National level competition to find India’s most promising early-stage social enterprises, Identified social entrepreneurs to be offered mentorship support, funding opportunities and an opportunity to be incubated at IIM Calcutta’s Incubation Centre
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KOLKATA: Rewards Mentorship Maximum of 20 teams will be selected for semi-finals and will be provided a 5 week mentorship support including 2 days at IIM Calcutta campus. Funding Opportunity All teams shortlisted for the semi-finals and finals will have an opportunity to pitch to India’s largest social VCs for seed funding.
Incubation The teams which make it to the grand finale will be given an opportunity to pitch for incubation at IIM Calcutta.
Cash Awards The total prize money is Rs 5 lakhs for the top three teams. The semi-finalists will receive travel grants. New Delhi, 25th September, 2014: Tata group, today, announced the commencement of the Tata Social Enterprise Challenge 2014-15, a joint initiative with the Indian Institute of Management Calcutta (IIM-C), a quest for India’s most promising early-stage social enterprises.
The endeavour of the challenge is to create an ecosystem for social entrepreneurship and encourage sustainable, scalable and measurable social impact.
Teams who either have an early stage venture (not older than 3 years) or a promising idea with a plan, that can create sustainable social impact in India, can submit their business plans online, by logging onto www.tatasechallenge.org.
Impact Proposals (detailed Business Plans) are invited in the areas of agriculture, food and dairy, healthcare, water and sanitation, technology and development, education & skills development, housing, handicrafts, energy and microfinance/financial inclusion. The ventures will be judged on three parameters – Business Model, Social Impact and Sustainability.
The last day to submit the Impact Proposal (business plan) online is November 15th, 2014. The Challenge also invites the general public to nominate, through the initiative’s website, social enterprises they know who fit the eligibility criteria.
Mr. Atul Agrawal, Vice President, Corporate Affairs, Tata Services said, “We are truly delighted as Tata Social Enterprise Challenge enters its third year, taking forward the Tata group’s ethos of giving back to society, through acts of entrepreneurship and innovation.
The third edition, has in fact been more comprehensively designed to engage and integrate a larger network of social entrepreneurs with the introduction of regional seminars, discussion forums and online resources. We urge enterprising minds to participate in this Challenge in their journey to be champions of social change.”
Prof. Ashok Banerjee, Dean (New Initiatives and External Relations), IIM Calcutta says, “The Tata Social Entrepreneurship Challenge is designed to draw the attention of social entrepreneurs across the world to participate in this contest and share their business model, experiences and thereby help us achieve the common cause of ensuring social equality. The challenge will identify the most promising social ventures that would have the opportunity of availing incubation facility at IIM Calcutta.”
Winners of last season:
MicroX Labs:
MicroX Labs developed a technology to count the blood cells. The Solution is based on upcoming technology of Lab on Chip and MEMS (Micro electro mechanical systems) which mintuarizes the instrument to less than 2 kg.
Bodhi Health Education
The solution by Bodhi Health Education uses affordable tablet computer technology to train, monitor and supervise community health workers through simple e-learning content on medical topics in regional languages.
Green Agrevolutions
Agrevolution’s entire business model is based on the gap between the growers and consumers of agricultural produce, providing support to the growers during the production cycle without any intermediaries, with the buyers getting competitive price and high quality.
Further, from amongst the top twenty, three ventures from the 1st edition – Doctors For You, SwitchON-ONergy, Edwell Solutions, and two from the 2nd edition – Bodhi Health Education and Samvaad are being incubated at the Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation at IIM Calcutta.
This year, the initiative has adopted a more comprehensive approach in its mission to propagate the Challenge. Gauging its outreach and impact amongst social entrepreneurs across the country, it involves a new R.A.C.E campaign to engage a greater number of stakeholders in a more sustained and integrated manner. The campaign will include:
Roundtables: Special ‘Think Social’ Roundtables will be organized in select cities to invite, interact and build bridges with active players, decision makers and influencers representing the key stakeholder groups who have an important role to play in the Indian social entrepreneurship eco-system.
Awareness: This exercise aims at building awareness, interest and desire to engage with the social enterprise ecosystem among graduate & post-graduate students who are about to begin their careers through seminars across four cities and key note lectures at IIM Calcutta.
Challenge: This is the national level Tata Social Enterprise Challenge in its third year now.
Engage: This exercise with encapsulate creating & disseminating knowledge on Social Entrepreneurship status in India through interactive digital & social media platforms such as Tata Social Enterprise Challenge website, Facebook page, Twitter handle, YouTube videos and so on.
Tata Social Enterprise Challenge is a unique initiative, undertaken jointly by an educational institution and a business group, to promote the spirit of social entrepreneurship in India. It is being supported by some of the biggest Venture Capitalists in the social entrepreneurship space.
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