OneRoof aims to be a one-stop shop for essential services

Operating as a for-profit SE, OneRoof through its subsidiary in Chennai (and another in Mexico) intends to build out franchises throughout the country that offer what it considers nine essential services to the world’s poor.

You can see from the organization’s website the services they plan to offer. They currently have 20 locations between India and Mexico where they are building out their business model.

David Stoker of microfranchising.org likes OneRoof’s brokerage approach to search and provide products from other providers — in a similar vein that a financial services firm can sell products from other institutions.

I like their model of being a broker of services as far as being a branded location that can be a point of distribution for a number of partners instead of providing all the services themselves. I have no sense of how well they are delivering on their mission, I have not seen them in the press much and their blog has not been updated since they secured their second round of funding. Their aim to function completely as a for-profit venture will make them an interesting case study in evaluating the feasibility of Gates’ creative capitalism and Yunus’ social business.

You can go to the company’s website here.