Fwd: More entrepreneurs are off to a great start

[Swapnil Agarwal]

Thanks & Regards,
Swapnil Agarwal
Student - IRMA
Ph: +91-9099067758

Sent from a mobile device
Please excuse for any brevity or typos

----- Forwarded message -----
From: "Villgro Innovations Foundation" <in...@villgro.org>
To: <swapni...@gmail.com>
Subject: More entrepreneurs are off to a great start
Date: Wed, Sep 4, 2013 3:48 pm


After a rigorous selection process, two groups of promising entrepreneurs have
been selected for the SEED (Social Entrepreneur and Enterprise Development)
programme and newly launched Entrepreneur-in-Residence programme.

An 8-month programme designed to help enterprises sharpen their business model
and raise their first round of funding

[1]

Students Fuel builds a comprehensive and credible database on opportunities and
has conducted career counselling sessions for 5 lakh high school students over
the last 4 years. Ketan is the founder, and a regular speaker at many colleges
and forums on career options and social entrepreneurship, and an Ashoka Fellow.

"Seed will help us to re-fuel our energy to scale our organisation pan-India"

[2]

Azadi is an alternate rural retail channel that is women led, has products that
women want, and has a brand that speaks to a rural woman's aspiration. Through
training women in entrepreneurship, selling demand driven products, Azadi
removes the barriers to product access and provides sustainable community profit
opportunities. Dhirendra and Ameet are the co-founders of Azadi.

[3]

Medhavi Foundation helps school students achieve career planning by providing
career assessments, mentoring & career awareness. It runs on a hybrid model
where it provides free career planning to students from low-income families and
a premium paid online career planning programme to students from high-income
families. Ayush is the founder and a 2013 Fellow in the Startup Leadership
Program in Delhi.

"I hope to get the right mentoring to refine the hybrid model of creating a
self-sustainable social enterprise and also fine-tune the model to raise funds."

[4]

Impulse Social Enterprises mobilizes and empowers artisans in North East India
to become independent entrepreneurs with professional dignity, connecting them
with national and international markets. Hasina, the founder, is an Ashoka
Fellow and has been working with artisans for 15 years.

"I hope SEED can help us create a road map for finding investors who will
support scaling of the Impulse product."

[5]

Skillveri Training Solutions Pvt Ltd is founded with the aim of transforming
skill development in India to address the huge 'skill gap'. The "veri' in
Skillveri stands for true, authentic, realistic. (As in words like verify,
veritable or Bureau Veritas). Skillveri is about imparting the right skill,
through the use of technology based tools and simulations. Sabarinath is the
co-founder.

"Utilizing the mentoring and workshops to fine tune our business model. SEED's
tagline best describes it - 'from an idea that your family would invest in, to
an idea that a VC would invest in."

Icon has a low-cost rural newspaper with a network of rural reporters writing
about business opportunities in rural settings, to inform farmers on the latest
updates on technology, self-employment, government schemes, and more. Icon
employs an innovative distribution channel by piggy-backing off of dairy
co-operative networks. Anupam is the founder, and has implemented pilots in 4
states across 10,000 villages over the last 20 years but is ready to turn it
into a replicable business model.

A 12-month in-residence programme that helps idea-stage entrepreneurs convert
innovative ideas into successful social enterprises.

Life Catalyst will develop the Rubelite Glucose Sensor, a simple to use,
low-cost blood glucose monitoring solution integrated with a technology
platform. Sagar is a recent graduate of IIT-Madras with a B.Tech and M.Tech dual
degree.

SkillTrain provides vocational training to rural unemployed youth through a
technology enabled blended learning 'freemium' model with the objective of
preparing them for employment or entrepreneurship. Ganesh has more than 10 years
of experience in the education sector and has recently set up 7 vocational
training institutes across UP, MP and Rajasthan.

The enterprise aims to create a simple web platform through which educational
institutions and coaching centers can deliver well structured and easy to
understand video courses, giving students a near classroom experience. Mervin
graduated from IIT-Bombay in 2012 and has worked with CapGemini for a year
before leaving his job to pursue his enterprise full-time.

The enterprise aims to develop an alternative to batteries used in solar power
systems using compressed air technology. Sankar has worked with the Ordnance
Factory Board for over 20 years and has significant experience working with
machines.

amrutDhara seeks to provide clean, quality assured water at affordable price in
public places by deploying the most optimal filtration systems. Minhaj Ameen, an
MBA from Manchester Business School, has significant experience in management
consulting in the UK before he returned to India to work on sustainability
related projects.

The enterprise aims to create a service that will develop solutions for rural
needs by tapping into student innovations and projects that are being developed
in colleges and universities across the country. Adithya graduated from M S
Ramaiah Institute of Technology with a B.E in biotechnology, and is currently an
intern at the Stanford BioDesign Center.

The enterprise seeks to identify critical developmental issues in rural
communities and address these problems by creating solutions that are energy
efficient and sustainable. Koushik is a recent graduate from the M.Tech Program
at TERI University and has previously worked with John Deere and Husk Power.

[6][7][8]

References

1. http://www.studentsfuel.org/
2. http://www.azadi.co.in/
3. http://www.medhavifoundation.org/
4. http://www.impulsesocialenterprises.com/
5. http://www.skillveri.com/
6. http://www.villgro.org/seed
7. http://www.villgro.org/eir
8. http://www.villgro.org/

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Villgro Innovations Foundation | Kanagam Road | Chennai, TN 600018, India

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