Imagine 100+ regional and international investors, business incubators, policy makers and corporates combined with hundreds of social entrepreneurs from sectors such as rural innovation, agriculture, healthcare, education, clean energy and more…
This was the Sankalp Forum hosted by Intellecap, which brought together social businesses and stakeholders sharing a common conviction that capital should be invested to create multiple bottom-line returns. One highlight of the forum was Vijay Mahajan, CEO of Basix, discussion of the word Sankalp which means “determination” and his story of starting his first social enterprise. Another highlight was the evening panel led by Venkat Krishnan, Founder of GiveIndia and Educational Initiatives, who discussed ”Impact Investing” as a way to transform capitalism and as a new and morally legitimate industry.
Ziqitza Education, which is the for-profit holding company while Education Access for All is our non-profit foundation arm, made the finalist round in the “Education for All” category in the “Emerging Growth” model. Other finalists in our category included Technable Solutions, which offers employment oriented vocational training; BookBox, which has created animated books to support emergent literacy and language skills; Forklift Academy of India, which runs a premier safety training company primarily on material handling equipments; and Joy of Learning, which develops children friendly books and runs activity centers that use play-based learning to teach elementary concepts to students. We were proud to be there in such company to discuss the opportunities and challenges facing the education market, the role of government, and different types of education business models and believe that only with collaboration across sectors, regions and models will we be able to make a dent in changing education here in India.
by Erica Dhawan
