Infuse has been set-up by IIM Ahmedabad’s Centre for Innovation Incubation and Entrepreneurship (CIIE) and is currently backed by the Ministry of New and Renewable Energy (MNRE), BP, World Bank member IFC and Technology Development Board. Infuse, which also recently announced the initial closing, shall invest in and handhold India-based seed and early-stage cleantech enterprises across renewables, resource efficiency, waste and water.

Ecolibrium has raised a total of $1.6 million in this financing round from Infuse Capital and IFC, who invested through its recently created Cleantech Innovation Facility. The company was founded by brothers Chintan Soni and Harit Soni and was incubated at CIIE in partnership with MNRE through the Renewable Energy Search initiative.

Ecolibrium has developed a technology platform that helps commercial, institutional and industrial organizations produce, monitor and use energy more intelligently, and overall make substantial and rapid cost savings. Ecolibrium has several paying customers and operational pilots across the country – some marquee customers include MNRE, Torrent Power, Fiat and Mitsui. Ecolibrium Energy has made its presence felt within one year of operations by providing very attractive ROI for its customers.

“The current round of funding will be used for strengthening our offerings in the energy optimization, renewable integration, smart micro grids and demand response space. We are delighted to partner with Infuse and IFC for our journey going forward and look forward to their active strategic support”, said Chintan Soni, Founder and CEO, Ecolibrium Energy.

Cleantech is a young and emerging sector in India. Very few funds are actively investing in this space, especially at the critical early-stage. Infuse was created to bridge this financing gap and will invest up to Rs 5-10 crores per venture to support commercialization and scale-up. Infuse also has a unique seed program under which it shall work with entrepreneurs-in-residence to co-create and seed viable capital-efficient ventures across renewables, distributed generation, energy efficiency, transportation, waste management, sustainable agriculture and water sectors.

“We firmly believe that India requires frugal technology and business model innovations to overcome the energy security, access and climate change issues. Start-ups like Ecolibrium, who are building low-cost and commercially viable solutions, are ideal for optimizing the growing energy needs of the industry”, said Prof Rakesh Basant, Chairperson, CIIE. “We think active mentoring and handholding is critical for success of early stage ventures and through Infuse, CIIE will continue to actively work with Ecolibrium in helping them increase their outreach.”

IFC’s co-investment in Ecolibrium is a strong validation of CIIE’s incubation model. Over the last few weeks, several of CIIE supported ventures across sectors have received external funding and validation. CIIE incubatees iStar and Biosense recently raised funds from Unitus and Insitor respectively while Barrix Agro, a winner at Power of Ideas initiative, won the best social start-up award at the recently held Sankalp Forum. In the IT sector, Ventureast recently funded CIIE-supported Smartrx while Tookitaki raised commitment at Nasscom’s 10,000 start-ups initiative.

DM 2013 will provide grants between $50,000 and $100,000 to the winning social enterprises to assist them to replicate/scale projects/business models with demonstrated operational viability/proof of concept and financial sustainability, to deliver public goods and services to poor. DM grant support would fund enterprises to meet expenditures of goods and services in the nature of preliminary, operational, and capacity building expenses. This will be a 15-month incubation/acceleration process. Once entrepreneurs are ready with credible, sustainable projects, DM and its partners would also facilitate entrepreneurs in contacting and connecting with other potential funders for the next stage of growth.

With over 190 proposals submitted, DM shortlisted twenty social enterprises and will bring them together on May 1, 2013 in Bhopal, Madhya Pradesh.  The social enterprises are diverse, focusing on issues from education to health to adolescent girl trafficking.  Seven are for profit models, twelve are non-profit, and one is a hybrid.  The May 1^st event will focus on challenges and opportunities with social enterprise business models, access to working capital, integrating technology for development, and more.

If your desire to make a difference to the world was somehow lost in your search for a stable career, here is your chance to rediscover it. The Villgro Fellowship is an opportunity to take a break from your script and experiment with an alternative career.

On the one hand is the social entrepreneur, who is always short of critical human resources. On the other hand is the mid-career professional, who always wonders how his or her skills could be used for something larger than just making money. Well, the Villgro Fellowship is that magical bridge that connects these two worlds.

The Villgro Fellowship aims to cultivate a pipeline of future leaders who have the social commitment and leadership and operational skills to contribute to the development of villages in India though principles of social entrepreneurship while filling a critical talent gap within Villgro’s incubatee companies. The Fellowship is a one-year program that immerses Fellows in field work with social enterprises and exposes them to leadership training to support their professional growth.

Over the last 5 years, 29 fellows have passed through the Fellowship program. 62% of them have stayed back in the social sector to pursue their interest as a career.

What is the Villgro Fellowship?
Villgro works with social entrepreneurs who are transforming rural India with innovative ideas such as Bee-Keeping that increases farm yield and financial returns for farmers, Cost-effective anaemia testing machines to prevent maternal mortality, to name a few.

Through the fellowship you get an opportunity to apply your skills, mind and energy to problems of the poor. A unique opportunity to be part of solving some of these pressing problems, using innovation and enterprise. You will work very closely with a social entrepreneur and develop an in-depth understanding of innovation and social entrepreneurship. You will also be part of a transformative leadership development program that will hone your skills and personality.

Who can be a Villgro Fellow?
If you are passionate about using your professional skills for social impact and have 3 plus years of experience in any of the following areas – Strategic Planning, Finance and Accounting, HR, Sales and Marketing, IT and Operations this could be the program for you.

For more details and to apply please visit: http://villgro.org/fellowship-

The accelerator focuses on for-profit, commercially scalable Indian startups that display a high level of social value in their tech-driven or tech-enabled offerings. The accelerator will focus on technology ventures operating in the mobile/ICT, health, agribusiness, education, sustainability and livelihood solutions verticals.

With the first of three 4-day sessions at the IIM-A campus beginning on April 11^th, the highly competitive application process saw 300 organizations applying to be selected for the program.

According to Akash Bansal from CIIE, “the accelerator will help optimize ventures through interactive working sessions with international impact investors, entrepreneurs that have overcome the same challenges facing many in the cohort, and one-on-one access to high quality professional services”.

The cohort includes:

Kriyate Design Solutions is utilizing elevation technology to create a smart phone for the visually impaired at an accessible price point, liberating and creating livelihood-enhancing opportunities for potentially millions around the globe.

Edsix Brain Lab is poised to disrupt the booming educational gaming sector by becoming the world’s largest developer and publisher of interactive brain skill & curriculum based products.

MediAngels is creating the world’s first online hospital, providing medical services for people around the globe utilizing internet and mobile technology.

Aakar Innovations is producing a biodegradable sanitary napkin product for the BoP woman consumer sold by women in a hub & spoke model across India.

Advance DIA-BESE Care is helping patients and care providers manage diabetes and its associated complications through a novel algorithm driven program

Green Agrevolution maximizes the take home profit of farmers by improving efficiencies in the agricultural supply chain, from crop selection to marketing, utilizing a microentrepreneurial franchise model.

UTOPIA is developing a number of innovative and unique livelihood enhancing products and solutions for the differently-abled.

SuryOn has developed the Apollo Mobile Phone Charger, capable of charging mobile phones directly from sunlight, without the intermediacy of batteries.

GreenNerds Solutions provides innovative technology solutions to address the needs of current environmental challenges around the solid waste management sector.

HelloMyDoctor is a pre-paid telephonic health consultation platform that utilizes a location algorithm to ensure that patients are connected with participating doctors nearby.

Pappilon Software Solutions Pvt. Ltd. has developed HealthBooth, a five-minute check-in booth, which is capable of performing health checks for Rs 50 (less than US$1).

Kaambol.com is an online job portal with supplemental training and placement services for brown-collar workers. Clients placed through Kaambol regularly see salary hikes between 40 and 80%.

Experifun has developed a suite of innovative, patent-ready, interactive scientific product solutions to dramatically improve in-classroom learning at the K-12 level.

Sanchayan delivers comprehensive financial planning, literacy & financial services like savings, banking, etc to low-income BOP populations.

nanoPix is an image and video processing product company focusing on socially impacting products bringing value, quality and safety to people. They are working on products in both the agricultural and medical device fields.

“We could not be more excited about the incredible talent that is represented in our cohort. It is a diverse group of entrepreneurs, all of whom are extremely attractive from an investor perspective”, says Patrick Duffy, Village Capital’s program manager in Ahmedabad.

More information about the program can be found at www.vilcap-ciie.org.

Selected investees will receive a one year package of:

• Startup funding
• Hands-on assistance with critical areas like business and financial planning, fundraising, legal structures, governance, etc.
• Connections to peers, experts and leaders

What are some of our social entrepreneurs doing?

Ankit Mathur and Neha Juneja, the founders of Greenway Grameen Infra, have designed a Smart Stove that burns biomass with incredible efficiency, using 65% less fuel and producing 80% less smoke than traditional mud cookstoves. For their innovative work, they recently won the Tata Social Enterprise Challenge, were selected as 2013 Unreasonable Fellows and co-founder Neha won the L’Oreal Paris & Femina Women’s Award for Science & Innovation.

Meanwhile, Apurva Kothari is hard at work to reduce farmer suicides with his company, No Nasties. By designing, producing and selling high-quality t-shirts made from 100% fair trade, organic cotton, Apurva seeks to engage the local consumer sector to build a market for the organic cotton being produced by farmers. He was recently featured in Entrepreneur Magazine, alongside other entrepreneurs such as Seth Godin.

What have our investees said about our support?

Krishna Ramkumar, the founder of Avanti Fellows, explains, “We applied to UnLtd India within the first couple of months of our inception. As a startup looking for access to capital, mentoring support and a wider network of peers, funders and supporters, we fit the bill for UnLtd India perfectly.” Now the largest company of its kind in India, Krishna says, “UnLtd India played a massive role in helping accelerate our growth. I got frank feedback…helping me refine and better articulate our goals as an organisation [and] UnLtd India staff also made valuable connections with legal resources and helped us establish a partnership with a leading bank for financing.”

Applications for the next cohort of investees are now open! Please consider our eligibility criteria below and visit our website for details on how to apply.

Deadline for applications is April 15th, 2013.

Basic Eligibility Criteria

1. Applicant must be a resident in India (based in Mumbai, Thane, Pune, Solapur, Raigarh, Satara or Ahmadnagar).
2. Applicants must be over 16.
3. Applicant must have the passion and drive to make a positive change.
4. Applicant must have an idea or an existing project. The project must not be legally registered for more than four years.

Please note:

1. Applicants could be working part time on their idea/project.
2. Applicants need not have registered organizations.

If you or anyone you know meets the criteria below, please connect with us at incubation.support@unltdindia.org.

Given the known and studied human resources issue with social enterprises in India, as detailed in the 2012 Intellecap study on “Understanding Human Resources Challenges in the Indian Social enterprise Sector,” Karmany helps address the gap not only by offering an improved matching system, but also by increasing the amount of information both the candidate and the employer has during their search.  Unlike other job sites, employer profile pages include photos and videos of the workplace and team, testimonials, media coverage, and what the mission, sustainable model, and innovation are.  Candidates are asked to provide a variety of information including things such as their employment history, skills, functions, and are even asked to answer questions about their personality to help determine their fit for any job selected. This new way of displaying information creates a marketplace view that this sector has never seen before.

“The social enterprise space is growing around the globe and there is no professional marketplace to bring awareness of the opportunities directly to talent interested in the space,” says Shweta Sharma, Karmany Founder and CEO.  After volunteering with a nonprofit in Gujarat and having previously started and successfully run an education nonprofit called Vidya Grants, Sharma recognized that the existing gap between talent – both local and international – and the inspiring work of social enterprises needed a new approach.

At launch, the platform features twelve enterprises, from Daily Dump to Simpa Networks to Hippocampus and 17 job opportunities. As more enterprises and candidates sign up for the platform, the algorithmic functionality of the site will respond to more data, and the team will continue to refine its intelligence to improve the ability to match candidates to jobs.

Through increased transparency and intelligent matching, Karmany ultimately aims to inspire and enable candidates from around the world to connect with businesses that have social impact.  Lowering barriers and offering insights into the world of both the employer and candidate allows Karmany to build a bridge to help social enterprises take their work to the next level.

The summit comprised of 5 sessions: Women as leaders of change; Men’s role in women’s empowerment; Overcoming the obstacles to girls education; The benefits of economic inclusion of women and a session on women and technology – from access to action.

WomenChangeMakers is a global fellowship program that identifies, supports and connects leading social entrepreneurs addressing women’s access to education and healthcare, economic and political participation . In doing so, it empowers them to build sustainable models, develop synergies and increase their impact. Yann Borgstedt, a Swiss entrepreneur, founded WomenChangeMakers with the aim of helping women to higher social and economic participation is to help their communities develop and succeed. He is assisted by Antonella Notari Vischer, director of WomenChangeMakers. WomenChangeMakers offers a full range of tools to its fellow social entrepreneurs to achieve growth; in accordance with their specific needs, they chose what type of support and tools they require.

Meet some of the WomenChangemakers:

Guacira Cesar de Oliveira, Founder and Executive Director of the Centro Feminista de Estudos y Assessoria (CFEMEA, Brasilia), Ashoka Fellow. CFEMEA designs and guarantees women’s rights in Brazil and works to secure social justice for women by teaching social movements and organizations how to monitor public expenditures, ensuring that dedicated resources are used to address women’s priorities. They strengthen the incidence of feminist policy on public policies and finances by reinforcing the women’s movement’s dialogue with the public authorities – www.cfemea.org.br

Alice Freitas, Founder and CEO of Asta (Rio de Janeiro), Ashoka Fellow and Avina leader. Asta contributes to social equality and economic development in Brazil by strengthening women’s productive enterprises at the bottom of the pyramid through access to markets, know-how, and the creation of networks. Asta has created a direct sales catalog to help informal artisans overcome the challenges of large-scale distribution. By equipping a network of well-trained amateur sales agents with an intimate understanding of the personal histories and social impact behind the products, Asta provides a direct communication channel between producers and consumers. 93% of the 600 artisans it works with are women; 97% of the 650-700 re-sellers are women and 100% of the Asta team are women

Safeena Hussain , Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Educate Girls is a WomenChangeMakers fellow in India. Educate Girls has developed a comprehensive model that leverages existing resources from the government, village and school levels and creates community ownership for school reform. They ensure that teachers, the government, parents, and even girls become active participants in the process and operate independently in school governance even after the withdrawal of Educate Girls. Educate Girls is building a cadre of village based youth leaders to work as champions for girls’ education and catalysts for school reform. Team Balika works in the schools as well as village communities spreading awareness about girl child education. It boosts enrolment, retention and learning outcomes for all girls. To create synergy, they work top-down with government officials on different levels, and bottom-up with villagers and village committees. This enables them to realize their mission in a 2-year intervention with an average cost of just INR 100 or $2.60 per child.

The award is part of the Alliance’s strategic plan to increase the level of resources, grants, and investment in the sector on par with comparable global development challenges. Household air pollution (HAP) — emanating from traditional chulhas burning wood, coal and animal dung as fuel — is the largest health risk factor for Indians. According to recently published Global Burden of Disease estimates, HAP causes over one million deaths in South Asia every year.

“For decades, a lack of funding and financing for the clean cooking sector has prevented manufacturers, distributors, and other actors from scaling up to address the safe and clean cooking needs of millions of people,” said Radha Muthiah, Executive Director of the Global Alliance for Clean Cookstoves. “Driving investment in the sector is an integral part of the Alliance’s strategy to catalyze markets worldwide.”

The Alliance and Sankalp have come together to create a platform to showcase and recognize socially relevant enterprises with proven innovative approaches to tackle one or more of the barriers across the clean cookstoves and fuels value chain, and offer them the opportunity to access early stage investment capital. The winning enterprise must also be able to demonstrate how it will contribute to the Alliance’s goal of 100 million homes adopting clean and efficient cookstoves and fuels by 2020.

Enterprises that promote the use of clean cookstoves and fuels address the health and environmental impacts associated with burning solid fuels in traditional cookstoves, as well as improve the livelihoods of women who spend a considerable amount of time collecting fuel.

Aparajita Agrawal, Director Sankalp Forum, added, “Sankalp Forum has always been at the forefront of supporting high-impact social enterprises that effectively address challenges faced by low-income populations. We are proud to support the Global Alliance For Clean Cookstoves in their quest to find enterprises in the clean cooking sector. We look forward to showcasing these ventures at the upcoming Sankalp Unconvention Summit in April.”

Applications for the award will be opened on the 28^thof February and will close on the 23rd of March.

The winning enterprise will receive a cash grant of USD 15,000 along with the opportunity to be considered for the Alliance’s Spark Fund and strategic mentoring advice from sector experts. The winner of the award will be felicitated at the Sankalp Unconvention Summit 2013.  

The DFID Samriddhi-Sankalp Recognition for Women Empowerment cash grant is for social enterprises that are either founded/managed by women entrepreneurs or are focused on providing solutions that improve the quality of life of women and young girls. Applications for the Recognition are open till March 23, and winners will be announced at the Sankalp Unconvention Summit – the world’s largest Social Enterprise event, on April 17, 2013.

The finalists of the recognition will receive access to strategic mentoring from sector experts, connections to other impact investors, and the opportunity to present their business to a global audience of more than 1000 delegates at the Summit.

Last year, the Recognition was jointly won by two enterprises – both at the cutting edge of innovation and need. Vindhya e-infomedia, a socio-economic venture run by a first-generation woman entrepreneur, is India’s only for-profit organization that only employs people with disabilities (PWD’s) as its production staff. The joint winner – Sukrut System’s manufactures a “Silent Observer” – a non-invasive device installed on sonography machines to check female foeticide.

More information on the DFID Samridhi-Sankalp Recognition for Women Empowerment 2013 is available on sankalpforum.com. Last date of application is March 23, 2013.

About Sankalp Forum

Sankalp Forum (www.sankalpforum.com), an Intellecap initiative, recognizes & supports innovative, sustainable, high impact social enterprises. It builds an enabling ecosystem for early-stage businesses, channels impact investments, and engages over 11,000 stakeholders globally through collaborative year-round initiatives. It has developed an involved community of entrepreneurs, investors, enablers and policy-makers to encourage innovation, facilitate scalability, and drive consensus on matters that aid social enterprise development.

Since 2009, Sankalp’s Annual Summit has been the largest social enterprise focused gathering in the world and in 2013 has partnered with Villgro’s Unconvention to become the Sankalp Unconvention Summit. The Summit brings together more than 1,000 delegates, thought leaders, industry experts, policy makers from around the world to voice, discuss, debate issues, trends and solutions that aid social enterprise development.

For more information http://sankalpforum.com/

About Department For International Development (DFID)

DFID leads the UK government’s fight against world poverty.DFID works with national and international partners to eliminate global poverty and its causes, as part of the UN ‘Millennium Development Goals’. DFID also responds to overseas emergencies. Since its creation, DFID has helped more than 250 million people lift themselves from poverty and helped 40 million more children to go to primary school.

In India DFID Focuses on the poorest people in India’s low income states Madhya Pradesh, Bihar and Orissa, putting women and girls at the heart of their work, investing in girls’ education, access to finance, skills and low carbon energy, safe birth, children’s health, nutrition and sanitation. DFID believes strongly in the private sector’s potential to combat poverty through pro-poor enterprises that deliver jobs, products, infrastructure and basic services to 2 $ a day customers.For more information http://www.dfid.gov.uk/