Doodh Bhandar (DB), a plan focused on revolutionizing milk production in rural India, has reached the finals of the Harvard Business School (HBS) Business Plan Contest in the Social Enterprise track. Cattle are one of the most important assets for rural families in India and an improvement in their productivity will have a significant socio-economic [...]

Editors’ note: The ThinkChange India staff is committed to providing our readers with first-hand insights from groundbreaking changemakers. Readers will be able to see other conversations under our TC-I Changemakers and Change-Agent tags. This week, Vinay sat down (over the phone) with Dheeraj Batra of Innosight Ventures, a unique venture capital firm that employs the [...]

Looking for interesting conferences to attend over the course of the next two months? Well, look no further! Below are three upcoming conferences that we recommend you attend – The Harvard Business School Social Enterprise Conference (March 1, 2009), The Harvard Business School India Business Conference (March 15, 2009), and the Harvard Kennedy School International [...]

TCI had mentioned the StartingBloc fellowship earlier, and this past weekend, I had the opportunity to attend the Greater Boston institute at MIT Sloan and Tufts Fletcher School.  To provide some background on StartingBloc, the organization holds three institutes in Boston, New York and London, whose goal is to bring together a cadre of 150 young leaders with a passion for social innovation. [...]

Are you the senior executive of a “retail microfinance institution, banking institution, or other organization interested in microfinance”?  Are you an “industry-related policy-maker or investor”?  Are you looking for ways to: succeed in highly competitive financial sectors balance a social focus in a commercial setting reach new business segments evolve products and delivery channels If [...]

A cabinet committee approves the continuation of the Social and Infrastructure Development Fund beyond 2007-08. Rs. 6000 crore will provided for the fund this year (via The Hindu) Laloo bhai is on the move again, the Indian Railways initiates a $160 million modernization plan. In case you haven’t heard, the Indian Railways success is now [...]

This was my second year at the Harvard Social Enterprise Conference – an annual gathering of the social enterprise enthusiasts from the US and around the world. The conference is jointly hosted by the Harvard Business School and the Kennedy School of Government. Below are some highlights (with a slight bias towards India!) India in [...]