Engineers for Social Impact 2009 Fellowship Program

Engineers for Social Impact, a program started by NITK alumni and present students, has launched it’s 2nd Fellowship program. The aim of the organization in it’s own words “is to connect the best engineering talent to the most credible for-profit social enterprises that drive market-based solutions to development in India”.

The fellowship will be given to 10 undergraduate students selected from the top 15 engineering schools across India (IITs, NITs, BITS etc). The selected fellows will then be able to work with for-profit social enterprises in areas as diverse as microfinance, low cost power solutions, rural healthcare etc. The network of partner organizations is diverse with some very innovative and impressive companies like SELCO, Ujjivan, DhanaX and Vaatsalya.

Social Entrepreneurship is a very misunderstood area. A lot of people have a strong urge to work for the socially backward but very few consider the path of for-profit enterprises to work towards this aim. Many narrow their view of organizations working in this domain to NGOs or philanthropic efforts. One of the first to actually prove the model of for-profit Social Entrepreneurship was Muhammad Yunus, who built the first profitable microfinance institution, won a Nobel Prize and whose model has been recreated the world over in domains very diverse from banking. As an aside, I would strongly recommend his autobiography to people who what to learn more about for-profit social enterprise. It is a bit drawn out with a lot of Bangladeshi history and context thrown in, but is enlightening.

This would be an excellent opportunity for undergrads to connect with some of the huge challenges and opportunities in India and work with people passionate about social enterprise. Though I am not sure that selecting only engineers, and that too from only 15 colleges is the right strategy. Some colleges, like DA-ICT have a compulsory rural “intern” program and could have had strong potential aspirants.

Bhavish

Technorati Tags: Social Entrepreneurship,Microfinance

Weekly Readings

I follow Rajesh Jain’s blog and he has a weekly post on interesting readings over the past week. I decided to replicate that on DesiTech. This weekly column will list 3-5 articles that I read over the past week and found to be insightful and interesting. The content of the articles will be allowed to vary across the Technology Business space and the genre would be leaning more towards opinionated and analytical posts rather than news coverage and reporting. I’ll publish this post weekly on Friday/Saturday.

This week readings are:

1. Comments on TRAI Paper on MVAS Growth Recommendations by Rajesh Jain on Emergic.org: This post is about Netcore’s comments on the TRAI paper on MVAS future and organization in India.

2. The Future of Book Retailing in India by Abhaya Agarwal of Pothi on Pluggd.in: Abhaya compares the Indian physical retail  and e-commerce scene with that in the US, concluding that the trends in both markets are very different. Physical retailers in the US are facing pressure from e-tailers/e-commerce sites whereas in India, the physical retail sector has just started getting organized.

3. Let’s Spend on Broadband and the Power Grid by Samuel J. Palmisano, the current IBM chairman and CEO on The Wall Street Journal: This article discusses the benefits of investing in smart infrastructure projects in domains like Healthcare, Broadband and Power Grids in terms of sparking economic activity, rather than investing in traditional infrastructure projects like civil works like bridges and highways.

Bhavish

PAN IIT 2008 - IIT Shining

[Ed Note: Krishna Mehra is an IIT graduate turned researcher turned entrepreneur. His latest passion is his startup - Capillary which focuses on mobile based reward programs for small enterprises. Being a Calcuttan (if that is even a word), his craving for milk sweets is legendary. More about him on his blog.]

I was in Chennai from 18-22 Dec, esp. for PAN IIT 2008. As I already pointed out earlier, we covered all the SMS based notification and search applications for PAN IIT, and hence had to be there well in time to setup the system etc.

The way the event had been structured was that there were 5-6 tracks: Research, Rural, Entrepreneurship, Innovation and so on, and a galaxy of speakers was lined up for each session as a panel. Although unfortunate that you couldn't be at two places at the same time, it left something for everybody.

The event started with a bang. We participated in the Business Plan Conclave so didn't get to see the Opening Ceremony, where Prime Minister Manmohan Singh was streamed from New Delhi. The highlight of the day had to be Hema Malini. I remember as soon as we sent out the notification about Hema Malini being around, half the place got deserted and people crammed into the hall to catch a glimpse. It almost seemed that the alums who'd passed out two decades ago, couldn't resist the sight of Dream Girl ;-) A big disappointment was the Cocktail party being cancelled in the wake of protests from the political lobby about IIT Madras being used as a bar. A bunch of us left for the nearby Besant Nagar beach, cramming 11 people in an Auto!

The second day had some interesting sessions by Raghuram Rajan, Steven Cohen, and the COO of P&G. One thing that kept coming up was the current economic crises and the recent Mumbai terror attacks. The highlight of the second day has to be the Cocktail party at the Chennai Trade Center - some 30 Km from IITM from what I heard where we all filled up in buses and went.

Similarly, the last day started with quite a few activities at the Students Activity Center (SAC) - Steven Cohen and Kishore Mahboobani, and a session on social networking by Orkut Buyukkokten of Google. The closing speech by Amartya Sen, however, took the cake thanks to his scholarship and well prepared rhetorics. The question and answer session was extremely entertaining and informative, with Sen completely overshadowing the ceremonies - one classic was (not verbatim):

Q. How do you think India can become a superpower?
A. I don't wish for India to be a superpower. I hope Indians can be happy and reduce poverty.

It seemed a little ironic that both the opening ceremony of a ballad on IIT was done by alumni of Delhi School of Economics - but overall, it was a great show in terms of content. The organization, however, was lacking. There were hardly any volunteers to ask for help, nobody seemed to be accountable for the proceedings, people were denied food -- it seemed there were too many delegates and too few volunteers.

Overall a great show. One thing really humbling was seeing celebs from the business world (and some outside) at a extend-your-hand-and-touch distance. I almost bumped into Nandan Nilekani en route to his book signing session, and we found Chetan Bhagat ambling near Gurunath's Canteen with his family. It was above all a celebration of IITs and their contribution, and in this, the event fully succeeded.

So long till Chicago 2009.

-Krishna Mehra

Technorati Tags: IIT,PAN-IIT

Entrepreneurship is living life the way most people can't

Entrepreneurship is living a few years of your life like most people won’t, so that you can spend the rest of your life like most people can’t.

[Source: Empowered Quotes]

Technorati Tags: Entrepreneurship,Quotation