Tech4Impact workshop #2 has wrapped up!

IMG_1765I had the pleasure to help organize and run the second installment of Tech4Impact, an accelerator program being run jointly by CIIE and Village Capital.  Entrepreneurs go through a 3 month accelerator and are taught how to evaluate one another’s businesses, and multiple times during the program entrepreneurs publicly rank one another according to the Village Capital investment criteria.  The accelerator focuses on technology ventures operating in the agribusiness, livelihoods, cleantech & sustainability, healthcare and sanitation, education and mobile/ICT.

Entrepreneurs had the opportunity to speak with business professionals, mentors, customers and peers to shape their business model and develop their ideas.  The ventures worked hard and had several 15 hour days using the time to meet with business professionals and refining their pitches.

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Ranking the cohort pitches

Pitches were presented on the fourth day, where the ventures ranked their peers in regards to 6 categories: Team, Product/Service, Customer Validation, Profitability, Impact and Scale.  Each category is ranked from 0 – 5, with a maximum score of 30.  After the peer ranking, the top two enterprises from this round are:  Sanchayan and Aakar.  Sanchayan, delivers comprehensive financial planning, literacy & financial services like savings, banking, etc to low-income BOP populations.  Aakar is producing a biodegradable sanitary napkin product for the BoP woman consumer sold by women in a hub & spoke model across India.

Chatting with a co-founder of Sanchayan

Chatting with a co-founder of Sanchayan

 

Personal Reflection on Workshop #2

The workshop ran fairly smoothly, but I would make some major changes.  Firstly, it seems that the cohort doesn’t quite understand the criteria still which they are ranking each other on, which is an enormous problem.  For example, the ventures did not present on an exit strategy, even though this is 1/6 of the grading criteria.  I find this to be an enormous flaw.  Another major issue is that the ventures are not able to properly quantify their social impact.  In my opinion, too much time of the workshop has been spent on “MBA course-like” work – which can be supplemented by any incubator program.  CIIE and Village Capital needs to do a better job at distinguishing their accelerator program by preparing the cohort better to pitch to impact investors.  Lastly, I believe that this cohort needs to learn brevity when speaking about their enterprises.  A diatribe about poverty in India is NOT the way to begin a pitch to investors and the cohort needs to learn perspective on audience.

Areas of focus for final workshop:

  • EXIT STRATEGY!
  • Social impact measurement
  • Brevity in presenting
  • More storytelling to convey mission and impact of business

Does Scaling a Social Enterprise Compromise Impact?

SELCO, a leading solar energy company based in Southern India, has been producing and selling solar energy units to the rural poor since 1995.  SELCO works alongside state-owned andcooperative-owned banks in India, to provide loans to rural households in order to assist in the upfront costs of the solar lighting.  Families that switch to SELCO solar energy products experience both lifetime savings on energy costs and incalculable costs on healthcare that is prevented from cleaner burning energy.  In addition to providing homes with cleaner energy, it is also reliable; users cited that SELCO products increased productivity and quality of life.

Food Stall with SELCO lamp

Food Stall with SELCO lamp

The company model works by setting up centers in rural areas that are responsible for selling and servicing the products in their vicinity.  These centers are small enough that they know their customers and trust has been built between the consumer and the SELCO employee.  This is an important relationship since SELCO has taken responsibility for underwriting the loans the “unbankable.”  In addition, by placing their centers within close vicinity to the households served, SELCO technicians are able to respond within 36 hours if equipment is in need of repair.  It is important to SELCO’s founder, Dr. H. Harish Hande, that SELCO maintain a good reputation with their customers, as trust in the product is a driving factor in the consumer’s choice to buy SELCO’s products.

SELCO lanterns

SELCO lanterns

Six years after inception, SELCO broke even in 2001.  Since then, the enterprise has gone through several pivots, investing in R&D, building partnerships and trying to keep its products competitive.  Although SELCO hopes to continue to grow at a steady pace, Dr. Hande believes that real impact will only continue by keeping their small-scale model.  SELCO management would prefer to assist others in replication of the model (in the North, East and West of India), rather than scaling up their enterprise.  As Dr. Hande explains, “It is better if we focus on developing other SELCO’s suited to the context where they would operate, rather than trying to grow this SELCO.  Ideally we should create an organization that can become investment partner for entrepreneurial entities – the SELCOs’ of the future. We can provide the seed capital and pass on to them our knowledge, things that we learnt the hard way. However, the new entities will have complete independence in the way they would develop their business, because their specific model needs to be suited to their context. We would like to do this in other parts of India first and thereafter, maybe, across the globe.”

Often, impact investors searching for investable social enterprises seek out businesses that have eventual scalability.  Profitability and impact are often examined hand in hand, and evaluated with the same weight, therefore making scalability a vital factor.  However, culture context is just one of a slew of issues that prevent many industries from scaling up.  Customer trust, social capital and depth of impact are challenges that scale may pose on a social business.  Perhaps, as SELCO’s management team would suggest, impact investors should re-evaluate their terms of measurement, examining the real trade-off between scale and impact.

Note: Information gathered and quotes are taken from: Mukherj, Sourav. “SELCO: Solar Lighting for the Poor.” UNDP Case Study: New York, NY, 2011.

New Year – New Social Enterprise Incubator

CIIE… And new change of scenery.  Last summer, I was working for a social enterprise incubator in Bogota, Colombia.  This Spring/Summer, I am working at the Center for Innovation Incubation and Entrepreneurship (CIIE) on the campus of India Institute of Management – Ahmedabad, India (IIMA).  CIIE, in collaboration with Village Capital is hosting the Tech4Impact Incubator.  The incubator has a cohort of 14 start-ups, which will participate in the 2 month long business incubator in which 2 companies will receive funding of at least $50,000.

Meet the companies here.