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!

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!   

TARAhaat is a for-profit social enterprise which delivers education, information, services and other opportunities to rural areas, through internet. It is an initiative of Development Alternatives Group, a New Delhi-based non-profit organization, which was establishes in 1983 to create large scale sustainable livelihoods.

TARA stands for Technology and Action for Rural Advancement and 'haat' is a Hindi word which means a mall or kiosk. TARAhaat was setup in the year 2000 after an extensive review by a panel of technology, rural and business experts. It uses a franchise model wherein TARAkendras ('Kendra' means Centre) are setup in rural areas and the services are delivered to rural consumers through these 'kendras'. A mother portal, TARAhaat.com, has been setup for this purpose.

TARAhaat mostly utilizes India's existing telecom infrastructure, such as telephone lines, but these offer low-speed erratic connectivity. A satellite-based alternative solution was tried out, but that is a not-so-economical solution.

The most interesting aspect of TARAhaat is its strong focus on developing products and information content relevant to rural consumers. For example, its TARAgyan products offer customized computer education to rural areas. Information is also offered in a few local languages. A lot of time and energy is being invested in order to develop new products and improve existing products and services based on feedback and demands from rural consumers. Additionally, TARAhaat provides extensive support, both financial and knowledge, for rural entrepreneurs setting up its franchises. It also encourages its franchisees to come up with new product ideas.

TARAhaat enjoys the advantage of being associated with Development Alternatives, which is one of India's oldest organization working on sustainable development. This association brings an in-depth knowledge of the needs of rural India and experience in handling the challenges. This has helped TARAhaat achieve success in creating economical and social value.

Meanwhile, Development Alternatives Group, in association with the Confideration of Indian Industries (CII), is hosting the 2nd Sustainability Summit: Asia 2007 in New Delhi on 11th and 12th December 2007.

It has been three months since I started blogging on "The Edge". Nowadays, I find myself being contacted by several people - friends, acquaintances and strangers - informing me about their own social initiatives or the ones that they know of. Last month, an acquaintance who lives in Chennai (previously Madras), informed me about Ericsson India's Gramjyoti Rural Broadband Project, a pilot project which has brought the benefits of mobile broadband connectivity to a few selected villages and small towns in the Southern Indian state of Tamil Nadu.

The Gramjyoti (which literally means 'Village Light' in Hindi) project was launched in September this year by Ericsson India and it uses the Wireless CDMA/ HSPA (High Speed Packet Access) technology, which is an evolved version of the existing GSM international mobile telephony standard. This is probably India's first 3G (third generation) wireless network which supports high-speed wireless data transfer.

Ericsson India, which currently connects 18 villages and 15 small towns in Tamil Nadu through this project, has tied up with various domain experts to offer services and information content which are relevant to its target audience. For example, Ericsson has tied up with Apollo Hospitals to offer Telemedicine and mobile healthcare services. It has also tied up with Bangalore-based Edurite Technologies to offer E-learning services and the local Government to offer E-Governance to Gramjyoti villages and towns. Ericsson is also collaborating with Turner Broadcasting Systems (a division of Time Warner which includes CNN and Cartoon Network) to provide infotainment services. New Delhi-based One97 Communications provides the technology infrastructure for this project.

An interesting collaboration in this project is with an NGO named Hand in Hand, which has been operational in a few districts of Tamil Nadu working for social causes such as eliminating child labour, encouraging education and fighting poverty. The NGO already runs citizen centres across the state and Ericsson intends to make use of these centres to provide Gramjyoti services.

I personally think that the idea and the model behind Gramjyoti is fantastic. It is a project in which a multinational telecom company provides the technology base and has tied up with domain experts to offer user-relevant services and information content. The project also exploits the existing 'social network' and experience of an NGO. The project is intended to be a revenue-generating, sustainable business in the long-run. When compared to a host of other technology-based rural information/service provider systems in India, Gramjyoti looks very promising. I hope it achieves mass popularity in rural India, very soon!

Meanwhile, it is the festival season in India and the festival of lights, Deepavali (or Diwali), will be celebrated this weekend. I always look forward to visiting my parents during this time of the year and this year is no exception! 

Indian stock markets have seen phenomenal growth in the recent past, with the benchmark Bombay Stock Exchange's Sensex breaching the 20,000 mark yesterday. There was a little bit of volatility in the markets last week, due to the Participatory Note regulation by the Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI), which further tightened the norms for cash inflow from Foreign Institutional Investors. However, there was an interesting development which, among all the market mayhem, went relatively unnoticed: SEBI has approved an exclusive stock exchange for Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) in India.

A question that immediately came to my mind was: what does it mean for social enterprises? Economic Times carried a debate on whether we need an exclusive stock exchange for SMEs in India. From a social enterprise point of view, I am not too sure if many SME social enterprises would queue up to list themslves on this bourse. As Deena Mehta rightly points out in the Economic Times debate, an entrepreneurial venture typically starts off with bank loans/personal savings and then receives VC funding or support from angel investors. It is taken over by Private Equity (PE) players once it reaches a certain size and lists on a stock exchange when it reaches the next level. An SME exchange, I presume, aims to provide an alternative to PE money or in some exceptional cases, even VC money.

From a social perspective, atleast in India, SMEs have shown better understanding of base of the pyramid markets than multinationals. I agree that SME social enterprises still have a tough time accessing investments to fund their operations. However, for-profit social enterprises, which typically have social and economic impact as their primary objective, would rather have a single, understanding investor (PE/VC) than many retail, capital-minded stock traders. More often than not, for-profit social enteprises take time to mature and show financial results as they go through a stabilization phase initially, trying to improve the lives of people at the base of the pyramid. And the last thing that they would need in this phase is market pressure to show financial results. Listing on a bourse might, afterall, make them normal profit-making businesses and not social enterprises.

I think the traditional bank loans-VC-PE-Public Listing model works better in the case of for-profit social enterprises. Of course this model needs understanding VCs, such as Avishkaar and Acumen Fund, but it ensures that for-profit social enterprises do not lose their focus. This does not mean that for-profit social enterprises should not list publicly at all. That can happen once they have proven business models and have ensured the impact that they would have set out to achieve.

It will be interesting to see how popular the proposed SME stock exchange will become among social enterprises.

One of the earlier posts on my blog here on Social Edge received a comment from a certain Mr. Ashwin Naik from Vaatsalya. I was pleasantly surprised to see his name in an article on Social Enterprises in Business World, a few days ago. Recently, my father, who hails from the North Karnataka region where Vaatsalya operates, also mentioned about it. So, I decided to explore and profile Vaatsalya.

Vaatsalya is a for-profit chain of hospitals and clinics which aims to provide quality healthcare to semi-urban and rural areas. Vaatsalya's mission, in their own words, is: "While 70% of India is living in semi-urban and rural areas, 80% of our healthcare facilities are located in urban/metro areas. Vaatsalya is bridging this gap by building and managing hospitals/clinics in semi-urban and rural areas and bringing healthcare services where it is needed most. Our vision is to transform the quality of life in India by bringing affordable, efficient and friendly healthcare within the reach of the common man". Vaatsalya opened its first hospital in February 2005 in Hubli, a city located nearly 400 miles to the North of Bangalore. They have since opened units in Gadag and Karwar in the North Karnataka region and these units provide healthcare services that are normally available only in big cities, at affordable prices. They also have clinics located in smaller towns, which are part of the Vaatsalya network.

Ashwin, one of the founders of Vaatsalya, holds a Bachelor's degree in Medicine and a Master's degree from the University of Houston Texas and has worked in various capacities in clinical research based on genomics and bioinformatics. Veerendra Hiremath, Vaatsalya's co-founder, also has a degree in Medicine and has worked in Hosptial Administration.

Recently, Vaatsalya won the top prize in the established category at the BiD Challenge India 2007 for its plan: "Bridging the Gap in Healthcare Access". The BiD Challenge India is part of a global network known as Business in Development Network. Veerendra Hiremath was also identified recently as a "Social Impact Fellow" for the year 2007-08. Vaatsalya plans to open 100 more units in five different states in India soon. I wish them the very best to achieve this ambitious goal. I also hope that they open a Vaatsalya unit in my hometown (Davangere) too! 

Canara Bank, which was established in 1906, is one of India’s oldest and largest banks. Headquartered in Bangalore, the bank has more than 2500 branches in India and abroad. The bank was under private control until 1969, when it was nationalized by the Government of India along with thirteen other banks. Canara Bank has always kept pace with times and this has been one of the main reasons for its success. The bank, faced with stiff competition from multinational private sector banks such as ICICI, Citibank, HSBC, computerized aggressively and opened ATMs in the last decade.

As the bank completed 100 years of existence in 2006, it adopted financial inclusion as an important corporate goal. Canara Bank launched a financial inclusion campaign earlier this year in 23 lead districts in India, by creating no-frills banking accounts. A few of these districts, including my home district, have already declared total financial inclusion. Canara Bank now intends to reach out to millions of unbanked rural consumers, by using technology. As a first step, the bank launched India’s first mobile ATM last month, in Devanahalli near Bangalore.

The mobile ATM, which was inaugurated by Reserve bank of India’s Deputy Governor Usha Thorat, consists of a bus which has a voice-enabled, biometric money vending machine. The ATM accepts only the customer's fingerprint as password and also guides the customer to withdraw money through recorded voice instructions in the local language. These features make this ATM especially useful to cater to an illiterate clientele. According to the bank, the mobile ATM is expected to reduce transactional costs and achieve financial inclusion too. The bank intends to launch nine more such ATMs soon and it will be interesting to see if these mobile, biometric ATMs can help Canara Bank achieve total financial inclusion in India.

On a slightly different note, Indian School of Business is hosting a Social Responsibility Conclave at its Hyderabad campus on 20^th October 2007. The theme for this conclave is ‘Education’. Registration for the conclave is free of cost!

As the two satellite radio service providers in the US, XM and Sirius, battle to stay afloat, Worldspace, the worldwide satellite radio service provider, in collaboration with San Francisco-based non-profit organization called Equal Access, has setup the Asia Development Channel (ADC) to reach the remote regions of Asia. Beamed through Worldspace’s AsiaStar satellite, ADC is channel number 1307 on the First Voice International Network and provides vital developmental information and education to underserved communities in remote parts of Asia.

ADC started beaming on the north-western beam of the AsiaStar satellite in 2002 and can now be received in Nepal, India, Afghanistan, Bhutan, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Maldives and a few CIS countries. In fact, millions of listeners in Nepal tune into ADC’s popular bi-weekly Nepali drama, “Kura Khasra Mitha” (Let’s Talk Straight), which addresses some of the most critical issues of rural communities.

Satellite radio has the advantage of reach when compared to terrestrial radio and this makes it a great tool to reach out to remote areas of developing countries such as India. Also, since the transmission is digital, the quality is better than that of traditional FM/AM transmission. ADC exploits these advantages of the satellite radio and transmits programs that assist rural communities in dealing with HIV/AIDS prevention, women’s empowerment, microfinance, sustainable agriculture and other developmental issues at a small price.