This op-ed was submitted by Suresh Pramar, and is a user post. The views expressed do not necessarily reflect those of TC-I, but we feel that it is important to cultivate opinions from all sides. India like the rest of the world has not escaped the impacts of the current downturn. The sudden rush in [...]
Editors’ note: The ThinkChange India staff is committed to providing our readers with first-hand insights from groundbreaking changemakers. Readers will be able to see other conversations under our TC-I Changemakers and Change-Agent tags. This week, Vinay sat down (over the phone) with Dheeraj Batra of Innosight Ventures, a unique venture capital firm that employs the [...]
Here is a piece that I wrote for my school paper. While it is not focused on India specifically, I believe that the topic is relevant to every country. Profits or Profiteering?: Why Companies Are Responsible for More If a corporation’s responsibility is truly only to its shareholders, then I guess the actions of Mercedes-Benz, [...]
Via NGO Post, a competition held by Teach A Man To Fish called Schools for Entrepreneurs aims “to find the best school-based income-generating initiatives in India, projects which are both educational and financially sustainable.” From student-run cybercafés funding classroom improvements, to schoolyard chicken-runs laying aside profits to pay for books, the competition aims to encourage [...]
Social enterprises are often searching for sustainable breakthrough innovations, but lack the resources to invest in large-scale research and development. One creative, and increasingly popular, solution to this problem is open innovation. The basic concept is to utilize the collected knowledge of experts from around the world to solve design challenges. One such tool is [...]
The hybrid business model (nonprofit with a profit-earning arm) is a central figure as a certain type of social enterprise, and is a topic of discussion by SocialEdge and books such as “The Power of Unreasonable People” or “How to Change the World: Social Entrepreneurs and the Power of New Ideas.” The Christian Science Monitor [...]
I had the opportunity to attend the International Conference on Social Entrepreneurship in India on the 4th and 5th of December. In this post I will try to narrate my experience at the conference. In the posts following this one, I will talk about people and organizations I got in touch with, and most importantly [...]
WaterHealth International, a private company and Acumen Fund investee, was covered in last week’s online BusinessWeek, which also includes a video featuring the founder, Tralance Addy (tipped from Acumen Fund’s blog). The company aims to “provide sustainable access to clean, safe water to all, including the poorest communities. ” Their work in India includes over [...]
Editor’s note: In addition to being informative, this post also outlines what IFMR Trust is looking for in potential hires. If you would like to see that immediately, go after the jump. Before Thanksgiving break I had the pleasure of sitting down at an informal roundtable with Dave Wallack, Senior Vice President of People to learn [...]
Yesterday, Acumen Fund‘s Chief Investment Officer Brian Trelstad came to NYU to conduct a live case study on a real company that Acumen Fund invested in, in an effort to educate MBA and other students on the investing strategy and process of this innovative social venture fund. I actually wrote about Acumen’s approach sometime back. [...]
