YT Awards: Recognizing finest Indian social entrepreneurs

Young Turks, over the past eight years, showcased entrepreneurs attempting to address real problems in education, healthcare, skills development and access to finance through innovative models. The show partnered with the World Economic Forum and the Schwab Foundation to recognize social change agents via the India Social Entrepreneur Awards for the last eight years.

This year YT join hands with the Sankalp Forum and Intellecap Initiative. Sankalp recognises and supports innovative, sustainable, high impact social enterprises. Over the last four years, it has mentored 100’s of social entrepreneurs and facilitated over USD 120 million in equity investments in more than 30 enterprises.

The Sankalp Social Enterprise Awards were organized to recognise the best social enterprise models in five major categories. They are agriculture, food and rural business, clean energy technology, education, vocational training, healthcare, water and sanitisation and technology for development.

The applications for the fifth edition of these awards came in from across the country. The finalists competed to win funding worth Rs 5 crore and a cash price of USD 40,000 as part of the Sankalp-Artha Grand Prize. The finest were vetted through a rigorous three month process by a panel of global investors. Around 21 companies made it to the finals and the winners will be announced on the April 18.

Some of the young finalists of the 2013 Sankalp Social Enterprise Awards are mationed below:

Dialogue in the Dark

Dialogue in the Dark (DID) traces back its journey to Germany in 1988. It has so far reached at 10 million visitors across 23 countries, while also providing employment to more than 8,000 visually impaired candidates. Once, when SV Krishnan tumbled on to one such exhibit, thanks to a delayed flight in Atlanta, it left a lasting and profound impression. Determined to introduce Indian audiences to such an experience, he along with cofounder Sudha Krishnan started an exhibit centre of Ace DID in Hyderabad in 2011.

The concept of Dialogue in the Dark is simple. Visitors are led by blind guides in groups into an area of pitch darkness forcing them to experience what it is like to live life without the ability to see and orient them to a world without pictures. The tour lasts about an hour but the impact Krishnan says is for life.

“We have had more than 25,000 school children coming to Dialogue in the Dark and experiencing darkness and taking back a message on social inclusion and divest education” says SV Krishnan, Co-Founder, Ace Experiences Asia. DID goes to colleges and corporates as well.

The only venture in the world that uses entertainment to educate people on socially relevant themes, Dialogue in the Dark also generates revenues through exhibition ticket sales, its restaurant Taste of Darkness and corporate workshops. DID has grown 80 percent per annum and Krishnan says has grossed revenues of Rs 2.5 crore. After the success of Dialogue in the Dark in Hyderabad, Ace Experiences Asia now wants to create 35 miniatures makeshift versions of Dialogue in the Dark to take the initiative pan India over the next five years.

Institute for Quality Skill Training

Around 80 percent of India’s skill development means are at the bottom of the Pyramid. A 39 year old, Aditya Baran Mallik wants to address that market. Founded in 2009, Aditya’s Brain Child, the Institute for Quality Skill Training helps skill youth from low income homes investment gold in Jharkhand to ensure a better livelihood. It has trained and placed nearly 10,000 candidates since inception.

Aditya Baran Mallik, founder says, “around the end of 2008, I came up with the idea that maybe we should have a specific model of vocational education, which would enable livelihood for all through skill training. That’s how we developed this concept”. In January of 2009, he started this company. The idea was to provide the easiest, fastest, cheapest and safest option for livelihoods through skilled training to everyone in the society specifically the disadvantaged.

Aditya and his team of over 100 plan to set up training centers in 13 states of India over the next three years to reach a training capacity of 50,000 students annually. With a turnover of Rs 2.5 crore, Institute for Quality Skill Training has been funded by Kitendo Capital. It is a Switzerland based angel impact investment fund. Aditya is currently working towards a second round of funding through mix of equity and debt.

Hippocampus Learning Centres

It was founded in 2010 by former Infosys employee, Umesh Malhotra. Hippocampus Learning Center provides affordable education to children living in rural India. The venture has established education centers in villages offering a full day kindergarten program and after school primary education as well.

Charging between Rs 1,200-3,000 a year, Hippocampus Learning Centres have taught over 3,000 students across 78 villages in Karnataka. Now it plans to reach three lakh students by 2018. Umesh and team have roped in 220 teachers so far with the emphasis being on training women from within the local communities.

Umesh Malhotra the founder feels that if looking at competition, the government schooling starts at class one. So, for many children, they actually do not have access to any kindergarten in the formal environment. At the same time, the government offers anganwadi. “These anganwadis are free, but they are largely run as day care centers. Therefore, even these centers do not offer pre-primary education to children”, he added.

Having received funds from Unitus Seed Fund, the Acumen Fund and Lok capital, Umesh has allocated the money to fuel expansion plans and also provide scholarships to children who cannot afford the fee. It is hoping to clock a turnover of Rs 84 lakh this year. Umesh is now working on expanding Hippocampus’s geographical reach.

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Ideal Choice Homes

The next finalist is creating an eco-system where one can buy a house just like buying a car. Simply walk in, chose the model you like and have it delivered on your land. This is the innovation of Parthajeet Sarma and Amber Malhotra who decided to tap into the USD 200 billion housing market with Ideal Choice Homes (ICH) founded in 2010. Project has seen investments to the tune of Rs 10 crore coming in from the global design firm Kieran Timberlake, Sam Circle Venture and Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors (RICS).

Currently they are building prototypes of their standardised homes at the Pune factory. Ideal Choice Homes is expected to go to market by the end of 2013. The company is targeting tier-II and tier-III towns and individuals who earn between Rs 10000-20000 a month. It can afford to pay an easy monthly installment (EMI) of Rs 3000-4000 a month on a house.

Parthajeet Principal, Ideal Choice Homes hopes to reach his target audience by offering his solutions to government housing boards and private developers.

He believes that Standardisation brings in cost and time efficiencies and that is what it is bringing in. By moving the construction of the offsite – that’s about 80 percent of the house being moved offsite. “We actually bring in a lot of standardization into the whole industry. These are component based houses and they will be manufactured at offsite location and erected onsite. We are able to now erect houses 80 percent faster than the conventional way of constructing homes", he said.

Being the first mover Parthajeet is looking at capturing one percent of the market over the next decade with an eye on crossing revenues of USD 2 billion. ICH will launch its first unit by the end of 2013 in Pune. He hopes to give out licenses to interested parties in order to expand and take the venture pan India soon after the commercial launch. For now the team will continue to focus on R&D.

Awaaz.De

A chance encounter in 2010 between 31 year old Neil Patel and Tapan Parikh has helped give voice to India’s disconnected rural population. Founded in 2010 as a knowledge sharing system, Awaaz.De allows organisations to circulate information using voice applications over their mobile phones.

Targeting rural India Awaaz.De’s top product is Streams – a group messaging application. It works like voice Twitter. One creates a stream of voice message group, people then follows it by calling into its unique phone number. Once someone joins the network they can post voice messages via phone or web to share information and organisations use the service for automated audio broadcasts on agriculture advice, health information and banking services.

Neil Patel, Co-founder, Awaaz.De says, “we combine web technologies for people to be able to create and manage groups that want to communicate. Then over the phone or the web one can start posting voice messages to the group members. It is very simple. There is not a whole lot of navigation or different options. It is even easy for somebody who is not familiar with technology to do”.

With the pay per use revenue model Awazz.De is currently being used in over 10 states in India and over five countries around the world. Incubated within the social impact portfolio of the Centre for Innovation, Incubation and Entrepreneurship (CIIE) at IIM Ahmedabad Awaaz.De closed its first round of seed funding in July 2012.

Awaaz.De has served over six lakh calls from over one lakh unique callers. It is in collaboration with the institute for financial management and research or IFMR and Harvard University is conducting an impact analysis of the service.

The study has also been recognised by US aid and will be awarded a development innovation ventures grant to scale up across Gujarat.

Rain Concert Technologies

Abhilash Pillai founder of Trivandrum based Rain Concert Technology is using his skills to build safer city. His web mobile conversion solution in an emergency safe city is a security framework that leverages the power of mobile telephony to bring together various stake holders including the police, hospitals, neighbours, friends, family and others to create an emergency response system.

Founded in 2008 inE safe city sends alerts to preset numbers through a mobile phone and can also be configured to send alerts to the nearest hospital or police station. The service is currently being tested in Trivandrum city to a network of about 500 households who have signed up for Rs 100 a month.

Abhilash Pillai, Founder, Rain Concert Technologies, says, “we have one direct distribution model, direct subscription models and sponsorship model. For example jewellers which is one of the major reasons of theft. Jewellers can actually sponsor to a customer. If I am buying gold for Rs 50,000 they can sponsor a customer for three months and this is the way we would take this forward”.

With a model designed to alert, validate and act the inE control room is the nerve centre of the entire operation. Here all active calls are monitored and they go through certain performance parameters. With initial investments of Rs 1.8 crore, Abhilash is targeting a rollout across Trivandrum city by the end of 2013 and that he believes will help the venture breakeven.

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Claro Energy

Kartik Wahi and Soumitra Mishra met at the Kellogg School of Management in the US in 2010 and toyed with the idea of getting into waste management, but finally decided to go clean and green. Claro Energy was born with the idea of using solar powered water pumping solutions to meet irrigation and drinking water need in power deficit regions of India.

Within six months they were ready to go commercial and decided to target Bihar, a state with a dismal power deficit, but a high water table. Claro solar powered pumps help irrigate fields and also leave the farmer with surplus power to charge mobile phones or run a thresher for grain harvesting.

Although, making the switch to Claro means a one time investment of about Rs 9.5 lakh. But the hope of recovering this cost in four years, through savings of Rs 2.45 lakh annually on diesel expenses does make this attractive investment for farmers.

Mishra believes that the government is got to be the first adopter of this system followed by institutions and wealthy farmers and then small and marginal farmers, which is the Holy Grail. In terms of companies solution he first considered on government and government tenders. So, its number one customer today is the state governments, but he is seeing tremendous demand in farmers who can buy these assets for themselves for purely irrigation means.

Targeting annual processing companies, wealthy farmers, farmer cooperative and agricultural institutions Claro irrigation systems have been installed in 75 locations and 150 sites are under execution. With revenue earned from the cost of a system and add-on services like remote monitoring and annual maintenance Claro Enegry hopes to close the year at Rs 4.5 crore. With plans to install 2500 systems across 20 states by 2014 this profitable venture is on the prowl for equity infusion.

Green Power Systems

While Kartik and Soumitra are harnessing solar power to address the power deficit in rural India IIM Bangalore graduates Mainak Chakraborty and Sreekrishna Sankar’s Green Power Systems is on a mission to solve urban waste management problems. Founded in 2010 Green Power Systems uses indigenous technology custom built for a market like India.

The ventures first offering Bio Urja converts biowaste to energy. For instance, a shopping mall generating a tonne of waste today can install a Bio Urja unit. The energy can be supplied back as a substitute for liquefied petroleum gas (LPG).

Chakraborty’s idea is to have his own waste treatment parks where we would be bringing in waste in association with the waste contractors and processing the waste and bottling it.

With the sale and maintenance driven revenue model Green Power System’s currently handles around 0.2 percent of Bangalore’s wet waste coming in from mass kitchens. While their reach maybe small, investors seem keen to buy it. With Rs 75 lakh in seed funds from i2India Ventures and a grant from the department of biotechnology Mainak and Sreekrishna are working on their expansion plan.

Listed among the top innovators of India under the age of 35 by the MIT Technology review and one of the most promising startups of the world by the Kauffman Foundation, a US based non profit foundation supporting entrepreneurship it is been a strong start for this young team.

Axio Biosolutions

In India 1000s of accident related deaths occur due to preventable blood loss. This grim statistic prompted Leo Mavely and Ashish Pandya to launch Axio Biosolutions.

Today this venture produces the first haemostatic emergency dressing in India. Axiostat stops profuse traumatic bleeding within minutes of application and thereby stablises the victim at the accident site.

Leo claims it is a 100 percent natural dressing made with biodegradable material that immediately reacts with blood to form a thick layer and easily comes off without causing any pain to the user.

Mavely’s target is to make Axiostat as a mandatory first-aid intervention for controlling bleeding in all first-aid kits by 2018. “With this mandate we are working aggressively to partner with different companies, different distributors in India and abroad and grow organically to achieve a target of Rs 100 crore by 2017” he says.

Axiostat is now being used by trauma and causality care centers in hospitals, by ambulances and now the Indian armed forces. Leo says this is the most affordable external haemostat in the world priced at around Rs 400 per unit.

Launched just eight months back Axiostat is already won over 20 institutional customers and Leo expects to hit a turnover of Rs 50 crore within the next three years.