The grants will enable SEs to enhance their offerings, bring their prototypes to market and improve existing processes to scale up existing business and achieve greater social impact.
NEW DELHI: DBS Foundation has launched the 2019 edition of the DBS Foundation Social Enterprise Grant. It is the Singapore’s first foundation to start social entreprenurship initiatives.
Social entrepreneurship is undertaken by start-ups and entrepreneurs where they fund, develop and implement solutions on social, cultural or environmental issues.
Successful applicants could receive between SGD 50,000 (INR 2.5 million ) and SGD 250,000 in grants. The grant is open to all social enterprises across Asia that have a business product or solution on social isssues. The solutions need to have market validation with plans to scale up the business.
The grants will enable SEs to enhance their offerings, bring their prototypes to market and improve existing processes to scale up existing business and achieve greater social impact.
The last date for send applications is 31 July and will be evaluated in two months. The successful applicant will be awarded th grants by November. The applications received after 31 July will be evaluated next year.
“At DBS, we believe that social enterprises should be commercially viable businesses that are driven by a strong sense of purpose and social mission,” Karen Ngui, board member, DBS Foundation and group head Strategic Marketing & Communications at DBS told this news service.
“The SEs will be selected based on criteria including the ability to address social needs, business innovation as well as the sustainability and scalability of their business models. In addition to presenting their innovative solutions, they needed to demonstrate a path to achieve key business and social impact milestones,” Ngui said.
“We are delighted to say that we have seen a marked growth in the number of innovative entrepreneurs over the years, who are focusing on finding ways to address many social issues in a rapidly developing Asia,” Ngui said.
The company also provides capacity building incubation programmes, bespoke mentoring and access to a broader network to these SEs apart from providing grants, Ngui added.
Since 2014, the grant has been continuously supporting more than 100 SEs from Singapore, China, India, Hong Kong, Indonesia and Taiwan. The idea is to encourage them to deploy innovative solution to areas like employment, income generation, social inclusion , environment protection, waste management and food sustainability.
DBS Foundation supported eight social entrepreneurship programmes which were featured in Forbes 30 list in 2018 and 2019.
The DBS Foundation works in partnership with like-minded organizations in the the public and social sectors to promote social entrepreneurship. To date, DBS has reached out to more than 30,000 SEs and supported over 300 SEs through grants worth SGD 4.7 million in grant funding.
