Started in 2008, ThinkChange India (TC-I) is India’s first online platform focused on social entrepreneurship. In the past four years, the blog has grown exponentially with close to half a million page-views, 20,000 members and 1300+ posts. TC-I had played a pivotal role in building awareness and connecting key stakeholders in the sector, which has been [...]

The Deshpande Education Trust (DET) has launched the Master of Social Entrepreneurship program. The Master of Social Entrepreneurship (MSE) is a two-year residential program affiliated with Karnatak University Dharwad and approved by the Government of Karnataka. MSE offers students essential skills in social innovation, entrepreneurship, leadership development and business practice taught by scholars and practitioners who actively engage in [...]

More than half of the world’s adults currently lack access to affordable and secure financial services. High transaction costs, physical barriers, and difficult loan agreements prevent many marginalized and underserved communities from building more prosperous futures. How can we include everyone in the formal financial sector? How can getting all citizens access to savings accounts, credit, insurance, and [...]

Greetings from the Centre for Innovation Incubation and Entrepreneurship (CIIE) at IIM Ahmedabad. As part of our efforts in promoting social entrepreneurship in India, we have partnered with the German Agency for International Cooperation (GIZ) to organize a workshop aimed at social enterprises that use information and communications technology as either a platform for their [...]

This post is written by Vallabh Rao. We know that India is full of ingenious and resilient entrepreneurs working at the grassroots level to solve urgent social problems in a variety of sectors. But in a country of over 1.2 billion people – most with unmet basic human needs – we need solutions that scale. [...]

The Centre for Innovation Incubation and Entrepreneurship (CIIE), Indian Institute of Management (IIM), Ahmedabad, is aiming at creating an entrepreneurial ecosystem in the country. With this goal, CIIE has once again launched The Power of Ideas 2012 in collaboration with Department of Science and Technology, Govt. of India and The Economic Times. CIIE is today [...]

Action for India has launched the Growth Prize Competition on Ashoka Changemakers platform for Indian social innovators and enterprises. The purpose of the Growth Prize Competition is to identify social entrepreneurs who demonstrate constant success or progress in scaling— or preparing to scale—their ventures and impact. The Competition deadline is now extended until June 18, [...]

The Rockefeller Foundation has launched the 2012 Innovation Challenges to source innovative ideas that will have the potential to create long-term impact. The Innovation Challenges, which run through May 25, expect to gather ideas from around the globe in three issue areas: data, irrigation, and farming. As The Rockefeller Foundation marks its centennial, the search has begun [...]

The Indian handicrafts sector provides livelihoods to millions of people around the country, especially women. However, linking small-scale rural producers to urban and global markets has been a challenge. Efficiently connecting buyers and seller in the handicrafts and handmade clothing market could have an exponential impact by improving the incomes of the poor and help [...]