SOCIAL ENTREPRENEUR OF THE YEAR AWARD 2011
Neelam Chhiber of Industree Crafts Awarded Social
Entrepreneur of the Year 2011 for India
The Jubilant Bhartia Foundation and the Schwab Foundation for Social
Entrepreneurship are pleased to announce the finalists of the India Social
Entrepreneur of the Year (SEOY) Award 2011
Neelam Chhiber was designated with the title of the Social Entrepreneur of
the Year 2011 for India by Prithvi Raj Chavan, Chief Minister of Maharashtra
The finalist Neelam Chhiber will be honoured at the opening of the World
Economic Forum’s India Economic Summit on November 13, 2011
Mumbai, India - November 12, 2011:
The Schwab Foundation for Social Entrepreneurship, in partnership with the
Jubilant Bhartia Foundation, has announced that Neelam Chhiber is the winner
of the India Social Entrepreneur of the Year 2011. Prithvi Raj Chavan, Chief
Minister of Maharashtra and Ashwani Kumar, Minister of State for Planning,
Science and Technology & Earth Sciences handed the award to the winner
in Mumbai. Industree Crafts Foundation triples incomes of marginal artisans
by moving them from being ‘piece rate workers’ to owners and
entrepreneurs of grassroots community enterprises. It works both at the
production and market ends of complex supply chains and has impacted more
than 10,000 artisans living below the poverty line, by putting them in
charge of their own enterprises.
The other contenders for the award were Gyanesh Pandey from Husk Power
Systems (Patna), Matthew Spacie from Magic Bus (Mumbai) and Sudesh Menon
co-founder of Waterlife India (Hyderabad).
More than 140 applicants entered the seventh competition for the “India
Social Entrepreneur of the Year” selection process. After several
stages of rigorous assessment, four finalists were chosen. An independent
panel of pre-eminent judges met on 12 November to select the winners from
among the finalists. The judges this year included: Shobhana Bhartia,
Chairperson of the Hindustan Times; Y. C. Deveshwar, Chairman of ITC Ltd;
Rohini Nilekani, Chairperson of Arghyam Foundation; Sudha Pillai, Member
Secretary of the Planning Commission, Adi Godrej, Chairman of Godrej Group,
Dr Harish Hande, Managing Director of Selco Solar Lights, Mirjam Shoening,
Senior Director of Schwab Foundation for Social Entrepreneurship, Rajiv
Khandelwal, Co-Founder and Executive Director, Aajeevika Bureau.
The award has been given annually in the country since 2005 to individuals
who have founded organizations or companies with targeted social missions
benefiting underserved communities. The winners enter the global network of
200 leading social entrepreneurs of the Schwab Foundation for Social
Entrepreneurship, a sister organization of the World Economic Forum.
Winner Profile: Neelam Chhiber (http://industree.org.in/icf/organisation)
Profile of Winner
INDUSTREE CRAFTS FOUNDATION/ INDUSTREE CRAFTS PRIVATE LIMITEED (Under
the Brand ‘MOTHEREARTH’):
Social
entrepreneur: Neelam Chhiber
Field: Rural Development; Enterprise Development; Culture/Handicrafts
Headquartered at: Bangalore
Year of Establishment: 1994
Legal Form of Business: Hybrid Not-For-Profit
Website:http://industree.org.in/icf/organisation
Industree triples incomes of marginal artisans by moving them from being ‘piece
rate workers’ to owners and entrepreneurs of grassroots community
enterprises. It works both at the production and market ends of complex
supply chains and has impacted more than 10,000 artisans living below the
poverty line, by putting them in charge of their own enterprises.
At the producer’s end, Industree incubates community enterprises and
common production entities that are jointly owned by artisans and local
entrepreneurs (typically unemployed or under employed youth) . At the market
end, Industree’s multi-retail brand, Mother Earth, and aggressive sales
force, set up with investment from the Future Group, offers the new
producer- entrepreneur with a direct market platform to the Indian retail
market, ensuring steady business of high volumes and smooth cash flows,
year-on-year.
For every 100 Indian rupees of revenue increase for Industree, producer
incomes increase by 58 Indian rupees. As a result, community enterprises
incubated by Industree, and owned by artisanal communities, break even
within their first year of operation. In addition, 13% of the brand Value of
Mother Earth has been locked into a MBT for artisans to purchase at par.
As of August 2011, Industree has incubated 13 SHG-based community-owned
enterprises and common production units in Karnataka and Tamil Nadu, and
directly impacted more than 10,000 marginal producers and their families, of
which 61% live below the poverty line, earning less than one US dollar a
day. Industree also trains and sources products from 400 crafts-based
collectives and SHGs in 10 Indian states, opening up the Mother Earth brand
and market platform for them.
In 5 years, Neelam Chibber and her team aim to directly impact more than
50,000 individual artisans by incubating their enterprises and facilitating
their diversification into newer products, brands and markets, beyond those
offered by Mother Earth.
BACKGROUND
The India SEOY Award identifies and celebrates visionary social
entrepreneurs who have demonstrated systems-change models and are at the
stage of scaling/replicating their ideas across India and in other
countries.
Applications to the India SEOY Awards 2011 opened in April this year. The
response was positive, and the quality of applications were by far the most
competitive. The finalists of this Award were identified through an
intensive 4- step process.
140 social entrepreneurs submitted their applications, of which 18
semi-finalists were moved to the next round of the competition. The Jubilant
Bhartia Foundation and the Schwab Foundation teams thereafter identified 6
applications for the next stage of the competition – i.e the due
diligence visits.
The four finalists, further selected from this pool, are extraordinary
social entrepreneurs who are shaping and scaling large-scale solutions to
building an inclusive India. They will meet the jury of the India Social
Entrepreneur of the Year Award on 12 November 2011 in Mumbai. The jury will
comprise eminent members from the corporate, media and the civil society
sectors. The winner will be announced on November 12, 2011.
The Schwab Foundation (
http://www.schwabfound.org/)
The Schwab Foundation is a sister organization of the World Economic Forum.
The Foundation provides unique regional and global platforms to promote
social entrepreneurship as a key element to advancing societies and
addressing social problems innovatively and effectively. It also fosters a
close-knit community of social entrepreneurs for idea exchange and
replication of best practices. Finally, social entrepreneurs gain
unprecedented networking opportunities with global decision-makers, thereby
furthering the legitimacy of their work and mobilizing resources for
continual expansion.
FINALISTS
HUSK POWER SYSTEMS:
Social
entrepreneur: Gyanesh Pandey
Field: Rural Electrification; Clean Technology
Headquartered at: Patna
Year of Establishment: 2008
Legal Form of Business: Social Business
Website: http://www.huskpowersystems.com/
Husk Power Systems (HPS) is lighting up the darkest (and not
coincidentally, the poorest) rural regions of India through a proprietary
technology that cost-effectively converts bio-mass waste (primarily rice
husks, but also such bio-wastes as mustard husks/stems, corn cobs, and some
varieties of grasses) into electricity. By installing and operating 25kW to
100 kW ‘mini power plants’, HPS wires up villages and hamlets of
up to 4,000 inhabitants, to deliver electricity to communities who pay for
the service.
On an average, every HPS power plant serves 2,500 people and up to 25 small
shops, enabling small businesses, especially rice mills, to generate
additional income. It replaces 18,000 litres of kerosene per year with
energy efficient compact fluorescent light (CFL) bulbs. As of August 2010,
HPS had replaced 10,000 tons of CO2 with clean energy, and saved a total
$2.25M in cash for all households served by its plants.
HPS currently runs 80 power plants that supply electricity to more than
200,000 individuals in 350 villages (a majority of which are off-grid) in
Bihar and Uttar Pradesh. Gyanesh Pandey and his team aim to set up 2,000
plants by 2016, impacting 5 million lives.
MAGIC BUS:
Social
entrepreneur: Matthew Spacie
Field: Sports; Youth; Education
Headquartered at: Mumbai
Year of Establishment: 1999
Legal Form of Business: Leveraged Not-For-Profit
Website: http://www.magicbus.org/index.html
Magic Bus has pioneered a ‘Sport for Development (S4D)’
curriculum that harnesses the transformative power of sport to enable
extremely marginalized children to tap into their inner agency, reflect
deeply on life choices, and exercise positive development decisions
vis-a-vis education, health, gender and livelihoods – levers that are
critical for their growth as active citizens and future participants of the
India growth story.
Magic Bus has directly delivered the S4D curriculum to 250,000 children in
the age group of 7-18 years in 5 states through a trained network of 5,000
Community Sport Coaches and Youth Mentors : a majority of whom are graduates
of the Magic Bus program and belong to the same eco-system as the children
they facilitate.
The cumulative cost-per-child of delivering the Magic Bus curriculum is 800
Indian rupees and is expected to drop further, as Matthew Spacie and his
team prepare to directly reach 1 million children in the next 3 years.
Children who engage with Magic Bus live in impoverished communities with no
easy access to role models, inspiration or facilitation to take positive
life decisions. In Mumbai, (where Magic Bus delivers its program to 70,000
children every week), 20% of all Magic Bus participants across locations
tend to be school dropouts, of which 34% go back to school and stayed
enrolled due to the Magic Bus influence; 85% of Magic Bus participants
across age groups stay clean of addiction; More than 95% of the youth in
Magic Bus have enrolled in higher education courses and 50% of those in
employable age have signed up for livelihoods and skill development
initiatives.
To secure large-scale, systemic impact, Magic Bus has signed a formal
contract with the Indian government to incorporate its S4D curriculum into
the National Rural Sports Program – opening up a catchment of 30
million children at the Panchayat level. As pioneers of the S4D pedagogy in
Asia, Magic Bus has also trained more than 150 organizations from the South
Asian region in its sport-led approach to changing behavior in
resource-constrained communities. Additionally, Matthew Spacie has partnered
with premiere sports brands (Barclays Premier League, Nike, The Lewis Group)
to strengthen the sustainability and growth of Magic Bus model.
WATERLIFE INDIA:
Social
entrepreneur: Sudesh Menon
Field: Health; Clean Technology
Headquartered at: Hyderabad
Year of Establishment: 2008
Legal Form of Business: Social Business
Website: http://www.waterlifeindia.com/index.html
Waterlife India founded by Sudesh Menon, Mohan Ranbaore and Indranil Das
makes safe and clean drinking water accessible and affordable for
under-served communities who live in geographies with high water
contamination. According to government estimates, 65% of the Indian rural
population and 35% of those living in urban areas do not have access to
clean drinking water. This segment comprises Waterlife’s core customer
base.
Waterlife India has developed a range of green and cost-effective water
treatment technologies that can address complex combinations of water
contamination in any area. Since 2008, 1.1 million excluded customers have
availed safe drinking water from its community water systems by paying a
nominal user-fee.
The Waterlife business model partners with local governments, citizen
groups and health workers who drive the education and awareness for clean
drinking water. It sets up and maintains flexible community water systems
that can serve populations from 2,000 to 25,000 by selling the capital
equipment to the government, undertaking long-term operation and maintenance
contracts for each system and receiving a user fee of INR 4-7 for 20 litres
of water that its customers willingly pay. A majority of its systems are
media-based and can operate in off-grid villages.
As of date, Waterlife has set up 1,300 community water systems in 6 Indian
states that have the highest levels of water contamination. Most Waterlife
customers live below the poverty line and do not have the wherewithal to
purchase water at regular market rates. Access to clean drinking water
within this population base has led to dramatic declines in water-borne
diseases, higher attendance in schools and increased incomes for local
entrepreneurs and SHGs who deliver water to families that live a distance
away from the community water systems.
Sudesh Menon and his team aim to reach 25 million excluded customers across
India and South Asia by 2014.
BACKGROUND
The India SEOY Award identifies and celebrates visionary social
entrepreneurs who have demonstrated systems-change models and are at the
stage of scaling/replicating their ideas across India and in other
countries.
Applications to the India SEOY Awards 2011 opened in April this year. The
response was positive, and the quality of applications were by far the most
competitive. The finalists of this Award were identified through an
intensive 4- step process.
140 social entrepreneurs submitted their applications, of which 18
semi-finalists were moved to the next round of the competition. The Jubilant
Bhartia Foundation and the Schwab Foundation teams thereafter identified 6
applications for the next stage of the competition – i.e the due
diligence visits.
The four finalists, further selected from this pool, are extraordinary
social entrepreneurs who are shaping and scaling large-scale solutions to
building an inclusive India. They will meet the jury of the India Social
Entrepreneur of the Year Award on 12 November 2011 in Mumbai. The jury will
comprise eminent members from the corporate, media and the civil society
sectors. The winner will be announced on November 12, 2011.
The Schwab Foundation (
http://www.schwabfound.org/)
The Schwab Foundation is a sister organization of the World Economic Forum.
The Foundation provides unique regional and global platforms to promote
social entrepreneurship as a key element to advancing societies and
addressing social problems innovatively and effectively. It also fosters a
close-knit community of social entrepreneurs for idea exchange and
replication of best practices. Finally, social entrepreneurs gain
unprecedented networking opportunities with global decision-makers, thereby
furthering the legitimacy of their work and mobilizing resources for
continual expansion.
ABOUT THE PREVIOUS YEAR’S AWARD
SOCIAL ENTREPRENEUR OF THE YEAR AWARD 2010
Mr Rajiv Khandelwal and Mr Krishnavtar Sharma, co-founders of Aajeevika
Bureau, were the winners of the India Social Entrepreneur of the Year. Mr
Kapil Sibal, Minister of Human Resource Development, Science and Technology
of India, handed the award to the winners in New Delhi. Aajeevika Bureau has
introduced a unique photo identification card for inter-state migrants,
allowing them to access banking, mobile telephone and other government
services and citizenship entitlements. In addition, the organization offers
skills training, job placement, legal aid and counseling.
More than 100 applicants entered the sixth competition for the “India
Social Entrepreneur of the Year- 2010” selection process. After several
stages of rigorous assessment, four finalists were chosen. An independent
panel of preeminent judges met on 12 November to select the winners from
among the finalists. The judges this year included: Ms Shobhana Bhartia,
Chairperson of the Hindustan Times; Mr Y. C. Deveshwar, Chairman of ITC Ltd;
Ms Rohini Nilekani, Chairperson of Arghyam Foundation; Ms Sudha Pillai,
Member Secretary of the Planning Commission; and Ms Hilde Schwab, Co-Founder
and Chairperson of the Schwab Foundation.
The media partners for the “India Social Entrepreneur of the Year-
2010” Awards were CNBC-TV18, The Hindustan Times and the Mint.
The award has been given annually in the country since 2005 to individuals
who have founded organizations or companies with targeted social missions
benefiting underserved communities. The winners enter the global network of
200 leading social entrepreneurs of the Schwab Foundation for Social
Entrepreneurship, a sister organization of the World Economic Forum.
Winner Profile: Rajiv Khandelwal and Krishnavtar Sharma, Aajeevika
Bureau (http://www.aajeevika.org)Udaipur
Co-founded
by Rajiv Khandelwal and Krishnavtar Sharma in 2004, Aajeevika Bureau is
headquartered in Udaipur, with offices in Ahmadabad, Jaipur and seven blocks
of southern Rajasthan, where, every year, an estimated 800,000 rural workers
migrate seasonally to Gujarat and Karnataka.
All of Aajeevika Bureau’s clients are unskilled and semi-skilled men
and women with annual family incomes of less than INR 36,000. They are
typically unviable for self help group or microfinance loans due to their
migratory status and lack of assets. Aajeevika Bureau offers rural seasonal
migrants photo identity and financial services, skills training, and
partnerships with local governments and businesses, mostly at their
destination points in urban markets.
Over five years, more than 50,000 ultra-poor seasonal migrants have
directly accessed the Bureau’s services, registering 50-80% growth in
their incomes as well as increased citizenship entitlements. Additionally,
Aajeevika’s model has been replicated by more than 30 civil society
organizations in Bihar, Orissa, Maharashtra, Andhra Pradesh and Madhya
Pradesh.
 |
 |
| Mr Kapil Sibal, Minister
of Human Resource Development, Science and Technology of India &
Mr Shyam S Bhartia, Director Jubilant Bhartia Foundation &
Chairman & Managing Director of Jubilant Life Sciences Ltd giving
away the “India Social Entrepreneur of the Year- 2010” Awards
to Mr Rajiv Khandelwal and Mr Krishnavtar Sharma,
Co-founders of Aajeevika Bureau |
Mr Shyam S Bhartia,
Director, Jubilant Bhartia Foundation & Chairman & Managing
Director of Jubilant Life Sciences Ltd; Ms Hilde Schwab,
Co-founder & Chairperson, Schwab Foundation for Social
Entrepreneurship; Mr Krishnavtar Sharma & Mr Rajiv Khandelwal,
Winners, The Social Entrepreneur of the Year Award 2010 &
Co-founders, Aajeevika Bureau; Mr Kapil Sibal, Minister of Human
Resource Development, Science and Technology of India; |
The
Social Entrepreneur of the Year - 2010, Finalists were:
Santosh Kumar Choubey, AISECT (
https://www.aisect.org)
The AISECT network has over 8,000 education centres across 27 states in
India. The organization focuses on IT skills training in rural areas. It has
a student base of about 1 million to date, resulting in 6,000 self-employed
people.
Mr Shyam S Bhartia, Director, Jubilant
Bhartia Foundation & Chairman & Managing Director of Jubilant Life
Sciences Ltd; Ms Hilde Schwab, Co-founder & Chairperson, Schwab
Foundation for Social Entrepreneurship; Mr Santosh Kumar Choubey,
Finalist, The Social Entrepreneur of the Year Award 2010 & Director
General, AISECT; Mr Kapil Sibal, Minister of Human Resource
Development, Science and Technology of India;
Anant
Kumar, Lifespring Hospitals Pvt. Ltd (
www.lifespring.in)
LifeSpring has nine hospitals in the state of Andhra Pradesh. Its mission
is to enable low-income women to access high-quality maternal healthcare in
India. It has delivered more than 7,000 healthy babies, and doctors have
treated over 100,000 outpatient cases.
Mr Shyam S Bhartia, Director, Jubilant
Bhartia Foundation & Chairman & Managing Director of Jubilant Life
Sciences Ltd; Ms Hilde Schwab, Co-founder & Chairperson, Schwab
Foundation for Social Entrepreneurship; Mr Anant Kumar, Finalist,
The Social Entrepreneur of the Year Award 2010 & Founder & CEO ,
Lifespring Hospitals Pvt. Ltd; Mr Kapil Sibal, Minister of Human
Resource Development, Science and Technology of India;
Ashwin
Naik, Vaatsalya Healthcare Solutions Pvt. Ltd (
http://www.vaatsalya.com)
Vaatsalya provides affordable and quality healthcare to more than 300,000
customers annually from middle- and low-income families. The focus is on
primary and secondary healthcare services (internal medicine, maternal
health, pediatrics and general surgery) in large towns and peri-urban areas
through 10 hospitals, as of today.
Mr Shyam S Bhartia, Director, Jubilant
Bhartia Foundation & Chairman & Managing Director of Jubilant Life
Sciences Ltd; Ms Hilde Schwab, Co-founder & Chairperson, Schwab
Foundation for Social Entrepreneurship; Dr Ashwin Naik, Finalist,
The Social Entrepreneur of the Year Award 2010 & Founder & CEO ,
Vaatsalya Healthcare Solutions Pvt. Ltd; Mr Kapil Sibal, Minister of
Human Resource Development, Science and Technology of India;
The India Social Entrepreneur of the Year Award provides unprecedented
opportunities to the winner (s) to engage with global decision makers from
the public, corporate, media and academic sectors to strengthen and expand
their model.
Specifically, the Award benefits for the winner (s) will include
participation in the India Economic Summit and regional meetings of the
World Economic Forum, inclusion in the Schwab Foundation network of leading
social entrepreneurs, possible nomination/s to the Forum of Young Global
Leaders and the Global Agenda Council, and eligibility to participate in the
Annual Meeting of the World Economic Forum in Davos.
The
Schwab Foundation (http://www.schwabfound.org/)
The Schwab Foundation is a sister organization of the World Economic Forum.
The Foundation provides unique regional and global platforms to promote
social entrepreneurship as a key element to advancing societies and
addressing social problems innovatively and effectively. It also fosters a
close-knit community of social entrepreneurs for idea exchange and
replication of best practices. Finally, social entrepreneurs gain
unprecedented networking opportunities with global decision-makers, thereby
furthering the legitimacy of their work and mobilizing resources for
continual expansion.
