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Entries For:
December
2007
2007-12-18
Celebrating entrepreneurial spirit at the base of the pyramid
Sonalben Rajebhai Parmar’s life story seems to be taken straight out of a ‘70s Bollywood masala movie with a quintessential rags-to-riches story. From being a wandering daily wage labourer to running a successful retail business in Gujarat’s remote Nani Rabdal village, Sonalben has not only turned around the fortunes of her family but has also become a role model to several women in the village. Shaheeda Begum, a resident of the holy city of Banares in North India, turned her husband’s struggling cloth weaving shop into a profitable, branded apparel-making business. Nipu Bhattacharjee of Assam was once a school drop out but now runs a highly successful oil manufacturing business. Krishna Amin from Udupi in Karnataka, who once struggled to support his family due to his meagre income, not only runs a successful construction material supplier business now but also funds eye surgeries and healthcare for the poor.
What is common to all these men and women? They are all successful Micro Entrepreneurs who built sustainable businesses using micro-credit and are also recipients of the 2007 Micro Entrepreneurs Awards presented by Citibank’s Citi Foundation in collaboration with a Delhi-based NGO named Partners in Change. A ceremony to honour the 2007 awardees was held in Mumbai recently.
Since its inception in 2004, the Citi Micro Entrepreneurs Awards program has recognized and awarded several entrepreneurial talents at the base of the pyramid. This year, 11 worthy winners were chosen from an applicant pool of more than 1000 micro entrepreneurs. Women accounted for nearly 50% of all the applicants, indicating micro-credit’s popularity among them. Among the winners, apart from Kusum Tanwar of Delhi, all the others come from semi-urban and rural areas. A press release from the Citi Foundation says: “The awards were classified in three distinct categories- National Winner, National Runner-up and Social Responsibility. Keeping in mind the social, cultural and economic challenges in different parts of the country, awards in each category were presented to winners from four regions- East, West, North and South. Each National Winner of the 2007 Citigroup Micro Entrepreneur Awards received a cash prize of Rs.200,000/-. The National Runners-Up and winners in the Social Responsibility category received prize money of Rs.100,000/- each. NGOs, which nominated the awardees, received a special citation commending their efforts”.
The Citi Micro Entrepreneurs Awards program is a fantastic initiative that encourages entrepreneurship as a driver of social and economic change at the base of the pyramid. The program also provides us with real-life examples to understand the tremendous amount of impact that micro-credit can have at the base of the pyramid.
Here’s wishing everyone a happy holiday season! Merry Christmas!
2007-12-11
A week of Climate Change Co-incidences
It has been a week of co-incidences (or deliberate incidents?) with respect to the ‘climate change’ initiative. First, it is the ongoing United Nations Climate Change Convention in Bali, Indonesia, which I have been following with utmost interest. Then, Al Gore and R K Pachauri (of the UN Climate Change Panel) accepted their Nobel Peace Prize 2007 in Oslo earlier this week. Bangalore, which is known to have a fine weather throughout the year (supposedly comparable to the salubrious Californian weather), recorded unusually low temperatures due to a cold wave and some experts, surprisingly, attributed this also to the climate change phenomenon (I thought the climate change initiative’s focus was on rising temperatures and not the falling ones). And of course, after several ‘false starts’, I finally watched An Inconvenient Truth. The movie is truly incredible and deserves every bit of the adulation that it has received (a lesser known fact, at least in India, is that Jeff Skoll is one of the movie’s executive producers). Also, 8th Dec was celebrated as the ‘Global Day of Action against Climate Change’ and more than 1000 Greenpeace activists descended on Bangalore’s Chinnaswamy Cricket Stadium (where an India vs. Pakistan Test cricket match is currently on) and cheered loudly, attracting viewers’ attention to take action against climate change. Phew! It’s hardly surprising then, that I am writing about SELCO this week.
Solar Electric Lighting Company (SELCO) is a Bangalore-based social enterprise which provides sustainable energy solutions, such as solar energy-driven products, to underserved communities in rural India. Established in 1995, SELCO has provided affordable and environmentally sustainable energy to more than 75,000 homes in rural India. SELCO not only provides solar energy solutions but also facilitates income generation at the base of the pyramid through sustainable energy-based micro-enterprises. SELCO has more than 25 energy service centres in rural areas of Southern Indian states of Karnataka, Kerala and Andhra Pradesh and these centres serve as one-stop-shops for all the energy needs of rural communities. SELCO, which is a profit-making enterprise today, is unique because it believes that poverty alleviation and climate change are inter-related. Very inspiring, indeed!
I will leave you all with this neatly done little green e-book from Morgan Stanley, which describes a few simple, day-to-day disciplines that can help the world tackle climate change!
2007-12-04
Infusing the ideas of inclusion and sustainability into India’s mainstream psyche
Arun Maira, Chairman, Boston Consulting Group India, has very strong interests in the ideas of inclusive development and sustainability. He has written several thought-provoking articles in India's national newspapers and I think that his efforts to infuse the ideas of inclusion and sustainability into the minds of Indian policymakers and businessmen deserve to be better recognized in the social enterprise circles.
Mr. Maira’s article in the Times of India dated 14th June 2007, which is called "Takes Three to Tango" is excellent and provides a ready recipe for inclusive economic development in India. According to Mr Maira, inclusive development can be brought about only when the three stakeholders - the Government, the private sector and NGOs - work together. His article in today’s (04th December 2007) Times of India is called “It’s a three-legged race” and he insists that environmental and social indicators, together with financial indicators, are integral to any economic growth story and the performance of any economic model should be measured not just by the financial value created but also by the social and environmental value created by it. Of course, measuring the social and environmental value creation, unlike measuring financial value creation, is not easy (a related topic – social, economic and environmental impact assessment - has bothered me for a long time but more on that later). However, Mr. Maira makes a strong point in this article and urges Indian policymakers and corporate setups to holistically manage the ‘triple bottom line’.
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