As one example, so-called impact investors try to convey that all investments have impact.  Based on this notion, it would seem redundant to call something “impact investing” rather than “investing”.  The underlying idea is that impact investing helps move what is known as investing today to another, more generally accepted, idea of investing that involves being mindful in choosing investments that create positive social and environmental impact.  Otherwise, they warn, we jeopardize quality of life because any other investment would have a negative impact.

Similarly, “social enterprise” has been thrown into the mix along the likes of corporate social responsibility (CSR), sustainable business, and responsible business by those tinkering with capitalism and the role of business in society.  But in doing so, these terms have been served up as a side dish rather than fundamentally changing the function and approaches of a business.

In the case of CSR, for instance, a company may redirect some type of value to communities which may have nothing to do with their core function.  Besides, that core function may be something that produces negative impact.  Even with social enterprise and impact investing, these terms have so far only managed to segregate a certain type of business and investment.

Is it even possible to push for a truly different vision of the economy?  How would that be achieved?

Yasmina Zaidman, who leads efforts to engage with corporate partners as Director of Communications at Acumen, a nonprofit financier and supporter of social enterprises focusing on poverty, offers some suggestions on changing the system.  Realizing that people “held a real skepticism about whether corporations could help build a more equitable world”, she explains what is needed:

It is not enough to say that [Acumen’s] work brings real benefits to social enterprises and the people they serve.  Our goal is to change the systems that have, in so many cases, led to the inequality and lack of options that we see.  So, to be successful, we need to partner with corporations that are also interested in changing systems.

In the summer, Acumen announced a partnership with The Dow Chemical Company as part of their policy to engage corporations.  In this partnership, Dow employees offer their expertise to help Acumen’s portfolio companies.  This may seem surprising given that over the years, Dow has been caught up in a number of controversies in areas such as human rights, the environment, and employee safety, building an impression of disregard to society.  But these conversations, these partnerships, these engagements, despite what friction may come of them, must be had to create systematic change.  As Zaidman goes on to write:

We see more and more companies willing to go outside their comfort zone and partner in creative ways in order to achieve breakthroughs.  As an example, we are now working with companies based in both the US and the countries where we invest to provide financial and in-kind support to social enterprises that seek to scale.  These companies are looking beyond traditional CSR to find new potential allies in the development of more inclusive and sustainable business models.  But these are the early days of exploring the potential for collaboration between corporations and social enterprises.

As it would seem, the days are still early in this approach to challenge old systems.  Will we see the day when “social enterprise” becomes obsolete, giving way to a truly more inclusive and sustainable “enterprise”?

I believe we will discover a whole new set of solutions by engaging in this discussion from a position of openness and respect, even as we hold ourselves accountable to the people, and not the systems, with which we stand.

Social Good Lab is an initiative between Paris Incubateurs, a Paris-based incubator network of over 400 startups, and Le Comptoir de l’Innovation, an impact investment and consultancy firm.

The City of Paris and Bpifrance, the country’s public bank for assisting and financially supporting French micro to small and medium enterprises, are backing the incubator through their “Paris Innovation Amorçage” fund, which is designed to finance innovative pre-seed or seed stage projects.

Although incubators and tech firms are a familiar couple, Social Good Lab purposely focuses on technologically innovative social enterprises in hopes that the tech sector can become more inclined to benefit society with their innovations.  Likewise, Nicolas Hazard, the president of Le Comptoir de l’Innovation, is counting on the possibility that Social Good Lab can influence other businesses to draw inspiration from social ventures in their ability to balance operations while creating positive impact to society.

What remains to be seen is the extent of their impact, but for now these are the eight startups to follow:

1. Arizuka

Arizuka, meaning anthill in Japanese, is a crowdfunding platform for organizations developing socially, economically, and environmentally innovative projects.

2. Cine Apps

Described as a young enterprise, Cine Apps has developed digital cinema “smart glasses” and “smartphone” services, such as personalized subtitles, last-minute bookings, alerts, and public transport information, for people with sensory impairment.

3. Eqosphere

Eqosphere is a collaborative web platform that facilitates the redistribution of end-of-life products and items that are unsold to reduce food and non-food waste.

4. microDON

microDON aims to revolutionize how donations are made by creating a service that allows people to round up the bill on their everyday purchases, so that anything from a few cents to a few euros would be donated to a specific cause.

5 and 6. Planète Langue des Signes and Egonocast

Planète Langue des Signes, professionals in sign language for audiovisual purposes, and Egonocast, a multimedia software company, have partnered to create a sign language translation service for television.

7. Power:On

Power:On developed a software capable of determining which hybrid of power supplies (solar, diesel generator, etc.) costs the least in a given situation, so that they can assemble sustainable and innovative solutions for rural communities that do not have access to electricity.

8. Social Club

Social Club aims to address the digital divide in France and around the world by creating a search engine that runs without access to the Internet, but uses interactive voice response to parse spoken queries and redirect the user to the person most suitable to respond.

In no small part this was due to various fringe events at all three, looking at the role of mutuals, the role of business in the local community, and plenty of others where social enterprise was referenced as part of the solution to wider challenges, including on topics as varied as youth employment, education, and health among others.

A strong presence for social economy organisations was also ensured thanks to the Social Investment Forum, a network for providers of social investment and social finance, and the Social Economy Alliance, a consortium of 22 UK cooperatives and social enterprises, universities, think tanks, and charities.

The Liberal Democrats kicked things off in late September with their conference, which had the tag line “Fairer society, stronger economy”.  The main thrust of their message was that neither of the other two main parties – Conservatives or Labour – could be trusted to deliver both, so the Liberal Democrats could be relied upon as a regulatory force.

But in spite of a tagline that seems a natural fit with the wider social economy movement, there were few policy announcements that could be considered social enterprise-friendly, and the Social Economy Alliance fringe event was poorly attended by party delegates.  Much of the economy policy focus was on encouraging big business and banks to play more fairly, such as reducing the use of offshore tax havens for instance.

A week later the Labour Party resurrected the spirit of old, paraphrasing ex-Prime Minister Tony Blair by talking about “an economy and a society which is not only for the privileged few”.  One of their key policy proposals was to introduce a 20-month freeze in energy prices if elected.  This announcement prompted a four point gain for Labour in the opinion polls whilst simultaneously causing mild panic on the markets, with £2 billion being wiped off the value of some of the big energy companies.  Labour leader Ed Miliband also announced that they would introduce a £800 million tax break for small businesses, which by default would include many social enterprises.

The Social Economy Alliance responded to the energy announcement by emphasising the existing work of cooperatives and social enterprises in the energy sector.  In an open letter the Alliance asked for a “21st century debate”, arguing it “must not be about big state versus big business.  But about big problems versus big opportunities”.

The response in the mainstream media to the Labour conference focused on the return of socialism, providing a benchmark against which the Conservatives would further define and distinguish themselves.  A principal message of the Conservative Party conference concerned how they were “pro-business” and Labour were “anti-business”.  While the conference was light on policy announcements which could impact on the social economy, Prime Minister David Cameron emphasised the party’s pro-business stance, exclaiming “profits, tax cuts and enterprise… are not dirty, elitist words”.

The fringe event at the conference brought home the scale of the challenge still facing the social economy.  At the event Minister for Civil Society Nick Hurd said, ”You would think in a government obsessed with growth, someone would notice that one part of the economy was growing faster than the rest”, referring to the low profile social economy organisations still have with many government departments.  While largely advocating the role social economy organisations could play in the future, he challenged social enterprises in particular to reach the scale required in order to make them attractive to government commissioners.

The conference concluded this Wednesday, with the Social Economy Alliance responding to David Cameron’s keynote speech by urging all political parties, not just the Conservatives, to better explain what sort of businesses they want to see thrive in the UK.

“Business is key to solving our economic and social problems.  Society and the economy cannot exist without one another and the Prime Minister is right to promote the critical importance of genuine enterprise.  What all parties must do now is explain the sort of businesses they want to see thrive in this country”.

Despite differences in their politics, what is clear is that politicians of all persuasions support the idea of social enterprise and entrepreneurship in principle, but do not yet see it as being a significant enough area to justify substantial policy interest.  With just 20 months to go, it remains to be seen whether the sector as a whole is able to change that.

The report, written by The International Centre for Social Franchising (ICSF) on behalf of the Big Lottery Fund, fills a gap in the sector’s knowledge by providing quantitative data on social replication and franchising, which has previously been lacking.

The lack of information available to ensure successful replication was cited by respondents as a primary reason why organisations aren’t pursuing this route.  Despite the clear benefits to replication, many organisations still lack the knowledge required in order to scale their impact in this way.  Fifty-five percent of respondents who had not yet replicated their work felt they did not know enough to consider social franchising in the future, and even amongst those who had already replicated, 35 percent felt they still lacked sufficient knowledge.

Organisations participating in the research warned that replication needs the right conditions to work. The majority felt that grant funding is an essential prerequisite for replication, with the report finding that most types of organisation – from charities to social enterprises – were more likely to use grants to cover the costs of replication.  Seventy percent of those who had already replicated their work spoke of using grants to build organisational capacity and/or to finance the ongoing costs of franchising, such as staff salaries.  As such the research suggests that there is currently not a sufficient pipeline of replication-ready organisations to feed the expanding UK social investment market, recommending that a ‘replication readiness’ fund could be required in future.

As a result of this research, ICSF have developed five steps they believe could help the chances of organisations successfully replicating their work.

Source: Realising the Potential of Social Replication, The International Centre for Social Franchising.

Dan Berelowitz, Chief Executive for the ICSF, said, “This research has been critical, not only in confirming ideas we have been pursuing to help others replicate, but also for creating new strategies to ensure every proven organisation that has the potential and desire for replication is able to.”

This year, their challenge was to create a social enterprise that will drastically increase food security for urban slums by 2018.  The best idea will take home $1 million in seed capital, donated by Swedish entrepreneur Bertil Hult and the Hult family.  But there are some changes this year.

“This year we made a fundamental change to the competition.  This year we’re giving a million dollars directly to the winning student team, not to an NGO.  And that is because the students have the energy, passion, commitment, and ability to take their ideas forward like no other third-party could match,” said Stephen Hodges, head of the Hult International Business School.

The Hult Prize previously partnered with NGOs and charities – including One Laptop Per Child, Water.org, Habitat for Humanity, and SolarAid – through which prize money to develop an idea would be awarded, instead of directly to the students.

There is also a desire to move theoretical ideas into practice.  Previous years did not require teams to have a working business plan, but this year teams have already built startup ventures and pilot programs.  They were required to attend a summer accelerator at the IXL Center where they were provided with the tools, resources, and mentors to hone their businesses.

The challenge attracted 11,000 students from 350 universities across 150 countries this year, up from 300 students in 2010 when it was still called the Hult Global Case Challenge.

“Literally four years ago to the day, I didn’t even know what social entrepreneurship meant.  I had no idea that there is an intersection that existed between doing good and doing well,” said then-MBA student and creator of the Hult Prize, Ahmad Ashkar.

Ashkar went back to school after the fallout of the 2008 financial crisis.  A speech by Charles Kane of One Laptop Per Child triggered his interest in how to sell a product to the poor to eliminate poverty, which he didn’t think possible at the time – charity is charity, business is business.  Kane explained that there was something called social enterprise.

With the Hult Prize, Ashkar wants to target MBA students who never would have considered a career in the social sector, saying that “when they answer the President’s Challenge, they get hooked, they see the opportunities to have a lifelong career – something that can give them responsibility in the impact that they have, and also a career where they can live sustainable lives.”

Aspire Food Group

Out of 11,000 students, 26 competing in six teams remain.  Kicking things off last night was Aspire Food Group, created by a team from McGill University in Canada, who aspire to use insects to address the challenge.

Already eaten by over 2 billion people worldwide of which 140 million live in urban slums and lack food security, insects such as grasshoppers are a “micro-livestock” loaded with protein comparable to traditional livestock and six times the amount of iron and calcium.  But the problem is that they are hand-harvested, making them more expensive, and they are seasonal.  In Mexico, home to the largest slum in the world, grasshoppers are only available for three months per year.

Aspire’s idea is to harvest insects year-round by breeding insects and supplying farmers with eggs, getting farmers to grow insects, and distributing them in the slums.

Reel Gardening

A team from the University of Cape Town in South Africa pitched Reel Gardening, a biodegradable paper tape with built-in seed and fertilizer to make planting food easier.  The idea was developed by team member Claire Reid, who realized from a personal experience in her own backyard in Johannesburg during her teens that growing a vegetable garden is not as easy as it looks – there are Mother Nature’s other animals to hold back and sometimes families have to trek far distances just to get water.

As an optimally-designed product, Reel Gardening spreads seeds at the correct distances apart, is protected from birds, and is able to save up to 80 percent of water than traditional gardening methods because a user only has to water the demarcated part.  Beyond food security, Reel Gardening has fostered a collaborative spirit by working with schools and communities to implement gardens.

Pulse

Another team hailing from the Hult International Business School created Pulse to address food security from a different angle.  Rather than producing food, Pulse is a mobile-based solution which encourages customers to save away money for food.

In slums, vendors sell food, but people are still malnourished.  An average slum dweller, lacking access to bank accounts, may try to save their hard-earned money at home, but because it’s not stored away it becomes easy for the family to use it on items other than food.  When they purchase something at the local vender, they often get change in the form of chocolate bars or candy, because vendors are short on small change.

Pulse, leveraging a high mobile use rate in developing countries, allows users to “top-up” their accounts so that they can save for rainy days.

Poshnam

Students from the Asian Institute of Management in the Philippines aim to create a new supply chain with Poshnam.  They hope to sell off-specification produce, typically discarded for their appearance, to make food more affordable for slum dwellers while cutting food waste simultaneously.

In India, 30 percent of all food produced is off-spec.  They get discarded along the supply chain and never make it to the consumer, but could have potentially been used to feed the millions who are malnourished in the country.  Poshnam purchases off-spec produce from farmer co-operatives, and through women entrepreneurs they hope to reach the end consumer at a significantly lower markup and selling price.

SokoText

Next a group from the London School of Economics introduced SokoText, which uses mobile text messaging to aggregate demand and realize bulk pricing for slum dwellers. By aggregating purchases, SokoText estimates that the price of fresh produce is reduced by 20 percent.

Farmers would inform SokoText of their available produce, and customers on the SokoText network would be informed of what’s available and place orders.  Each SokoText outlet manages the orders for 150 local kiosks serving over 11,000 customers altogether.  The company employs “SokoText Ladies” or micro-franchisees to set up kiosks, which are pickup points for the food.  This summer, the team went to Mathare Valley in Nairobi and has successfully implemented a fully operational outlet there.

Origin

Finally, students from the ESADE Business School took to the stage, but they were one person short.  Having just returned from one of their pilot locations, one member contracted malaria and was in hospital.  The remaining members presented Origin, a social enterprise that helps small retailers sell cheaper and healthier foods in slums.

They do this by leveraging the supply chain of their partner TechnoServe, who has been aggregating the supply of smallholder farmers.  Origin would expand the supply chain to slums.   As a network, Origin handles all the logistics and builds local collection centres.

Winner

In the end, a panel of eight judges including Muhammad Yunus, the 2006 Nobel Peace Prize winner and founder of the Grameen Bank, Ertharin Cousin, the executive director of the United Nations, and Premal Shah, the co-founder and president of Kiva, chose Aspire as the Hult Prize winner.

“If I said to somebody 60 days ago ‘I love this prize and I’m going to give the prize this year to someone who wants to grow, process, and sell edible insects to actually empower rather than devour urban communities’, some people would laugh, but the truth is two-and-a-half billion people worldwide eat insects seasonally already,” said Clinton, who was there announce and congratulate the winner.

But before they take home the $1 million prize, Aspire would have to deal with one ongoing issue, otherwise they risk losing the prize money.  The McGill team is currently in a dispute with Jakub Dzamba, a PhD student at McGill, surrounding the cricket farming kit.  Dzamba claims he first came up with the idea in 2009.

Dzamba filed a report of invention with the university in August 2012.  He was approached by the McGill team this year, who knew of his cricket farming research, and asked for help in designing a farming kit for the competition. Businessweek reports that he “produced some of the graphics used for the team’s presentation, including several showing the collapsible ‘cricket reactor’ he designed for the team.”

Dzamba says he believed there was a verbal agreement where he would be made a team member or partner in any company formed should the team win the regional competition, which took place in spring. But that never happened.

The university has stepped in and after review, says that Dzamba was the sole inventor.  The Hult team did not meet the criteria of co-inventor as they did not have the idea or the ability to execute it.

The university tried to facilitate a resolution, but talks broke down leading up to the competition last night.  Although it didn’t affect their ability to win the competition, Hult representatives say that McGill team would be ineligible for the prize money if they violate any laws, including intellectual property, and that they would need to sign an agreement saying they won’t.

They’ve conducted a survey of nonprofit social enterprises in Canada’s most populated province, Ontario, and analyzed the data which will be released in a report at the approaching Ontario Nonprofit Network conference.

For the time being, here’s a sneak peek:

$143 million – the amount generated in sales.

$117 million – the amount paid in wages and salaries.

$548,700 – the amount of goods and services sold on average for each social enterprise.

$42,000 – the average net revenue for each social enterprise.

85 percent – the percentage of responding social enterprises that have broken even. This number is reduced to just over half when grants are not included.  Close to 85 percent of social enterprises accept some form of grant funding.

5,355 – the number of people employed (2,930 full-time equivalents).

65,900 – the number of people trained.

18,000 – the number of volunteers involved.

Social enterprises in the province and wider Canada are generally identified by a nonprofit label, although it is understood that these ventures sell a product or service.  

In the report, social enterprises in Ontario are categorized into five sub-sectors: arts and culture; farmers’ markets; thrift stores; social purpose enterprises – which provide employment or training to those facing barriers; and miscellaneous – those that did not fit into any of the preceding categories.

These social enterprises most commonly serve low-income individuals, youth, and women.

According to the report, the oldest social enterprise was established in 1780, when the City of Kingston became home to the province’s first farmer’s market.

Singaporean social entrepreneurs, benefitting from national policy, are known to receive a wide range of support from different groups, including government, corporations, and think tanks.

A 5-episode reality show, Social Inc. goes over some of the entrepreneurs’ challenges and brings in a local entrepreneur to offer advice.

Episode 1: Laksania Redefined

Sim Sin Sin left a comfortable job working at her family’s restaurant empire to start Laksania, a food and beverage social enterprise hiring marginalized people and serving up a popular Southeast Asian soul food, laksa.  However, two of her three restaurants are swimming in the red.  To help turn things around, Lyn Lee, an ex-lawyer who founded Awfully Chocolate and built a multi-million dollar cake shop starting with just one chocolate cake, is put to the challenge.

Episode 2: Aii Sweets Repackaged

You may be familiar with Leona Leong, the founder of candy business Aii.  While she manages to turn a profit, some months are harder to get by, so this young and inexperienced entrepreneur hopes to improve her business.  In comes Nicholas Ng, the founder of FoodXervices Inc, Singapore’s market leader in foodservice distribution with over S$30 million in annual revenue.

Episode 3: Silver Spring Retrained

Founding her social enterprise in 2009, Helen Lim, now 65, is the Managing Director of Silver Spring, an employment agency focused on seniors.   Lim rejects the idea of “being old and being weak” and wants to bring senior talents back into the workforce.  However, good intentions aren’t enough to sustain the business.  Richard Hoon, the CEO of I Search Worldwide, a headhunting firm focusing on C-level executives, coaches her on doing well to do good.

Episode 4: Gone Adventurin’ Retrained

Gone Adventurin’ co-founder Ashwin Subramaniam left a stable job at a bank to work on this company, which creates outdoor adventures with a social cause to support a company’s branding efforts.  But he hasn’t secured a client for the past six months.  Jörg Dietzel, a PR guru who has previously worked at DDB China, DDB Berlin, BBDO Asia, and now runs his own agency Jorg Dietzel Group, will try to help rebrand the company.

Episode 5: Purple Threads Reclothed

Purple Threads is an online store started by Shamla Ramasamy that sells adaptive clothing to the disabled and elderly.  For many in a wheelchair, normal clothing can be difficult to put on and obstructs the ability to carry out daily functions.  But sales for the business are slow and supplies are uncertain.  Bert Tan is the Director of Bodynits International, and is given the task to take the business further.

Photo courtesy of Ambro / FreeDigitalPhotos.net.

The company explains:

Initially, we decided to set up our formal organizational structure as an NGO (non-governmental organization).  We soon realized however that, despite share values of creating social impact, the NGO structure was not a perfect model to choose.  Around the same time, we had been in talks with operators, who were willing to support us on both our mission and the sales and there were an increasing amount of people asking us when the phone would hit the market, so they could buy it.  “Wow!”, we thought, but also “mmm, what now”.

Realizing that it would be easier to market the product and generate revenue to fund the long-term mission, becoming “a ‘real’ company made more sense”.  So with the help of the Waag Society and seed investment from an investor, Fairphone launched three years ago.

After a crowdfunding campaign from May to June to start mass production with 5,000 phones, the Dutch company managed to double sales with almost 10,000 phones sold within that period.  So they decided to produce 20,000 phones this year (then raised to 25,000), with over 14,000 already sold.

The company just announced that the phones will be delivered to customers in December.

Prized as an ethical phone, Fairphone is cautious to produce a phone with conflict-free materials and to be transparent with their work.  For instance, customers were briefed through blog posts regarding concerns about the phone being produced by a manufacturer in China, A’Hong, who has factories in Shenzhen and Chongqing.

To date, the phones are only sold in Europe and through their website, but plans are to expand into retail in 2014.

Photo courtesy of Fairphone.

“Magazine years are like dog years.  Mental health is a really interesting area any way.  It’s an area where there isn’t really that many social enterprises, at least many successful social enterprises.”

The magazine, which seeks to help people understand mental health difficulty from the perspective of those who experience it, has survived despite sustained cuts to public sector spending.  “We started selling in bulk to major organisations, such as the NHS, and that was going OK until 2010.  It was amazing the effect of the change in government.  It was like a portcullis coming down.  And quite quickly people began cancelling their subscriptions.”

Added to this, the magazine has bucked another trend by being a successful publication on mental health – only earlier this year one of the UK’s largest mental health charities Mind, cancelled its magazine ‘Open Mind’ after 15 years in circulation.

So how have they done it?  “We’ve kept it going because we really want to keep it going.  We’ve done that by grafting and hustling and getting by.  I think that’s the reality of small business,” argues Brown.

It’s a reality Brown believes is all too often lost in the hype around social enterprise.  He is a strong advocate of the old adage that ‘small is beautiful’, suggesting that the magazine’s success is due in part to the company’s flexibility and agility. “We’ve been more successful the more we’ve slimmed down, bizarrely.  Making it to the end of the month requires the agility of not having a large staff team.  There’s no great big contracts, huge endowments, or massive reserves.  That’s how we’ve survived, by being small and dirty.”

The magazine gives those with experience of mental health difficulties a chance to help and educate others by writing for the magazine, receiving modest remuneration in return too.  Brown feels this is what gives the magazine its distinctive edge over others that have tried and failed to break this area, having also experienced these issues himself.

“No one actually believed that you could do a good magazine written by people with mental health difficulties.  And funders and investors had sort of had their fingers burnt in the past, by putting up the money for a magazine or publication, which maybe was not so great, and it disappearing once the funding ended.”

Several of his writers have since gone on to write for other publications, which Brown suggests shows how mental health can be part of a normal life, and that the two things need not be exclusive of each other.  “[We’ve shown] that useful mundane advice is better than inspiring stories of people riding up Everest on a unicycle.”

Brown now looks forward to the next five years and beyond, intent on continuing to improve the content of the magazine and expanding its market.

What tricks can an old dog teach the rest of the sector?  Brown had the following advice for other potential and nascent social entrepreneurs about what it takes to sustain a social enterprise.  “A lot of good social enterprise ideas won’t get off the ground unless they go through the dirty, grimey period.  It’s not all going to be exciting award ceremonies, with flash cars and flash suits.  It’s going to be unpleasant sleepless nights and hard graft.  That’s how we’ve kept it going.  We’ve kept it going against financial sense but through a strong moral sense.”

Today, 15 social enterprises chosen from 116 applicants have been announced as finalists.  They are:

Aakar Innovations Pvt. Ltd
Arogya Finance
Avani Bio Energy
Banka BioLoo
Boond Engineering & Development Pvt. Ltd
Edubridge Learning Pvt. Ltd
Jackonblock Facility Services Pvt. Ltd
KNIDS GREEN Pvt. Ltd
NextDrop
MicroGraam Marketplace Pvt. Ltd
Sanchayan Suraksha Solutions Pvt. Ltd
Sevamob
Sakhi Unique Rural Enterprise
Tamul Plates Marketing Pvt. Ltd
Villgro Innovation Marketing Pvt. Ltd

“It was an interesting learning experience,” said Pradeep Kashyap, who is the founder of MART and was on the jury panel.  “Some of the plans from the ventures were of the highest order.”

As a finalist, the businesses will receive capacity building support from innovation accelerators Ennovent and Villgro to take their ventures to the next level.  If the ventures are able to secure an investment in the form of grant, equity, or debt within the next eight months, they will also get the opportunity to access Rs 25 lakh (approximately US $37,000) of matched equity funding as part of the Challenge award.

Seeing as many ventures fail because of the inability to access funding and resources required to grow, the AVC was created to invite entrepreneurs who have completed a proof of concept and are looking for growth investment.  The Challenge aims to address the missing middle in impact investing by providing high-risk patient capital and customized business support.

“The Artha Venture Challenge is a pioneering initiative for early-stage social ventures in India.  We are excited to be announcing this final cohort and providing them the capacity building support they require to secure their lead investors, which will in turn trigger our matched round of Rs 25 lakh,” said Audrey Selian, Director of the Artha Platform.

“Our goal is to shift the center of gravity in this space, to empower the entrepreneurs through our process, and then to encourage our peer impact investors to take action.  This is indeed an opportunity for us all to replace talk with action.”

The AVC was inspired by the UnLtd Big Venture Challenge where 10 early-stage co-investment deals were closed within 10 months.