Villgro Launches Three Year Research Project to Study Social Businesses

Villgro Innovations Foundation (Villgro), the leading social enterprise incubator is launching a new social sector research and education initiative, “Learning from Pro-Poor, Market-Driven Innovation in India.” This project will focus on generating primary and secondary research and information on the growth and scale of social businesses in India.As a business incubator, Villgro has worked for several years to grow innovation; particularly technology innovation with the potential to improve the lives of India’s vast rural population. Recognizing that currently little original research and documentation exists about how to grow and scale social businesses, Villgro is keen to create a body of knowledge that will help innovators, investors, practitioners, and governments better understand how to foster innovation and technology that caters to the needs of rural India. The project will span three years, and will engage with researchers from educational institutions, consultancies, advocacy and research groups, and think-tanks. Research outputs will be used to develop a curriculum on innovation and social enterprise for academic institutions, as well as be made available through Villgro’s website, and dissemination workshops. Speaking about the project, Paul Basil, CEO of Villgro says “This project is important to Villgro because we have felt first-hand the need for more original research in this niche sector. Social businesses do not follow conventional business models because they serve the demographic group at the lower end of the economic scale. It is therefore important for all those who work with them to understand their operations and the challenges they face. We hope that through this project, Villgro will not only understand these challenges and issues but also make this knowledge available for all those working in this field.”

This project is supported by The International Development Research Centre (IDRC). The IDRC is one of the world’s leading institutions in the generation and application of new knowledge to meet the challenges of international development. For 40 years, IDRC has worked in close collaboration with researchers from the developing world in their research for the means to build healthier, more equitable, and more prosperous societies. In line with its mission, IDRC is supporting this project as part of its Innovation, Policy and Science Program. Veena Ravichandran, the Senior Program Officer in charge, reiterating IDRC’s support, says “This project is relevant to the Indian context in view of current policy objectives such as reducing income disparities by supporting entrepreneurship and to reduce knowledge and technical skills deficit by innovative technical education programs.”

The project is being officially launched by Dr. M.S Ananth, Director of IIT Madras. Other representatives present will include members of the IIT academia, consultancies, foundations, and research partners.

About Villgro

Villgro empowers rural development by identifying and incubating innovations that could be translated to market based models thus impacting thousands of lives. In efforts to impact rural life, Villgro actively promotes social entrepreneurship and works with different stakeholders to create and support an eco-system that empowers this by means of seed funding, mentoring, networking and recognition. Villgro has impacted over 360,000 rural users with technology & solutions reaching the grassroots. We have identified and activated more than 2000 social innovators.