecting children's books, and was overwhelmed with the response - over 3,000 books arrived within the next two months. The following year, John returned to Nepal, rented a yak, and returned to the village to deliver the books.

On that trip, John made a decision. He would leave the corporate world in order to devote himself to starting a new non-profit. In his memoir, Leaving Microsoft to Change the World, John explains, "Did it really matter how many copies of Windows we sold in Taiwan this month when there were millions of children without access to books?" In late 1999, John quit his executive position with Microsoft and started Room to Read.

With Room to Read, John sought to marry the corporate business practices he learned at Microsoft with an inspiring vision - to provide the lifelong gift of education to millions of children in the developing world. He contended that with 750 million illiterate adults worldwide and 100 million children without access to school, a non-profit "with the scalability of Starbucks and the compassion of Mother Theresa" was required.

To date, Room to Read operates in Nepal, Combodia, India, Laos, Sri Lanka, Vietnam and South Africa, has impacted lives of close to 1.5mn kids, has created over 4,100 schools and libraries, awards 3,400 scholarships to girls, has published 150 children's books in local languages...

Perspective on "Making a Difference"

2007-07-12T15:07:00.000+05:30

This is an old post elsewhere, and a favourite story:

Yawar sent me the transcript of his speech to a group of children. It was a nice, coming from the heart speech, and one part which caught my attention was the narration of this story:

...Finally I want to close my speech by telling you another true story. This one is about a little boy and the famous writer Lauren Eisely. Lauren writes that he was on holiday by the sea side when one night there was a big storm. Very early next morning as he was walking on the beach he saw that among the debris of the storm were literally hundreds of starfish which had been thrown up on the sand the previous night.

As he walked along, Lauren saw someone in the distance doing what looked to him, like a dance. The person was bending down and standing up and moving along as he did this. As Lauren neared him, he saw that it was a little boy who was picking up starfish from the beach and was throwing them back into the sea.

Lauren was like me. A man of the world with a lot of education and life experience.

He went up to the boy and asked, “What are you doing?”

The boy said, “I’m throwing these starfish back into the sea so that they don’t die. They can’t move on the sand and if the sun comes out, they will dry out and die. So I am throwing them back so that they will live.”

Lauren says, he laughed at this statement. He then proceeded to put things in ‘perspective’ for the boy...

So Lauren said to him, “Look, do you realize that on this beach alone there are literally thousands of starfish? And then of course there are hundreds of beaches in the world, on which are thrown up millions of starfish in every storm. You are one kid, throwing one starfish into the sea! For God’s sake, what difference does it make?”

The boy looked at Lauren; he looked at the starfish in his hand, he turned and threw it far into the waves and said to Lauren, “It made a difference to that one!”

Lauren writes, “I walked away and kept walking for a long time. Then I returned to the boy who was still there, picking up and throwing the starfish into the sea. I silently picked up a starfish and threw it into the sea. And we did this together for a long time.”

"Hrudaya Post": An Example of "Social Innovation"

2007-06-16T11:02:00.000+05:30

'Hrudaya Post' launched in Karnataka to help Heart Patients

Bangalore: Thursday, March 15 2007: (UNI) A unique rural healthcare facility ''Hrudaya post'' was launched in Karnataka today to enable heart patients in villages scan and send their medical reports to superspeciality hospital Narayana Hrudayalaya for consultation from a neighbourhood post office.

The Postal Department and Superspeciality Hospital Narayana Hrudayalaya have joined hands to offer ''Hrudaya Post'. Under the scheme, first of its kind in the history of health care, heart patients in small towns and villages can go to any of the Post office and send their entire medical reports by scanning and uploading to Narayana Hrudayalaya.

The Hospital in turn, within 24 hours, after studying the report, would send a detailed report back to the sender thus saving time to visit Heart Specialist for advice.

Narayana Hrudayalaya Chairman Dr Devi Shetty, talking to newsmen here, said that the service of studying and advice to patients, including medicine prescription, would be provided free of cost.

"Our aim is to link the post offices to our hospital, so that heart patients living in small town and villages can get medical advice at their door step." Replying to a question, he said that people living in villages were also equally vulnerable to heart disease as in urban areas.

Dr Shetty said that besides advising about the treatment, the hospital would also help in meeting financial requirement for the needy patients.

He said that 'Hrudaya Post' would be of great helpful for the heart patients in rural areas since about 99 per cent of heart patients does not need surgery and can be cured with medicine. More than 30 Surgeons and 200 personnel of Narayana Hrudayala would be working 24 hours to serve the people, he added.

Replying to a question, he said that more than 22,000 people were treated since last five years of introduction of Telemedicine introduced in association with Indian Satellite Research Organisation (ISRO).

Heart Specialist Dr Jairaj of Narayana Hrudayalaya said that under Karnataka government's unique health scheme 'Yashasvini' more than three million people were insured.

Karnataka Chief Post Master General Meera Datta, in her address, said that, to begin with the 'Hrudaya Post' would be introduced in 25 District Post offices and gradually it would be extended to all post offices in the State. It has been decided to charge Rs 100 for scanning and sending the report to the Hospital and additional Rs 25 would be charged if a person desires the report be delivered at his door step.

She said that there are 511 post offices in Karnataka with Computer facility and one of the computer may be devoted for the purpose.

Conceptualising Social Entrepreneurship

2007-04-15T18:48:00.000+05:30

Ever since, I have got involved with this field (which is quite recent in life), I had always felt that the understanding and conceptualisation of Social Entrepreneurship is skewed by history.... or rather by its recognition as a line of human endeavour in the history.

Business Entrepreneurship was discovered and conceptualised earlier, and so it has come to mean The Entrepreneurship... and since detection of Social Entrepreneurship is more recent, somehow it is seen/conceptualised as on the fringe of the business entrepreneurship...

Last month, during the meeting of the Advisory Council of University Network at the Skoll Forum for SE, I was able of articulate my understanding of where does Social Entrepreneurship fit into the "entrepreneurial space"...

Here is what I understand:

Entrepreneurship – whether social or business – is all about “creating wealth” in/for society

Wealth in a society would include 3 components:
- Economic Capital
- Social/ Community Capital, and
- Environmental Capital

Traditionally, Business Entrepreneurs focus only on creating “economic/financial wealth” – even though their product/services may have impact (+ve or –ve) on the Social/Environmental Capital (This is also because in traditional economic terms/assumptions, society/environment are seen either as a cost factor in production... or, worse, the impact on them is dismissed as "externalities")

However, if one accepts that "wealth" is not just money/profits, but also the social/environmental capital (i.e business is part of society, and not the other way round), then there is a need to look at entrepreneurship from a different perspective.

In my understanding, there are two dimensions of "wealth creation":
- (1) Nature of wealth that is being created by the entrepreneur, and
- (2) who is the beneficiary of that wealth.
see the figure below:

Business entrepreneurship primarily - and by choice - creates wealth that is economic/financial in nature, and the primary beneficiary of the the wealth is the entrepreneur and his/her business.

That is, the business entrepreneurship (or The Entrepreneurship) is only a small sub-set of the entire entrepreneurial space.

I hope, this will help me - or someone else - to build a typology of the variety of social entrepreneurshial ventures in the overall "entrepreneurship space"... I have tried to put a few in the diagram below:

...from small beginning

2007-02-28T16:02:00.000+05:30

Like with many established big ventures, it is sometimes difficult to imagine that they had actually started as a small single step.

Here are two stories of small beginnings:

"In 1971, migrant women working as cart-pullers in the city’s cloth market came to me in TLA, where I had started my work life working for textile mill workers of Ahmedabad. The women who lived on the footpath, were seeking help for better living conditions. Next month came the head loader women of the same cloth market, feeling agitated about very low rates of payment (30 paise per trip carrying the bale of cloth from a wholesaler to a retailer). They felt exploited by the traders. Then followed the used garment dealer women in search of credit facility... That was 1971. Some of these urban, poor, self- employed women workers came to the meeting that I called in a public garden where we formed our trade union (1972). We called it the Self Employed Women’s Association, SEWA."

That was the beginning of SEWA

"Yunus had never met Sufiya Khatun on his many walks through her village. Sufiya, a widow, was trying to support herself by constructing and selling bamboo stools. She earned two cents a day. When Yunus asked why her profit was so low, she explained that the only person who would lend her money to buy bamboo was the trader who bought her final product--and the price he set barely covered her costs.

Yunus's instinct was to dig into his pocket. But first he wanted to see if there were other villagers in similar circumstances. He and a few students canvassed the village and compiled a list of forty-two people whose capital requirements, in order to buy materials and work freely, added up to about $26.00.

Through the years he would recount that story hundreds of times. A decade later, testifying before the U.S. Congress Select Committee on Hunger in a hearing devoted to micro-enterprise credit, he recalled what had gone through his mind: "I felt extremely ashamed of myself being part of a society that could not provide twenty-six dollars to forty-two able, skilled human beings who were trying to make a living."

...that is how the Grameen story started

Are we....?

2007-01-23T09:33:00.000+05:30

Ingrid Srinath, CEO of CRY was at here last week, and signed an MOU with XLRI to partner with us for their projects in this region.

In her address to the students, one slide made a lot of sense:

Are we...?

An "Invisible" Revolution... 400 Poor Women/ Hour!!!

2006-12-30T14:42:00.000+05:30

"Invisible" people create revolutions that too remain invisible from the sight of most - specially the MSM...

The following is a glimpse into one such revolution, which is happening in India.

Perhaps the best introduction to this phenomenon is this desciption from the preface of The Lights and Shades Study:

This Self-Help Group (SHG) is only one among the 2.6mn SHGs that spread across Indian villages.

What are SHGs?
Self Help Groups (SHGs) are informal associations of up to 20 women (their average size is 14) who meet regularly, usually once a month, to save small amounts (typically Rs 10 to 50) a month. While they are formed with the encouragement of NGOs and other self-help promoting agencies (SHPAs) such as government agencies and the banks, they are expected to select their own members, and are therefore sometimes called affinity groups. After saving regularly for a minimum of six months, and using the funds to lend small amounts to each other for interest, which is ploughed back into group funds, and satisfactorily maintaining prescribed records and accounts, they become eligible to be "linked" by the local bank branch under a NABARD-sponsored programme called the SHG-Bank Linkage Programme.... On-time loan repayment to the banks has been very high, above 90 percent, and there have been no defaults so far.

Some facts:

Started as a pilot project of 500 SHGs, by Nabard in 1992, they grew slowly. In last 5 years, they have grown 10-fold.

Now, they reach 31mn rural households (out of the 191mn total Indian households).

Of these, about 14mn households are linked to bank credit though SHGs

According to The Lights and Shade Study, overall, 51% of SHG members fall below the poverty line; another 32% are ‘borderline’ (above the poverty line but vulnerable to risk). Scheduled Castes (SC) and Scheduled Tribes (STs), recognised as structurally poor, are 55% of members. Widows, also a vulnerable and under-privileged group, were found to be 10% of SHG members.

, 38% of SHG members work as casual labourers - 29% work in own agriculture, and 17% are engaged in a non-farm enterprise.

74% have no schooling, 11% have some adult education to become ‘neo-literate’, 15% have some schooling (mainly at primary level).

SHGs also represent an antidote to the "Access Denied!!!" phenomenon...

And perhaps also explain the fact that:

In India, there are 400 women, who join an SHG every hour!!!

Cross-posted at Altenative Perspective

The Sensitization Challenge

2006-12-12T18:38:00.000+05:30

I had posted this elsewhere before I started this blog. Am binging it here because it fits with the theme of this blog

Here are the excerpts from the The Sensitization Challenge:

...."Voluntarism can also be termed as a study of attitudes. While there is much ado about the need of volunteering people's time and efforts towards social causes and societal development, we have in the past seen the percentage of responsiveness, indicating scope for change.

"25% aren?t even interested to know anything beyond their nose. For example - any person untouched by happenings beside him/her!

Out of the balance 75%,

- 40% are information seekers to wet their souls. They are overwhelmed listening to social issues and talk a lot about them, nothing beyond. For example, retired persons, especially from the Government, housewives and some academicians!

- another 30% would like to involve in " known" organizations, have elements of doubt and limitations of thought beyond "feeding" or helping ORPHANS! They eulogize the Sacrificers of Lives (demigods who run "charitable" organizations), visit these places and are satisfied with the beaming smiles from the "beneficiaries" and go back, hearts full. For example, individual donors.

- 20% progress to give time due to internally driven or externally driven motives, and study projects and their progress and support organizations and causes that fall in line with their thoughts. For example, funding organizations, Lions, Rotarians and their likes).

- 5 to 8 % are more keen, they start organizations themselves - a group of them, for instance, to promote and advocate a cause. They involve greater time, but in isolation work independently to cause pockets of change, with replicable programs and very little interfacing with Governmental or other Service Providing Agencies. For example youth groups, bank employees, corporate staff groups)

- Less than 2% feel the need for interdependency and networking. They understand the dynamics of social change and the possibility to work in tandem with existing systems. They are motivated when they hear about problems, and work within their area of control and influence to bring about model systems of interdependency in their community, tapping local resources, and utilizing it to develop their community with an idea of sustaining the growth, without "patronizing" and increasing the dependency factor. For example local leaders, Facilitating Organizations and individuals).

What about you!!??

The Power of an Idea

2006-10-15T10:51:00.000+05:30

30 years back, a young professor of economics went for a walk in a village adjoing his university in Chittagong (Bangladesh). While there, he met a poor widow, Sufiya Begum, who tried to make a living by constrcting and selling bamboo stools. She worked hard the whole day, and yet her daily net earning was just $0.02 (2 cents).

Why?... because she had to take a daily loan for buying bamboos from the local moneylender, who charged exhorbitant interest, and whose lending condition was that she sells her produce to him at a price decided by him!!!

She was poor - not because she lacked skills, or because she was lazy - but becasue she did not have access to her own working capital. All she needed was $0.27 (27cents) to get out of this vicious cycle of:

Low income => No working capital => High interest loan => Low income

The professor gave her 27 cents... but then, also went on to find out how many others in the village lived on an income of less than $1/day. To his amazement - and dismay - he found that there were 42 such able-bodied skilled working people, whose cumulative requirement to end their poverty was just $27!

He gave them that sum as loan, which they could use to break out of the cycle of poverty... and they returned the loan in due course.

It was such a simple solution to end the poverty. Poverty, the professor realised, is not caused by people; it is caused by the system. Much later, he described his first insight through an analogy:

"You take the best seed of the tallest tree from the most fertile forest, and plant it in a small flower-pot. The seed does not grow into the tall tree..." not because the seed was bad, but because it got planted in the wrong place.

Academically, this simple insight had a simple solution. Get the banks to give loans to the poors.

But the banks refused: how can you give loans to people who have no collaterals to offer? what if they default? and since they own nothing, you can't take back anything from them, can you?

Failing to convince the regular commercial banks to lend money, the professor decided to become the "guaranteer" for their loans with the bank. If they default, he would pay the banks - but they did not default!

But this experience led to the second insight:

The commercial banking system works on a premise that the more you have (i.e., as collaterals), the more you get; the less you have, the less you get... and of course, if you don't happen to own anything, that you are forever condemned out of the banking/credit system.

...Like the local moneylender, the commercial banking system imposes its own conditionalities in which the rich become richer - and the poor become poorer.

And thus the the third insight: Create a bank for the poors!

This simple idea led to the establishment of Grameen Bank - the "barefoot bank" - in 1983. The professor of economics, you guessed, was Professor Muhammad Yunus, who was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize 2006 this week... The rest, as they say, is history...

Today, the Grameen Bank:

has 6.6mn borrowers ("poorest of the poor" - including beggars), of which 97% are women

has 2,226 branches operating in more than 71,000 villages of Bangladesh, supported by a staff of around 18,000.

is owned 94% by the borrowers (the rest 6% is with the government)

offers loan without any collaterals, legal instrument, group-guarantee or joint liability

has provided loans of about $5.7bn since its inception

provides loans for micro enterprises, housing, education, scholorships, life insurance and pension funds for the borrowers, disaster loan funds, etc.

has remained profitable all through its existance, except for 3 years (1983, 1991 and 1992)

does not rely on external funding or donations since 1995 (has paid back its loans since then)

has helped about 58% of its borrowers to cross the poverty line

and has a loan recovery rate of 98.85% (the other 1.15% constitute the defaulters on deadlines of payment - not on payment itself)

Perhaps more importantly, the contribution of Prof Yunus was The Power of the Idea:

that the poor are "credit-worthy" (or the reverse: the commercial banking establishment is not "people worthy")

that poverty eradication does happen by handing out "doles" through the top-down subsidies, donations, grants or investments (by govt/IMF/WB, etc.)... In an article in WSJ (Oct 14,'06), he noted:
"...one of our most successful tools for rebuilding businesses is not government handouts, but rather, small loans packaged with practical business and social advice.... very little of the cash so generously given ever gets all the way down to the very poor. There are too many "professionals" ahead of them in line, highly skilled at diverting funds into their own pockets. This is particularly regrettable because very poor people need only a little money to set up a business that can make a dramatic difference in the quality of their lives."

Instead, eradicating poverty requires innovating systems for economic empowerment... By giving the poor that elusive access to the "first dollar that gets you the next dollar."

that there is another model of development that is far superior to the "trickle-down" economic model... That perhaps "the rising tide will lift all the boats" is a merely a myth in the minds of the owners of those few boats who have "access rights" to the tide!

It was this power of idea, that has mobilised a global movement for providing "access to credit" to the poor during last 30 years. There are now:

about 3,100 MFIs worldwide

who service 92mn clients and

about 330mn people from the "poorest of the poor" families

across more than 100 nations

... and are growing in numbers, and innovating new solutions.

----
Cross-posted at:
http://alternativeperspective.blogspot.com/

The Price of a Cauliflower

2006-10-12T01:50:00.000+05:30

...an interesting example of the difference between the "physical" and "economic opportunity" distance.

- From where I stay, if I drive a couple of Kms towards the local private airport in the evenings, just before the airport, I find people - mostly farmers from nearby areas - sitting on the roadside. They are the small farmers who come from the other side of Swarnarekha river, sit on the roadside and sell vegetables that they have produced. I can buy a cauliflower from them for around Rs.2/- or less (if I negotiate, I can even get 4 for Rs.3/-)

- Past the airport, I take the right turning, and after about 0.5Km, is the Gudari Bazaar, which in the evenings, becomes a sort of large vegetable mandi. The price of the cauliflower there ranges between Rs.5/- to 7/-.

- The place from where I buy vegetables is Dhatkidih, which is slightly tangential to the above, but within a range of a couple of Kms. I, and others, buy vegetable from the shops, and pay Rs.12-15/- for a cauliflower.

The guy sitting on the roadside before the airport does not have 'access' to mandi - or to customers who will pay Rs.5/- (or Rs.12-15/-) for the cauliflowers without a second thought...

even though
...he is within a range of a couple of Km from both the mandi and Dhatkidih shops, and

...he is the person, who used his land, time and toil to produce the cauliflower in the first place

(cross-posted at Alternative Perspective)

Structure of Opportunities

2006-10-08T13:27:00.000+05:30

The other day in my class on Social Entrepeneurship, I had made a reference to the 'Structure of Opportunities' in a society. Opportunities are not equally distributed in a society, i.e., for some of us certain 'opportunities' come easily, while for others they never do - and therefore, the achievements are not always a function of just 'merit' and 'capability'.

"...e.g., suppose, you go to Chashire Home or School of Hope - or a T-Shirt manufacturer, etc. - and give a bulk-order of their produce, so that you can sell it in the campus (or elsewhere), make some margins and share it back with them. The chances are that, if you ask, they may give you the products on credit, simply because you come from a "background". That is, you can do this venture without 'working capital'. Morevoer, you also have an easy access to the 'market' (batchmates, campus people, etc.) to sell these products.

Now, imagine that instead of you, it is one of those construction workers who are there on the campus these days, who approaches the same suppliers (Chashire Home, School of Hope, T-Shirt Manufacturer, etc.), with the same "business plan". S/he will need the 'working capital' and even though being in the 'market' (XL Campus),his/her access will not be as smooth...

This difference would remain irrepective of the "ability" of the person...

Around the same time, Thanks to Annie's post on HTOHL, I came across this insightful listing by "M." about these 'opportunities' (or as she puts them 'undeserved privileges') on her blog.

This is a list worth looking at. Social Entrepeneurship essentially involves creating access to these and similar 'opportunities' for those who don't have them...

Why Business will move "Beyond Business"

2006-09-28T19:27:00.000+05:30

Mayank Krishna had posted a comment and link to his post on Future of Business: Socially Oriented Capitalism.

Which is also the reason for this post - to extend his point... and to share why Milton Freidman's "Business of business is business" may be - hopefully - out of steps with the emeging tends.

The following are some of the reasons why in time to come, business will move "beyond business":

Even though voluntary by nature, the UN Global Compact has been increasingly adopted by companies in India and abroad. In India, more than 125 companies have committed to support and abide by the 10 UN principles (which relate to human rights, labour standards, environmental protections, and anti-corruption) in doing business.

'Triple Bottom Line Reporting(or TBL/sustainability reporting) that was mandated in France is increasingly becoming the norm across the world. This format recommends that companies not only disclose their financial accounts, but also their performance on environmental, and social and ethical parameters. About 25 Indian companies, including ITC, Dr Reddy’s Laboratories, Jubilant Organsys, Ford India, Tata Steel, Reliance, etc., have already shifted to triple bottom line reporting norms.

The Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) that started in 1997 under UN Environmental Program, and is spearheading the TBL/sustainability reporting has around 20,000 ‘stakeholders’ across 80 countries. Its 2002 guidelines are followed by around 880 corporations worldwide that include almost all well-known MNCs. More are likely to join once the 3G (3rd Generation) guidelines get published in October 2006.

One of the landmark events, which is likely to change how business is done globally, took place in May 2006, and resulted in 'The Equator Principles’for project financing that were adopted by 40 global international financial institutions with funds worth $4trillions. These 10 principles lay guidelines about assessing the environmental and social risks in funding a project, and ensure compliance to the performance standards on these issues. These principle will come in operation from January ’07, when the EPFIs (Equator Principles Financial Institutions) will expect due diligence on the environmental, social and governance issues before funding a project.

Increasingly the global trading companies (e.g., Chiquita, Gap, Levi Strauss, Marks and Spencer, Mothercare, Tesco, etc., to name a few) are adopting the nine standards of the ‘Ethical Trading Initiative Base Code’, which is based on the ILO recommendations about child labour, right to collective bargaining and association, working condition, wages, etc.. The ETI initiative also involves the trade unions and global NGOs such as Care International, Christian Aid, Fairtrade, Oxfam, etc.

Etc.

My guess is that in time/years to come, just like ISO certification, these will become the norms. So just like, even if an ISO-certified company is not necessarily, the most 'quality-conscious' organisation - and may be just paying lip-service to the norms - similarly, the business will have to follow certain norms to remain in the business (even, if it does not believe in it)

Development through Philanthropy?

2006-09-24T15:51:00.000+05:30

Social vs. Business Entrepreneurship

2006-09-23T10:54:00.000+05:30

I had my first class for the Social Entrepreneurship course, last evening. The following were the key points that came out from discussions:

1. Like any business entrepreneur, social entrepreneurs also find gaps and create a venture to serve the unserved 'markets'.

2. The primary difference between the business and the social entrepreneurs is the purpose for setting up the venture. While the business entrepreneurs' efforts focus on building a business and earning profits, the social entrepreneurs's purpose is to create social change.

3. A business entrepreneur may create changes in the society, but that is not the primary purpose of starting the venture. Similarly, a social entrepreneur may generate profits, but for him/her that is not the primary reason for starting the venture.

4. Profitability - not 'profit-making' - however, is important for the social entrepeneur. Being 'profitable' helps self-sustainability of the venture, and also works as a mechanism for self-monitoring. To quote from Dr Yunus (Grameen Bank):
"Grameen's central focus is to help poor borrower move out of poverty, not making money. Making profit is always recognised as a necessary condition of success to show that we are covering costs. Volume of profit is not important in Grameen in money-making sense, but important as an indicator of efficiency."

5. Another key difference between the social and the business entrepreneur is in the meaning of wealth creation. For the business entrepreneur, 'wealth' is same as profits. For the social entrepreneur, however, wealth also encompasses creation/sustenance of the social and environmental capital. Therefore, to be viable, a social entrepreneurship venture must show a positive Social and/or Environmental ROI.

Profile of Indian "Unorganised"/ "Infomal" Sector

2006-09-15T14:22:00.000+05:30

Often classified as part of the “informal” economy, the unorganized sector constitute the largest, yet surprisingly the most invisible, part of the economically active workforce in India.

According to the definition of International Labour Organisation (ILO, 2002), they comprise

the own-account workers in survival-type activities, e.g. vendors of vegetables, fruits, meat, fish, etc., and of non-perishable items like locks, clothes, vessels; garbage collectors, rag-and scrap pickers; head-loaders, construction and agricultural workers, rickshaw- and cart-puller, etc.

the paid domestic workers, e.g., maids, gardeners, chauffeurs, etc.

the home-based workers, e.g., garment makers, embroiderers, incense stick rollers, bidi-rollers, paper bag makers, kite makers, food processors, etc., and

the self-employed in micro-enterprises, e.g., road-side mechanics, barbers, cobblers, carpenters, tailors, book-binders, owners of small stalls and kiosks, etc. What they share in common is a lack of secure contracts, worker benefits or social protection.

In India the self-employed workers account for 93% of the total workforce. In other developing countries/regions also, informal employment comprises 50%-75% of non-agricultural employment, e.g., 78% in Sub-Saharan Africa, 51% in Latin America, 55% in Mexico. Even in developed economies, the temporary/part-time/self-employed – i.e., employment without benefits or protection – account for a large working population.

The contribution of the unorganized workforce to the economic health of India society has largely remained neglected. In India, this sector accounts for
- 60% of Net Domestic Product (i.e., GDP minus depreciation),
- 68% of income, 60% of savings,
- 31% of agricultural exports, and
- 41% of manufactured exports.

Even in the urban centers of India, the unorganized workers account for about 60-67% of the employment.

Women workers in the unorganized sector – the farm workers, vendors, casual construction labour, domestic help, home-based workers – are even far more neglected and unaccounted-for part of the informal economy. This is so, since the self-employed women work from homes and their contribution is mostly not calculated into the national economic data. However, according to the National Sample Survey ’05, one-third of the informal sector workforce (about 120mn) comprises of women. Collectively, they accounted for 96% of the female workforce in the country, and contribute to about 20% GDP of India.

Manager as "Professional" = Manager 'Beyond Business'

2006-09-04T07:57:00.001+05:30

Is "management" really a "profession"?... Does a manager really qualify to be called a "professional"?

Perhaps it is worth looking at what the term "Profession" means.

More often than not, the meaning of the “profession” remains confined to two parameters:

mastery over certain specialized skills or body of knowledge, and

membership to a community who possess similar skills or knowledge.

However, as RJ Lifton, in his book Home from the War (1973) pointed out, there is another, more immportant, criteria for a trade-skill to qualify as a "profession":

The fundamental and distinctive meaning of the term “profession” (and specially in the context of people-focused helping professions) revolves around the self-acknowledged “public/social role” of the professional. The term “profess” is made up of the Latin prefix pro, which means "forward," or "into a public position," and fess, which derives from the Latin fateri or fass and means "to confess, own, acknowledge." Lifton pointed out that the original meaning of profession was "a personal form of outfront public acknowledgment."

Thus, a profession by its very definition has a public or social role that goes beyond mere possession of specialized knowledge/skill and membership to a professional body.

In practice, this is also true of most other professions. A doctor, for instance, still retains his/her professional identity as a doctor even when outside the hospital or his/her chamber. The same is true for a lawyer or a chartered accountant. This is because their professional knowledge and skills remain relevant to the society even outside their place of work.

In contrast, a manager becomes just another ordinary citizen as soon as s/he steps out of the corporate boundary; his/her professional knowledge/skills have little relvance to perform a social/public role.

...at least so it is in practice!!!

So when can management really become a "professional"?

...when, for instance,
- the HR Manager can use his skills to empower the de-empowered in the society
- the Sales Manager can use his skills to open up a market for the village artisans
- the Corporate Strategist can turnaround a school or a hospital
- the Finance Expert can find a solution to the 'cash-flow' problem of a vegetable vendor
...etc.

That is... when a Manager can remain socially relevant even 'beyond business' !

Revisiting the "Bottom of the Pyramid"

2006-09-03T15:25:00.000+05:30

A few years back, CK Prahalad’s conceptualisation of “The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid” woke up a large number of corporates and entrepreneurs to the huge business potential that lay dormant in the lower strata of the masses. CKP’s thesis was that 4bn people on earth subsist on less than $2/day, and therefore, collectively and globally constitute a $13trillion market!

With all noble intentions, CKP argued that this masses at the Bottom of the Pyramid (BOP) should be viewed not as victims or a burden, but as value-driven consumers. If large corporations design and customise their offerings for this huge segment of consumers, it can change their life-style, and enhance the quality of day-to-day living for them.

CKP’s proposal, however, suffers from three underlying biases that permeate much of the contemporary management literature. The purpose of this note is not to diminish the value of the concept of BOP, but to surface these biases and reinterpret the concept, so that real the “fortune” that is embedded in the BOP can be leveraged:

Bias 1: Masses are primarily consumers, and not producers. And therefore, their life becomes “better”, if they get to consume more, and not if they produce more. This assumption, while partially correct, misses out on the entrepreneurial potential that lies in BOP. For instance, it neglects facts such as the exports from Dharavi, Asia’s largest slum in Mumbai, exceeded the total international earnings of a company like Ranbaxy in 2004.

This is allthemore more relevant in context of India where the “unorganised sector” accounts for 93% of the country’s economically active workforce. More than just being consumers, this workforce (consisting of hawkers, construction workers, domestic helps, road-side mechanics, scrap workers, etc.) account for 60% of net domestic product, 68% of national income, 31% of agricultural exports, and 41% of manfactuing exports.

The real “fortune” of BOP lies not merely in serving these low-income markets, but in organising and unleashing the under-utilised entrepreneurial potential of its inhabitants. For instance, Sri Mahila Grih Udyog (more popularly known for Lijjat Papad) mobilised the grassroot entrepreneurship of women into organising them into a Rs. 312crore business. Similarly, Aavishkar India Micro Venture Capital Fund provides venture capital to rural entrepreneurs to leverage rural innovations and appropriate technologies.

Bias 2: The quantum of profits is more important than its source. Like most contemporary management concepts, BOP primarily focuses on how corporates can create and exploit markets to reap large profits (though to be fair, along with “growth” and “profit”, CKP also added “incalculable contributions to humankind” as a benefit of focusing on BOP).

The concept of BOP, however, does not essentially discriminate among the sources from which the profits are generated. It would treat the profits from selling a Rs.5 bottle of aerated drink, or a Re.1 shampoo sachet as identical to the profits generated from making medicines or education available to this segment.

Like much of contemporary management literature, BOP also does not distinguish between the motives of “profit-making” and “being profitable”. Profit-making motive tilts the prioities away from the society to the owners of capital. It follows the dictum of the economist Milton Friedman: “there is one and only one social responsibility of business - to use its resources and engage in activities designed to increase its profits…”

Being profitable, on the other hand, is an imperative for the sustainability of any entrepreneurial venture. As Prof Mohammad Yunus, the founder of Grameen Bank (the largest bank of Bangaldesh which services almost 3mn “poorest of the poor” across more than 40,000 villages) once mentioned: “Volume of profit is not important in Grameen in money-making sense, but important as an indicator of efficiency. We would like to make more profit so that we can reduce interest rate - and pass on the benefits to the borrowers.”

Bias 3: Wealth-creation is same as making profits. Lastly, the BOP concept takes a very narrow view of wealth-creation. It neglects the fact that a society’s “wealth” is not just the income-levels of its members, but also the the sustainability of its community relations and environment. By focusing on profit making, BOP reduces the concept of wealth to just money, and the rest – i.e., the community and the environment - become mere resources which need to be "exploited".

To make BOP a viable concept for social change, there is a need to reinterpret the meaning of wealth. Take for instance, the Yasaswini health insurance scheme, pioneered by Narayan Hrudayalaya in Bangalore, which provides complete health cover (from common cold to brain surgury to 1.7mn farmers at a cost of Rs.5/month). The scheme is self-funding, but the “wealth” it creates is not money, but a healthy community of economically active people.