The Jubilant Bhartia Foundation and the Schwab Foundation for Social Entrepreneurship, announce four finalists for the prestigious Social Entrepreneur of the Year Awards, 2010
Tuesday November 02, 2010 , 4 min Read
The Jubilant Bhartia Foundation and the Schwab Foundation for Social Entrepreneurship announced the finalists of the India Social Entrepreneur of the Year (SEOY) Awards 2010. These include Aajeevika Bureau (founded by Rajeev Khandelwal and Krishnavtar Sharma), AISECT (founded by Santosh Chaubey), LifeSpring Hospitals Pvt Ltd (founded by Anant Kumar) and Vaatsalya Healthcare Solution Pvt. Ltd (founded by Ashwin Naik). The four finalists have been selected after a rigourous process and the winner will be announced at the awards ceremony on November 13, coinciding with the India Economic Summit.
The SEOY Awards 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. The models developed by the 2010 finalists are moving the fields of financial inclusion, health and rural education to their next curve of innovation and impact.
Applications to the India SEOY Awards 2010 opened in May this year. The response was positive, and the quality of applications was very competitive. The finalists of this year’s awards were identified through an intensive three step process. On behalf of ‘Jubilant Bhartia Foundation’, Start Up! – an angel investor and advisor to social entrepreneurs – managed the outreach and the due diligence process for the SEOY India 2010 Award.
Out of the 104 social entrepreneurs who submitted their applications, 25 semi-finalists were moved to the next round of the competition. Thereafter, six applications were identified for the next stage of the competition – i.e. the due diligence visits. The four finalists, further selected from this pool, will meet the jury of the India Social Entrepreneur of the Year Award on November 12, 2010 in New Delhi.
Brief Description of the Social Change Models Developed by the Finalists
AAJEEVIKA BUREAU
Social entrepreneurs: Rajiv Khandelwal, Krishnavtar Sharma
Field(s): Migration, Employment
Established in 2005, Aajeevika Bureau develops financial products, ‘photo-identity’ services, skill training programs and partnerships with local governments and businesses to help rural seasonal migrants succeed in difficult economies. Aajeevika’s solutions are designed to support seasonal rural migrants both at the source (i.e. resource-poor rural economies) and the destination (i.e. exclusionary urban markets) of their migration cycles. The Aajeevika model is working in 8 states of the country.
ALL INDIA SOCIETY FOR ELECTRONICS AND COMPUTER TECHNOLOGY (AISECT)
Social entrepreneur: Santosh Kumar Choubey
Field(s): Rural Technical Education and Vocational Training, Livelihoods and Enterprise Creation
AISECT has pioneered ICT-based education in rural India that has opened up entrepreneurship and new employment opportunities for more than 1 million rural youth in their local eco-systems. Additionally, it has created a network of 8000 rural education entrepreneurs who run profitable AISECT franchise centres in some of the most backward districts of India.
LIFESPRING HOSPITALS PVT LTD
Social entrepreneur: Anant Kumar
Field: Health
LifeSpring Hospitals is a chain of 9 small, low-cost maternity hospitals that provides quality, affordable healthcare services to women from low-income groups in Indian cities. With safe deliveries of more than 7000 healthy babies and quality care and treatment of 100,000 outpatient cases, LifeSpring has kept its morbidity rate to less than 1% and its caesarian cases to less than 35%. LifeSpring’s customers are women from families with monthly earnings of INR 3000- INR 7000.
VAATSALYA HEALTHCARE SOLUTIONS PVT LTD
Social entrepreneur: Ashwin Naik
Field: Health
Vaatsalya Healthcare Solutions Private Limited is a chain of 10 low-cost, no frills hospitals that provide primary and secondary healthcare services which are accessible and affordable to middle and low-income families in Tier II and Tier III towns in India. Vaatsalya focuses on the semi-urban and rural population that has limited access to good quality healthcare services. The network serves 300,000 customers every year, most of whom do not have insurance, and who come from families with monthly incomes of Rs 5000 to 15000 (USD 100-300). The services fees are at 15-20% of what an average urban hospital would charge its patients.