Champions of social sector. Meet the winners of ISB iDiya 2013
The 5th edition of ISB (Indian School of Business) iDiya, a ‘National Social Venture Competition’ held at ISB Hyderabad concluded on 30th November 2013. Launched on 26th July 2013, the event aims at stimulating and developing high-impact, social businesses in India. More than 450 applications from across a variety of sectors like rural health, education, mobile and environment, were received for the competition of which 10 companies were shortlisted after two rounds of filtering. These finalists went through a rigorous ‘Boot Camp’ held over the last week targeted at learning and unlearning various aspects of business.The highlights of the boot-camp include sessions on bootstrapping, fundraising, strategic scaling, venture marketing, ecosystem support, and debt-financing in India. Launching the 5th iDiya Profile book, Dr. Montek Singh Ahluwalia said, “If we could innovatively use the resources we have, we could improve phenomenally.”
The final presentations were evaluated on different parameters like impact, technology, team, and scalability of the idea. The jury included Subramonia Sarma (ISB Hyderabad), Sohini Bhattacharya (Breakthrough), Gopa Kumar Menon (Navgati), Shashaank Awasthi (Gray Ghost Ventures) and Pinaki Bhattacharyya (Villgro Innovations). The finalists and winners were honored by Jayaprakash Narayan and Shaheen Mistry who enthralled audience with their wonderful speeches. Jayaprakash Narayan shared, “When we work on how to make technology relevant and scale it up, then we will have a winner” while Shaheen Mistry emphasized that wanting to do desperately and then sticking to it is being an entrepreneur.
The winners of the 5th edition of ISB iDiya and other finalists are:
Tinker Tank Technologies, Ahmedabad (Winner, Rs. 2,00,000): They create need based products for the bottom of pyramid segment. They have developed award-winning Doopica- low cost semi-automated incense stick machines, to eliminate hard labor. It was founded by Keshav G, Adnan Ansari, Ankita Ostawal and Abhishek Rathi in 2011.
Bodhi Health Education, Gurgaon (First runner up, Rs. 1,00,000): The organisation seeks to provide affordable medical education to health workers in rural and semi-urban areas of India. It was founded by Startup Leadership Program fellows Abhinav Giridhar and Shrutika Giridhar.
ReMaterials, Ahmedabad (Second runners up, Rs. 50,000) : They work on the low-income roofing market area to help people in villages and slums to choose an affordable and adequate roof. ReMaterials is the fourth venture of serial entrepreneur Hasit Ganatra which was started in 2011.
Magic Pathshala, Delhi (Third runner up, Rs. 25,000): The company proposes a mobile education program to drive literacy and numeracy learning outcomes amongst primary school children in rural India. Co-founded by Vimalendu Verma (Founder & CEO of Magic Softwares), Sanjay Sundaram and Rajagopalan C, the team plans to launch android mobile application in February 2014.
Kaarmic Education Services, Hyderabad (Fourth Runner Up, Rs.25,000): They provide affordable career guidance to slum community students with their high quality student development programs and also train teachers at school level. Kaarmic Education Services was founded 6 months back by 4 IDEX Fellows, Anishay Raj, Prashanth Ramagiri, Karthik Dantu, and Adithya Sanjay.
Site4NGO, Hyderabad (People’s Choice Award): It is a “Plug and Play Service” that enable any NGO in world to launch their website in fifteen minutes for just $9.99 to make NGO’s sustainable and scalable, and bring social impact. It was founded by Satya Naresh whose another website portal for ‘Jobs for Physically Challenged’ won the 2nd edition of ISB iDiya.
Ripples, Hyderabad: After launching India’s first dyslexia friendly website, the organization plans to demystify the specific learning difficulties of dyslexia through awareness programs, workshops and conferences across educational institutions and healthcare industry. The four-member team is headed by Afshan Jabeen who has 12 years of experience in the field of dyslexia.
pariNathi, Chennai: The duo of Kavya Vunnam and Manikanda Prabhu plans to sell sanitary napkins at low cost of about Rs.13-15 per packet of 8 napkins for rural women through pariNathi.
Skilled Samaritan Foundation, Faridabad: Founded by Gauri Gopal Agrawal, the organization supports the development of an off-grid solar powered electricity network managed by local villagers, addressing the lack of low-cost lighting facilities in India. They have initiated with Project Sirohi in Faridabad and shall be implemented in three phases by September, 2013.
Dharthi CBT, Bangalore: It is an idea of community based tourism to ensure a role for the community, leading to locals being involved in planning and development. Co-founded by Freeda and Shaheed in 2011, the organization is working on three projects through the ecotourism board.