Ankur Capital helps nurture emerging businesses that target under-served communities in India. Ankur Capital supports inclusive business models with a unique combination of capital investment and hands-on management support. T teahem’s deep operational experience allows them to partner with enterprises to evolve, refine and grow their businesses. Ankur bridges the gap, both financial and operational, [...]

Coffee with Entrepreneurs! Sign up for July 4th coffee slots now! First Monday of every month in Mumbai What is it? An opportunity for social entrepreneurs to have conversations with Acumen Fund’s India portfolio team. These chats are informal, and a chance for us to connect directly with entrepreneurs. You can use the time to [...]

It is encouraging to see that the impact investing industry in India is gaining mainstream recognition these days. Businessworld, the country’s main business magazine ran a cover-story in November titled Social Capital, featuring all the major social venture capitalists in the country. Almost all of the organizations featured in the story were covered by us [...]

LGT Venture Philanthropy is proud to announce the launch of the iCats Program: The iCats Program is an answer to the need for professional know-how and resources in many philanthropic organizations and social enterprises. LGT Venture Philanthropy created a web-based platform to match experienced professionals with specific positions in selected philanthropic organizations. The fellow positions [...]

Last night in my Social Venture Capital class, my professor said something that I found interesting.  With regard to requirement of many social VCs for their portfolio companies to make market comparable returns, he explained it as the following: We want to develop a track record for these ventures so that they can show traditional [...]

Anil G of  New Ventures India informs us that New Ventures is inviting clean tech companies to submit their business proposals for a chance to receive mentorship, assistance, and connections with capital and market opportunities to scale up.  Click here for further details about the call for proposals, including eligibility requirements and contact information.  Proposals [...]

Shital had written in last November about Sankalp 2009, a business plan competiton for Medium, Small and Micro Enterprises (MSMEs) organized by India Development Gateway, in partnership with Rural Innovations Network (RIN) and National Bank of Agriculture and Rural Development (NABARD). Turns out the business plan competition has now developed into India’s first ever Social Enterprise [...]

Editor’s note: In addition to being informative, this post also outlines what IFMR Trust is looking for in potential hires. If you would like to see that immediately, go after the jump. Before Thanksgiving break I had the pleasure of sitting down at an informal roundtable with Dave Wallack, Senior Vice President of People to learn [...]

We all know the power of prizes to motivate innovation and so this new award will hopefully do just that: The financial services firm, Edelweiss Capital Ltd is partnering Kubera Partners, a private equity firm based in USA to launch the Kubera-Edelweiss Social Innovation Honours, three awards totaling US$ 60,000 to felicitate outstanding innovations that positively impact [...]

Yesterday, Acumen Fund‘s Chief Investment Officer Brian Trelstad came to NYU to conduct a live case study on a real company that Acumen Fund invested in, in an effort to educate MBA and other students on the investing strategy and process of this innovative social venture fund. I actually wrote about Acumen’s approach sometime back. [...]