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World Bank India Development Marketplace: Finalist Review Part 2

By on May 30, 2013 in Challenges, Investing

[Editor’s Note: The World Bank’s Development Marketplace (DM) is a competitive grants program that surfaces and funds innovative projects with high potential for development impact that are scalable and/or replicable. This is Part 2 of a 3-part series Part 1 here.] I met two excellent organizations working on agricultural extension yesterday and one of them (Under The […]

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World Bank India Development Marketplace: Finalist Review Part 1

By on May 29, 2013 in Challenges, Investing

[Editor’s Note: The World Bank’s Development Marketplace (DM) is a competitive grants program that surfaces and funds innovative projects with high potential for development impact that are scalable and/or replicable. Through a combination of grant funds and strategic technical advisory support, the grant aims to catalyze innovative social enterprise solutions delivering a range of social and public […]

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Artha Platform, closed social enterprise version of Angel List, announces Challenge

By on May 28, 2013 in Challenges, Investing

This post was supposed to be about Artha Venture Challenge (AVC) – a call for applications from social ventures across India operating in the sectors of Agriculture, Energy, Water, and Livelihoods. Up to 15 winning enterprises get the opportunity to pitch for up to INR 25 lakh (USD 50K) of funding. Ennovent, an early stage social impact investor and […]

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Paul Needham posing with the Simpa system (Pic courtesy entrepreneurindia.in)

Simpa Networks Closes $2 million Series B round

By on April 5, 2013 in Energy, Investing

[Update (Apr 8, 2013): Simpa’s CEO Paul Needham wrote back with a few details. ADB joins other investors such as Schneider Electric, DOEN Foundation, Invested Development, Hilti Foundation, Village Capital and some HNI angel investors that either joined this round or participated in earlier rounds.] Bangalore-based Simpa Networks recently closed a $2 million Series B round […]

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Will Poole, on the 10 commandments of pitching BOP startups

By on April 2, 2013 in Investing

[Editor’s Note: A few weeks ago, I had an engaging coffee chat with Unitus Seed Fund‘s (USF) Srikrishna Ramamoorthy and Eleanor Horowitz. The bulk of our discussion was on early stage social enterprises (USF’s sweet spot) and brainstorming on social entrepreneurship’s ‘top of the funnel’. If you are a current (or aspiring) social entrepreneur, you definitely […]

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Indian Social Enterprises Getting a Silicon Valley Makeover

By on January 10, 2013 in Investing

TechCrunch reports that Bangalore/Seattle-based Unitus Seed Fund got a fresh infusion of $8 million from a bevy of A-list investors – from Silicon Valley and Bangalore. I believe the entry of the Silicon Valley investors represents a major inflection point for the Indian social enterprise ecosystem. A major inflection point — not because there’s an […]

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Justrojgar – India’s newest BOP employment exchange

By on November 21, 2012 in Investing

Seattle and Bangalore-based Upaya Social Ventures alerted me about their recent investment into Justrojgar.com. While terms of the deal are not disclosed, Upaya has previously announced that their seed investments are in the $25,000 to $75,000 so Justrojgar is likely within that range. The press release blurb sets the context for Justrojgar thus: Justrojgar was designed as […]

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Tractor-operated seed drill (Pic courtesy khedutagro.com)

Omnivore’s appetite for agri technologies beginning to show

By on October 3, 2012 in Agri, Investing

Livemint reported yesterday that Omnivore Capital made two investments in agtech companies. The two companies, Rajkot-based Khedut Agro Engineering and Bangalore-based FrontalRain Technologies, couldn’t be more different. Omnivore invested Rs. 5 crore for a 33% stake in 2-year old FrontalRain Technologies, which offers Internet-based supply chain solutions for farm businesses. FrontalRain is targeting the whole range […]

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Ankur Capital: newest kid on the impact investor block

By on August 21, 2012 in Investing

Guns (over at the Villgro incubabor for social entrepreneurs) alerted me to the newest kid on the impact investor block – Ankur Capital. Founded by Rema Subramanian and Ritu Verma, Ankur provides a unique combination of seed capital and hands-on management support. Via a PDF brief and an email discussion with Ritu, I learned that […]

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Vir Kashyap (Babajob COO) - Pic courtesy babajob.com

Babajob closes Series A funding from Khosla Impact and Gray Ghost Ventures.. 3 months ago

By on August 10, 2012 in Investing

I first wrote about Babajob – a monster in the making in April 2011. I learnt about the existence of Khosla Impact only 4-odd months ago and promptly wrote about the Khosla Impact Careers resource in this post. A few weeks later, the very same Khosla Careers page displayed 3 job listings which undeniably pointed to […]

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