Magazine ofKCT Business School I March 2016 YOU +IDEA + COMMUNITY +START SOME GOOD = IMPACT SOCIAL ENTREPRENEURSHIP P3 P7 P11 P16 Business NOT as usual: Seriously Different Sustainable Model of Development and Social Impact The Rising Star Ashoka- Housing For All Helikx School BOOND Villgro CONTENTS Business NOT as usual: 3 Ashoka- Housing For All Seriously Different 7 Helikx School Sustainable Model of Development and Social Impact 11 BOOND The Rising Star 16 Villgro Your Story: 18 This Pune-based company is helping MSMEs meet their financial needs Your Story: 20 How this startup from Chennai is reducing school dropouts in Tamil Nadu 22 Campus News Vishnu Swaminathan South Asia Leader, Ashoka Innovators for the Public. Vishnu Swaminathan is “Hybrid Value Chains”. His presently the South Asia work led to change the Leader for Ashoka landscape of how Innovators for the Public. affordable housing was He leads Ashoka's work in done earlier by creating the region and is part of the over 15000 homes in a Leadership Group at short span of 2 years Ashoka. He has spent the across multiple cities. last 6 years at Ashoka. Vishnu has been an For the first 4 years he led entrepreneur most of his the affordable housing life. His first two for-profit initiative under “Housing for ventures were based out of All” which aimed to Singapore. He also serves demonstrate that large as Founder Director of social problems can be Indian Housing Federation solved - if for-profits come an entity focussed on together with non-profits as Affordable Housing at equal partners aka scale in India 2 Business NOT as usual: Making business sense by solving the world's largest problems Looking all around us, the nature of business has to unlearn the way we were taught about business. changed. You cannot conceptualise, run or scale up Almost every aspect of social business contradicts business the way it used to bea few decades ago. with the way regular business is carried out. The most Every business today has to think about the effects of important first step is to unlearn slowly but steadily its footprint on every stakeholder before even learn the process of building a business to thrive in launching itself. A mining company has to think about social business. I have tried to articulate the key the effects it would have on the environment and steps here below. make plans to replenish the resources - or a paper company has to look at the ways it would procure its 1. Picking the social problem that grows even raw material, trees. It is not only those with direct with a lot of investment. impact on the environment or its stakeholders, but the time has also now come for every business to Identifying the core problem as the first step seems being socially aware from the very conceptualisation. natural in every business. But, the key difference with social business is to look at the societal impact and to On the other side, making profits and then dedicating identify the problem that is growingin spite of a lot of a small percentage of its profits towards social investment. For example, consider the issue of responsibility is being enforced through the CSR law. malnutrition. Almost one in every two children under Even though the CSR law does not qualify the age of five in India is malnourished. The data is businesses on the ways to make that profit, it does available from World Health Organisation and the drive people to think about how the money was Ministry of Women and Child Development, India. made. If it's not just a thought, the people who will We have seen enough advertisements on the receive the money will eventually ask the question. A importance of malnutrition. In 2015, Government of business cannot survive on dichotomy for long. If the India allocated 2 lakh crore towards food and money was not made legitimately, it might not be nutritional security. If one witnesses the trend, the accepted by society even if it is given free to others for problem has grown along with the amount of long. investment. When you look at the other side, we are a proud nation - because India is the only country in the Prof. Muhammad Yunus, the founder of Grameen world, where nearly 60% of our population will be Bank, gave seven core principles that define a social under the age of 35 by 2020. That only means we will business. A social business focussing on have the most productive population for the next transforming society than just on profits, can become decade regarding age. When you compare these two economically and financially sustainable. Investors statistics, one amazing anomaly pops up. get only their investments back without dividends, any surplus gets invested back into expanding the What is the point of having so many young people if business, it is environmentally friendly and last but nearly half of them are under-performing due to not least, to do it with fun! When you look at these nutritional issues? It is pretty evident that if a child has principles and what is regular business, social nutrition absorption issues,i t is not going to business sounds counter-intuitive and the process is disappear when the child grows up to become an 3 adult. The problem of malnutrition is pretty broad - it India. Recently, cloth for work evolved where social stays with the human body much beyond the growth infrastructure like roads or bridges that needed to be years, all the way until death. Malnutrition is also one fixed gets set by local people and they get paid by of the leading causes of health problems that come cloth. up. When nutrition does not get fully absorbed into the body, one can imagine the effects of it Models evolve as a social entrepreneur moves manifesting in various ways in the body. through their work, but starting with just the model from day one is never a good idea. Focus on the So, as a social business - where does one start? impact the work can bring and the model comes What are the issues we need to gather before around naturally. deciding the intervention? Will it be a profitable business from the start? Who are the people we 3. Find the most unusual partner need to look at as stakeholders? All of these questions have a different answer compared to a In regular business, it is evident that one needs to regular business and it must be rightfully so. know every stakeholder in the value chain very well, have a robust, tightly sealed business partnership 2. Impact first, Model next. agreement with everyone so that they will deliver. In social business, we have to find the most unusual The issue at hand is so large, and one thing is allies to solve your problems. obvious-T here has to be a business model. I am particularly focussed on the question - When? When Affordable Housing in India is such a problem. you are moved by a particular issue like this, where Statistics shows that 24.6 million homes are missing the problem is mighty - you have to unlearn first and in India for the urban poor. This number grows every then start learning. In that process, we need to be year as migration to cities is increasing and the driven by a heart rather than only by the mind. A supply is meagre with just a 100,000 new homes a social business needs a soul and that soul gets year. In my work in affordable housing for the last six typically manifested by a moving thought or a close years, we had an insight. In regular housing personal experience. There are countless examples business, the architects and builders come out with of social entrepreneurs who start with no model, a standard 2–6 designs of the homes expecting that model that appears to be entirely charity based, or the customers will fit into one of those six designs like philanthropy driven for a few years. But a business 1BHK, 2BHK, etc. When designing homes for low- model slowly emerges. income urban poor, we cannot assume this. The homes are between 250–550 Sq ft and architects Anshu Gupta, an Ashoka fellow and founder of have never designed such small homes. We made a Goonj was moved to a social problem. People were sample home in Ahmedabad city and brought dying in the streets of Delhi during a cold winter women buyers from the low-income communities to without essential clothing. He started Goonj to collect look at them. An architect was placed there to take cloth from the haves and pass it on to the have-nots. note and make changes. Within three months, the For the last ten years, he has received tonnes of design was modified 35 times and at the end of it, the material and repurposed to the people who do not architect and builder could not believe their own have them. At that time, a model did not exist. Collect eyes. The home was almost perfect and did not feel from donors, repurpose and distribute free through a like a tiny space. The women designed it from their volunteer network. Later he realised that a lot of cloth needs rather than from heard knowledge. Women was wasted when repurposing as he was cutting here became the most unusual allies. cloth. That led to the creation of a model to make cloth sanitary napkins. Today, Goonj probably makes the most number of cloth sanitary napkins in 4 For every social business, there is always an unusual Prof.