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Sankalp Summit, Asia’s largest collaborative platform to bring together social enterprises, impact investors, policy makers, academicians and other market makers, returns on April 11-13. The event will be held in Mumbai and a key feature of the summit this year is the expansion of focus to business models being used in the larger Asian region. The summit is organized by Intellecap, a Mumbai-based advisory firm that works in underserved markets

Sign up for early bird registrations. Those registering before March 1 will get a 35 per cent discount.

The highlist of the summit will be the annual Sankalp Awards, which will showcase 31 high-impact enterprises from India and South East Asia. Nominations for the awards are now closed and winner will be chosen from five sectors. Scroll down for quick profiles of the 31 finalists and the sectors they represent:

Agriculture, Food & Rural Business

Bhushan Agro | Agriculture

The company uses modern scientific methods resulting to improved agricultural yield and productivity in Sagar, Madhya Pradesh. It plans to set up food processing units to produce value added items. The business model is to lease agricultural land from farmers at Rs 8000-10,000 per acre per year and carry out farming using modern scientific methods, equipment, systematic crop rotation, and water harvesting techniques. The projected result is an improved yield and three crops per year instead of the two currently possible in that region. The revenue from agricultural activities per acre per year is approximately Rs 100,000 – 150,000.

Driptech | Irrigation Systems

A water technologies company that operates from Silicon Valley, with offices in Pune and Beijing. It produces affordable, high-quality irrigation systems designed for small-plot farmers. The company distributes its products through local governments, corporate partners, and NGOs in India and China. Drip irrigation increases crop yields by 20-50 per cent and requires less labor and less money spent on diesel or electricity for pumping water. Driptech is growing rapidly to address the needs of the 600 million subsistence farmers who lack appropriate irrigation.

Kautilya PhytoExtracts | Agriculture

Works closely with the farmers of Jamui, Baniapur, Banka, Munger and Gopaljung in Bihar, and Mal, Kalinpong and Jal Dhaka in North Bengal. It takes orders from aromatic oils and medicinal plant companies and cultivating the required crops. The company supports local farmers, with a focus on delivering the largest amount of profit to the farmers themselves.

Safe Harvest | Organic Farming

Supplier of fresh, locally grown, high quality organic produce to wholesalers and consumers. Safe Harvest farms its product indoors, producing crops year round. Their proposal is to scale indoor farming so that a wide variety of produce is harvested in quantity enough to sustain even the largest of cities without significantly relying on resources beyond city limits. The enterprise aims to do so in a sustainable manner using no herbicides, pesticides or petroleum based fertilizers and eliminating agricultural run-off by recycling black water.

Vinfinet Technologies | Technology Solutions for Agriculture 

Uses sustainable technologies to make agriculture a safe and profitable occupation.” The company’s ‘Kisan Raja’ initiative provides an easy to use and economically viable motor communication and controlling system that enables a user to remotely operate a pump set through a mobile phone or landline, changing the way the farmer interacts with motors.

Clean Energy & Clean Technology

Ampere Bikes | Electric Vehicles

Designs and manufactures a wide range of reliable, cost effective and quality electric vehicles (EV) for providing economical, comfortable, stylish and well performing electric mobility solutions for all categories of people and businesses in Asia and beyond. Ampere’s vision is to enhance and empower the lives of people through affordable mobility solutions, worldwide. The most popular bike is equipped with a 25 watt motor battery. Once the battery is charged for 6-8 hours, it can carry one rider a distance of 45 km. The battery doesn’t require any maintenance.

Ecoreco | E-waste Recycling

Provides the full spectrum of activities covered under e-waste management, including the collection of e-waste from the door step of the generators, transporting, sorting them into working  or non-working components, secured data destruction and the dismantling of end of life equipment.  Ecoreco‘s facility carries out the above activities near Mumbai.

GreenTech Aqua | Clean Energy

Uses ‘pneumatic saturation and condensation process and system’ (PSC). This technology utilizes waste heat present in exhaust gas of fossil fuel fired power plants or other sources of waste heat as the main source of energy to desalinate seawater. GreenTech Aqua’s technology will generate high quality water in large quantities (greater than 7 mld per 210MW power plant) from a sustainable source like seawater or brackish ground water. The water generated is of high purity and can be used for industrial as well as potable purposes.

GIBSS | Green Architecture Solutions

Green India Building Systems and Services (GIBSS) is a multi-channel diversified business that provides best value products along with operational, maintenance and energy solutions to help buildings reduce costs and raise productivity. GIBSS assists building owners in making responsible decisions, reducing the overall building life cycle expenses and helping the building occupants live more efficiently. They cite the benefits of a green building as, better health and productivity, low life cycle cost, reduced liability, enhanced building marketability, cost effective design, better environment.

NextGen | Clean Energy

Helps businesses measure, manage, mitigate and communicate carbon emissions, save energy, develop a low carbon strategy and help them harness other green benefits. The company has developed an in-house biogas technology for decentralized organic waste to energy application, focusing on reliability, hygiene and aesthetic values. This technology is currently being deployed across IT parks, university campuses, housing complexes and hotel chains to substitute LPG and at rural telecom tower sites for powering them.

Education

Classle | Online Learning Platform

Classle.net is a resource hub for learners to search, create, share and discuss in their chosen disciplines. An engaged community is accomplished by the participation of a dedicated team of educators, professionals, academicians and career counsellors. Classle.net is a learner-centric community and is a free-for-use platform. It expands the availability of knowledge and learning material and allows for the student/learner to be an active contributor. In the process, it empowers the learner and enlists them as an important member of the learning eco-system.

Edusports | Inclusive Sports Education

India’s first sports enterprise which works with K -12 schools for providing a world-class sporting experience to millions of school going children. Its SOAR platform offers learning through physical activity and sports to the school children. Edusports programmes help create ‘physically educated’ children by involving the participation of all stakeholders (schools, parents & policymakers). The programmes are designed around the core principles of inclusiveness (every child must play), age-appropriateness (right skills at the right age), and are designed specifically to work in Indian context.

EZvidya | Education Support Services

Educational services organization that services the development of modern academic curriculums, training initiatives and strategic engagement with schools. Their products aim to improve teacher effectiveness and accelerate children’s learning. They also consult schools on ‘best practices’ and have teamed with large corporations in their corporate social responsibility programmes.

ROSE Computer Academy | Rural Computer Literacy

Aims to spread computer literacy, with a particular focus on rural areas. Their aim is to impart quality computer education at an affordable rate to the youth in rural areas in order to prepare them for either starting their own enterprise or to get a job. ROSE Computer Academy has trained more than 5,000 rural youth in computer education out of whom more than 1500 have got jobs in private and public sector companies.

Priyadarshini Taxi Service | Vocational Training

A social enterprise that aims to create an income generating capacity in women through a vocational training program in taxi driving. The training provided to the participating women is free of charge. It is an exhaustive, three-month training, where the woman is expected to drive at least for two hours daily, on the roads of Mumbai. Priyadarshini Taxi service is an all women enterprise where the drivers as well as, all employees, directors and even shareholders are women.

Health, Water & Sanitation

Eram Scientific | Public Sanitation

Eram Scientific has created ‘Delight’, the automatic public Toilet Unit which is intended to improve the sanitation facilities in urban geographies especially in developing nations. The unit has a unique structure that facilitates the display of advertisement boards on its outer surface. This can act as a source for additional income. This can also be a source of income for the people who are given charge of operating a unit. Their focus is on combining platform technologies to solve social problems.

India Home Healthcare | Healthcare Services

Provides healthcare to Indians in Chennai and Bangalore at their bedside. They give personalized care after an initial assessment, involving immediate family members with the ‘Care Planning’. The teams provide specialized care to newborns and new mothers, the elderly, orthopedic patients, cardiac patients, and stroke and neurological related illnesses.

MediAngels | Online Healthcare Services

eHospital that connects its users to trained healthcare professionals from across the globe. Simply register on the MediAngels website, choose a doctor and put forth your questions. It avoids patients having to travel, shuttling between specialists, waiting for appointments, and queuing up at doctor’s offices. Patients can upload their reports so that doctors have a full outline of their current ailment for an eConsult. For simple questions they can ask using the eQuery function. The site also provides a knowledge center that is similar to a laymen terms medical dictionary.

NationWide | Primary Healthcare

Chain of family physician and paediatric clinics that aim to make primary healthcare affordable and accessible for every Indian. Founded in 2010 by a team of UK-trained doctors and management experts, NationWide envisages bringing the best international practices in primary healthcare to India and spearheading a paradigm shift in India’s healthcare delivery system. Through a network of clinics, they provide personalised GP and paediatric services to health plan subscribers as well as walk-in-patients.

Waste Ventures | Solid Waste Management

The aim is to incubate and ensure financing for sustainable waste picker corporations (WPC) and publish and share best practices, technology and materials. Any organization to employ their blueprint, as well as, create and promote an environment of best-case practices in solid waste management.

Technology for Development

Avaz | Speech Facilitation Device

Alternative and Augmentative Communication (AAC) Device created by Invention Labs, India. It enables people with cerebral palsy to communicate by converting their muscle movements into speech. Avaz’s unique feature is the availability in multiple Indian languages. Avaz is portable, highly customizable and has been strategically priced right for the Indian market through appropriate use of technology. The cost is just 1/6th of similar devices available internationally.

B2R Technologies | Rural BPO

Rural business process outsourcing organization which sets up clusters of rural BPO service delivery centres to provide business support services to clients. Their aim is to tap into the potential of rural India, to create livelihood opportunities in local context and to create best-in-class service delivery capabilities for global clients. B2R wants to facilitate and contribute to the integrated development of other capabilities in the villages by investing 33 per cent of profits  back into the community.

Eko India Financial Services | Financial Inclusion

The Eko model works on the fundamental premise of giving everyone a bank account. It is building a low cost financial services infrastructure to increase the reach of financial institutions to the un-banked. The endeavour is to build a rapidly scalable model by addressing the challenges of the existing models and by using mobile technology to help bring down significantly the network cost.

Inventure | Financial Inclusion

Micro-investment platform that allows everyday individuals to invest in small businesses from under-served communities across  the globe. Inventure unleashes the potential of developing entrepreneurs to lift themselves and their communities out of poverty by connecting individuals directly with these entrepreneurs.

Milaap | Peer-to-Peer Micro Lending

Online lending platform that enables people to lend to India’s working poor. Combining the internet and human intent to create sustainable social change, Milaap aims to catalyze the next generation of microfinance through online microlending and fulfill varied unmet needs of the poor that go beyond just credit. Milaap’s field partners monitor the progress of the borrowers throughout the loan cycle to ensure effective use of both, the loan amount and the market links provided.

Apart from these finalists, a group of companies from South East Asia are also competing for awards this year:

• Bali Recycling, Indonesia
• Bombastic Plastix, Indonesia
• Hapinoy, Philippines 
• Kokoboard, Thailand
• Marine Gifts, Vietnam
• Sunlabob, Laos

Stay tuned for more on Sankalp 2012 in the countdown to the summit in April.

Image Courtesy: Sankalp Forum