The Sankalp Global Summit, an Intellecap initiative, is among the world’s largest convening platforms for development dialogues with entrepreneurs, impact investors, corporates and governments. The 2016 edition of the Summit engaged stakeholders from across the entrepreneurial ecosystem to debate, deliberate and discuss ‘Innovations for the Next 3 Billion’.
The Summit provided a platform for focussed conversations and collaboration, some interesting outcomes are:
- More corporates to engage in developing comprehensive s of working with social businesses
- Mainstream investment houses considering impact investing as an important stream and engaging more with high risk businesses that need patient capital
- Ensuring social enterprises direct their energies in last mile implementation and using effective technology to deliver greater relevance to projects that matter
- Identifying ways to drive social good and maximizing public sector impact
The Summit enabled high-quality innovations rather than ‘me-too’ ideas. It assessed the ecosystem’s appetite to handle and support innovations. The conversations also differentiated between inventions and innovations. Mr. Amitabh Shrivastava, CEO, CSIR Tech Pvt. Ltd. said, “It is not just about ‘Make in India’ but about making the best in India.” At the summit, large corporates like the Tata Group played a role in supporting innovators achieve scale and quality was also highlighted.
The Sankalp Summit also tackled many tough issues like ventures for the disabled, investing in women businesses and the impact of social risk on businesses. The other tracks at the Summit clustered around championing innovations in financing, disruptive SME financing innovations, technology-led financial inclusion s, scaling sector-led innovative business s, finding the next unicorn in education, accelerating impact and investments in innovative sanitation business s, scaling of healthcare innovations, creating a supportive policy framework and building and regional innovation and knowledge corridor, engaging with innovators and experts from across South Asia, Southeast Asia, EU and Africa to cross-pollinating replicable and scalable ideas across regions.
With over 30 interactive sessions, the Summit discussed case studies, spoke on scenarios and breakthrough innovations in last mile delivery for corporates and financial institutions.
In the words of Sankalp Forum, Director, Aparajita Agrawal, “The Summit helped us drive the conversations on – collaborations forward – what will it take to scale innovations and enterprises that can solve some of the tough challenges for the next 3 billion of the world’s low-income population – with support from corporates, policymakers, funders and entrepreneurs. The fact that we had partners asking us to take Sankalp Forum to Europe, America, Vietnam and Sri Lanka is a testament to the fact that we are building a powerful engine for creating impact in key markets.”
The fireside chat between Kiran Karnik, KRS Jamwal and Amitabh Shrivastava shed light on how better policies coupled with planned intent can help cross the last mile to deliver impact in a relevant manner.
New initiatives launched at the Summit included; corporate collaboration for impact facility with USAID, Innovation Labs, Start up Wave for virtual incubation and TRIBE-Online transaction platform from the Intellecap and Aavishkaar group. The Summit also launched insightful reports like the Rockefeller and Institute for Transformative Technologies (ITT) effort called Achieving Universal Electrification in India were released to the audience with a perspective on how to use the power of advanced technology to address the world’s most pressing problem.
The summit also celebrated impact innovators and provided a platform to the 16 shortlisted high potential enterprises who work in the low-income markets. The 4 winners for the Sankalp Awards were handpicked by a jury of eminent business and impact leaders.
Another awards category was, The Sankalp Global Innovation Challenge, to recognise global innovations with a focus on technology and development and 10 shortlisted innovators were given a platform to showcase their ideas. Swasti Agro and Bio Products whose innovative program BioAvert helps in prevention of a variety of crop diseases thereby ensuring food security were selected by USAID to participate at the prestigious GES Summit being led by President Obama in the Silicon Valley in June 2016.
About Intellecap:
Intellecap is a pioneer in providing innovative business solutions that help build and scale profitable and sustainable enterprises dedicated to social and environmental change. Founded in 2002, the Aavishkaar and Intellecap Group have directed US $ 600 million of capital to entrepreneurs working on such challenging problems sustainably through equity funds, venture debt vehicle, microfinance lending or investment banking intermediation. Intellecap provides a broad range of consulting, research and investment banking services, to multilateral agencies, development finance institutions, social enterprises, corporations, investors, policy makers and donors. Select clients include the Rockefeller Foundation, Gates Foundation, GIZ, DFID, Hindustan Unilever, International Finance Corporation, Asian Development Bank and Michael and Susan Dell Foundation.
For more details please visit, http://www.intellecap.com
About Sankalp Forum:
Sankalp Forum, an Intellecap Initiative, aims to influence the global inclusive development discourse through its work with entrepreneurs, impact investors and inclusive businesses in developing markets. Keeping entrepreneurs and the social impact that they create at its core, Sankalp engages governments, corporations, influential platforms like the G8 and G20, media and civil society to drive a paradigm shift in inclusive development approaches. Sankalp’s Global Summit, held in India annually, brings together over a 1000 of these engaged stakeholders from around the world to discuss, debate and create a roadmap for development. The Forum expanded to Africa in 2013, and to Southeast Asia in 2015. Since its inception in 2009, it has connected over 400 enterprises to investors and funders, and built an engaged community of over 25,000 worldwide. For more information, please visit http://www.sankalpforum.com
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.