Meet our elite judges

With preparations at full throttle, Team Kalpavriksha would like to introduce you to its highly esteemed panel of Judges. Our judges are flying in from all corners of the country, spending valuable time, to evaluate your entries and declare the winners.

Rajeev Kumar is a veteran Entrepreneur and Investment Banker, based out of Bangalore, India. Sustainability, advanced technology, social ventures are some of the topics that would excite him. He Co-founded and sits on the Board of a few Companies in India, as well as in USA, Australia and South Africa. A Postgraduate in IT, Business Management, Green Technology and Foreign Trade, Rajeev Kumar has over 20 years of expertise in leading different technology domains and has advised several reputed companies in India in important verticals across sectors. Rajeev is globally known for his leadership in a few leading social initiatives – Project Agastya, The Sixth International Ecocity Conference (Ecocity6), the Cleaner Production initiative & the Rajeev Kumar Foundation. He has played a leading role globally in pioneering several initiatives in Sustainability, Ecology, Innovation and Urban Policy. In 2006, Rajeev hosted the 6th International Ecocity Conference, that brought together some of the world’s leading minds in Urban Design, Ecological Sustainability, Urban Policy and Governance that led to the founding of the World Ecocity Summit Series. Rajeev’s current focus is on Global Sustainable Development, Technology, IPR and Innovation. Along with his friends, he has developed a National Network of incubation & Innovation Centers, Mentoring facilities & technology support facilities for the benefit of Indian Entrepreneurs & Innovators. With Project Agastya & RKF, Rajeev is working towards to bringing together a network of NGOs, Educational Institutions, corporates, etc. that are working on Sustainable Development, Environment & Ecology, Learning for Sustainability, etc. Rajeev has been a recipient of several awards & recognition and was a Bangalore Finalist at the “Lead India” by ‘Times of India’ – Bangalore, India (the world’s largest English Newspaper) – an initiative to identify Young Leaders (apolitical) to lead India into her future (September 2007).

P.Gopal Krishnan, Director & Principal Consultant, Stabaka Consulting P Ltd, is a member of the Institute of Chartered Accountants of India. He leads the agriculture business consulting practice of Stabaka Consulting, which includes food chain. He has handled assignments in India, Africa and Australia. Earlier, he has worked in various industry functions in Finance, Information Management and Supply Chain for about two decades. He has donned the roles of a Chief Executive Officer ( Shapoorji Pallonji Biotech Park P Ltd) and Finance Controller (Audio Business Group, Philips India Ltd. ). He has been an Entrepreneur ( started up KARD Scientific India P Ltd – a pre-clinical drug discovery company – & KARD Medics India P Ltd, affiliates of the KARD Inc., Wilmington, MA, USA ) and has co-led the turn-around of a loss making business (as Finance Controller, Ortho Clinical Diagnostics, Johnson & Johnson Ltd).

Kanchan Kumar is a techie turned sales man turned entrepreneur. He is the co-founder  of Remitr a tool that simplifies cross border money transfer. A programmer by profession, he has created several large enterprise grade products and has sold these products to large enterprises. He also founded Fluous.com, an enterprise payroll software company in 2002. Fluous continues to have some of the largest enterprises, conglomerates and banks in India as customers.This serial entrepreneur is also the Co-founder Emportant.com, India’s first cloud based comprehensive suite of HR & Payroll software for Small and medium businesses. Apart from this, he has also held the Executive Director  position at TiE Mumbai and helped start the #TiEBootcamp, a 60 day no-contract, no equity, no fee accelerate for product startups.

Pradeep Ghosh has always been a rebel and grew up to question the norm. It is this attitude that led him to come up with innumerable innovations that are a hallmark of his career. Starting off with a secure Government job, Pradeep felt that his creativity was being stifled and shifted to the corporate world by joining a Japanese firm. In 1998, he forayed into the world of social entrepreneurship by working with PLAN international. He went beyond his original brief and turned the project into gold. His travels brought to his attention the poor security that plagues the citizens of his home country. This prompted him to devise an ingenious plan for robust social security of Indians, a project he named OASIS. He currently lives in Bhopal, working everyday to make OASIS a success.

So there you have it folks, tomorrow you will be in the presence of Social Entrepreneurship Royalty. We look forward to you WOWing them.

Kalpavriksha partners with LivePlan!

Imagine having an idea in your head that doesn’t let you sleep or be in peace. Sound like something you are going through? Sounds like you are an entrepreneur.  A social entrepreneur is a subset of the entrepreneur. Men and women with unquenchable drive and passion to solve the problems of society; to make life better for those who cannot help themselves. The journey however, is a thousand miles of ridicule, disbelief, criticism, lack of funding and guidance. Do they give up? Nope. They trudge on. Kalpavriksha gives you a fairy god mother to make that journey a little easier.

Kalpavriksha is proud to announce its association with LivePlan for another year.  LivePlan is a refining tool that will help you refine your idea and convert something crude into something compelling to that investor. This brainchild of the Palo Alto Software, asks you all the right questions that you need to answer for your business plan. It also provides you with a wide array of sample business plans for your reference in addition to expert advice and guidance with its “anywhere access” philosophy. You can also edit your plan, track your progress and exploit the various innovative tools offered by the app.

We at Kalpavriksha are constantly striving to give you a nudge in the direction of your dreams. Without LivePlan, our dream would never be fulfilled. We at Kalpavriksha, celebrate the cherished partnership we have enjoyed with Palo Alto’s LivePlan software in the previous years, and take immense pleasure in announcing a continuation of the same during Kalpavriksha 2014!

All we need now is YOU.

Story of a social entrepreneur-Vikram Akula

Vikram Akula is a pioneer in market-based approaches to financial inclusion. He is the founder and former chairperson of SKS Microfinance, an organization that offers microloans and insurance to poor women in impoverished areas of India. Inspired by the Grameen model of Muhammad Yunus, he started SKS Microfinance in 1997 as a non-profit and then converted it to a for-profit in 2005. He led the company to a successful IPO in 2010 reaching a market capitalization of $2.2 billion and an outreach of 7.3 million low-income borrowers in 2011, by which time it had disbursed more than $5 billion in micro-loans as well as micro-insurance products. He believed that only a market-based approach would be able to tap capital markets and scale microfinance, unlike non-profit or government initiatives which depend on limited donations or grants. He stepped down as SKS chairman in November 2011.

For his work in financial inclusion, he was named by TIME Magazine as one of the 100 most influential people in the world in 2006.He has a BA from Tufts, an MA from Yale, a Ph.D. from the University of Chicago, was a Fulbright Scholar, and has worked with McKinsey & Company and the Worldwatch Institute. He was named the Ernst & Young (Start Up) Entrepreneur of the Year in India, the World Economic Forum’s Young Global Leader, the Schwab Social Entrepreneur of the Year in India, and was a 1998 Echoing Green Public Service Fellow.

He is the author of A Fistful of Rice; My Unexpected Quest to End Poverty Through Profitability, published by Harvard Business Press.

He is held the position as a Director in AgSri, a sustainable agriculture company focused on helping small sugarcane farmers reduce water use, and in Bodhi Educational Society, which establishes schools for underprivileged children in India.

Akula has received several awards for his work with SKS.

-Time Magazine’s 100 Most Influential People of the Year in 2006.
-Social Entrepreneur of the Year in India, 2006.
-Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year in India (Start-up, 2006)
-Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year in India (Business Transformation, 2010)
-Karmaveer Puraskaar Noble Laureates, 2006-2007.
-World Economic Forum’s Young Global Leader award, 2008.
-Echoing Green Poverty Alleviation Economic Development – 1998 Fellow

Story of a social entrepreneur-Jacqueline Novogratz

Jacqueline Novogratz is founder and CEO of Acumen Fund, a non-profit global venture capital fund whose goal is to use entrepreneurial approaches to address global poverty. Acumen Fund has invested over $50 million of patient capital in 50 businesses that have impacted more than 40 million people in the past year. Any money returned to Acumen Fund is reinvested in enterprises serving the poor. Currently, Acumen has offices in New York, Mumbai, Karachi, Nairobi, and Accra.

Jacqueline was born in the U.S., the eldest of seven children (who all currently reside in New York City). Her father is a U.S. military veteran. She went to high school in suburban Virginia and attended college at the University of Virginia, where she studied Economics and International Relations. Novogratz has an MBA from the Stanford Graduate School of Business. The title of Novogratz’s 2009 book ‘The Blue Sweater: Bridging the Gap Between Rich and Poor in an Interconnected World’ is based on an encounter she had in high school that led to her giving away a favorite sweater to Goodwill, only to allegedly find exactly the same sweater with her name on the tag later on a boy in Rwanda, an encounter that may not really be true but rather a good example of poetic license.

Novogratz started her career at Chase Manhattan Bank as an international credit analyst. After three years, she left banking to explore how to make a bigger difference in the world. This led her to work throughout Africa as a consultant for the World Bank and for UNICEF. As a UNICEF consultant in Rwanda in the late 1980s, she helped found Duterimbere, Rwanda’s first microfinance institution. Novogratz also founded and directed The Philanthropy Workshop and The Next Generation Leadership programs at the Rockefeller Foundation before starting Acumen Fund in 2001. Under Novogratz’s leadership, Acumen Fund has grown to serve 40 million people a year through its investments of patient capital in businesses that provide low-income people with critical goods and services.She also oversaw the creation of Acumen’s year-long Fellowship program that aims to build the next generation of leadership for the social sector.

Novogratz currently serves on the advisory boards of Stanford Graduate School of Business and of Innovations (journal) published by MIT Press. She also serves on the Aspen Institute Board of Trustees and as a member of a World Economic Forum Global Agenda Council on Social Innovation. She is also a member of the Council on Foreign Relations.

In 2010, Jacqueline Novogratz was honored as the 2010 Rensselaer Entrepreneur of the Year (EOY) for her work with Acumen as well as for her New York Times best seller ‘The Blue Sweater: Bridging the Gap Between Rich and Poor in an Interconnected World’, published in 2009.In early March 2010, she received an honorary degree from Wofford College in Spartanburg, South Carolina. Such mark of recognition of her work in Kenya inspired her to establish a book club for The Blue Sweater, using the school’s honorarium to create “The Blue Sweater Challenge.” The program allows young organizers from the slums of Nairobi, Kenya, who have hosted both “The Blue Sweater book club” and a TEDx in the Kibera slum, to identify and award three local groups who are doing the most to effect positive social change in their communities.

In 2009, Novogratz published the New York Times bestseller ‘The Blue Sweater: Bridging the Gap Between Rich and Poor in an Interconnected World’. The book is a firsthand account of her journey from international banker to social entrepreneur and founder of Acumen. Since its publication, the book has been picked by the Carroll School of Management at Boston College, the University of North Carolina at Charlotte and Peace College as common reading for all incoming freshmen.

There’s much to learn from her life. Passion above anything else!

Story of a social entrepreneur-Nand Kishore Chaudhary

Nand Kishore Chaudhary (born June 13, 1953) is an Indian social entrepreneur. He currently serves as the Chairman and Managing Director of the social enterprise Jaipur Rugs, which he founded in 1978.

Nand Kishore Chaudhary was born in a Marwari family in the Churu district of Rajasthan. He was not interested in following his father in the traditional family business of shoe-making. Instead, he was fascinated by the carpet business, and started weaving with two looms in the year 1978.

Hence he established the social business model of Jaipur Rugs, connecting the poor weavers with the global markets by building a global supply chain focused on developing human capability and skills at the grassroots level, providing steady income for rural men and women in the most depressed parts of India and connecting them with markets in the United States.Visionary, Man of the Masses, and a Businessman with a Heart of Gold” Mr. Nand Kishore Chaudhary (NKC), is the founder of Jaipur Rugs. It is his story of success and prominence that clearly shows how determination and willpower, when coupled with knowledge, clear vision and proper planning, enables one to reach the peak of humility with leadership.

In 1978, he initiated his carpet business operations with just two looms and 9 artisans. Now, it has converted into a network of more than 40,000 artisans across 6 states in India and today, is known as India’s leading manufacturer and exporter of hand knotted rugs. The carpets are exported to more than 40 countries across the world. Mr. NK Chaudhary’s vision is to see Indian hand-knotted rug industry at par with the international industry. For this, he is constantly working to promote and facilitate research in the rug industry with special focus on product development and technology inclusion.

Mr. NK Chaudhary believes that the reason behind his devotion to the cause is seeing underprivileged people empowered. He wants to identify, develop and enhance their skills, so that they could continue sustaining and lead a respectful life In order to uplift the grassroots and introduce them into the carpet production value chain, he established Jaipur Rugs Foundation, which works to enhance their artisan skills and design sense, helping them further to become entrepreneurs. By elevating their status from mere wage earners to become business owners, it provides better ways to artisans, especially women below poverty line to earn more and lead a financially empowered life.

It’s all about turning artisans as leaders within their occupation and to become self-employed for the future.

Story of a social entrepreneur-Dr Verghese Kurien

Social entrepreneur Dr Verghese Kurien, known as the father of White Revolution, was the man behind Operation Flood. He was the chief architect who made India the largest milk producer in the world.

Born on November 26, 1921 at Kozhikode in Kerala, Dr Kurien graduated with a degree in physics from Loyola College, Madras in 1940. He also did his bachelors in mechanical engineering from Madras University. For a brief period, he worked at Tata Iron and Steel Company in Jamshedpur. In 1948, he went to the United States on a Government of India scholarship to earn a Master of Science in Mechanical Engineering from Michigan State University.

On his return to India from the US, Dr Kurien joined the Indian government’s dairy department. In May 1949, he was appointed dairy engineer at Government Research Creamery, a milk powder factory, in Anand. In 1949, Mr Kurien decided to quit a lucrative government job to join a small-time dairy cooperative. Since then, milk procurement of the cooperative grew from a few hundred litre a day to over 90 lakh litre a day now under one of India’s most popular brands – Amul. The co-operative was initially referred to as Anand Milk Federation Union Limited hence the name AMUL. Often called as Milkman of India, it was under his leadership that small-town Anand became the milk capital of our country. He was the founder Chairman of the National Dairy Development Board (NDDB) from 1965 to 1998, the Gujarat Co-operative Milk Marketing Federation Ltd. (GCMMF), from 1973 to 2006 and the Institute of Rural Management (IRMA) from 1979 to 2006, which are owned, managed by farmers and run by professionals.

Veteran film-maker Shyam Benegal directed the movie ‘Manthan’, a story set in the cooperative milk movement in India. Not able to finance it, Benegal was helped by Dr Kurien who gave an idea of getting each of his half a million member farmers to contribute a token two rupees for the making of the movie. Upon its release, truckloads of farmers came to see their film, making it a success at the box office.

Dr Kurien’s work has received tremendous national and international recognition. The Indian government conferred on him the Padma Vibhushan, the second highest honour. He is also the recipient of the World Food Price, the Ramon Magsaysay award for Community Leadership, the Carnegie – Wateler World Peace Prize and the International Person of the Year award from the US. He dedicated his life to the welfare of Gujarat’s cattle owners and turned the state’s dairy co-operative sector into one of the most successful cooperative models in the world. He passed away after a brief illness in Nadiad, Gujarat on 9 September 2012.

Story of a social entrepreneur-Peter Thum

Peter Thum is who you would call a serial social entrepreneur. His story begins at McKinsey in 2000, working at the time on a consulting project in South Africa and meeting people without access to clean water. He would quit his job in 2002 and move to New York to start Ethos Water – a bottled water company that funds water initiatives – with Jonathan Greenblatt, who is currently the Special Assistant to the President and Director of the Office of Social Innovation and Civic Participation at the White House.

In 2004, Ethos had been trying to get Starbucks as a customer but was unsuccessful, until Pierre and Pamela Omidyar invested in the company and asked what they needed. Thum asked for an introduction to Howard Schultz.

Eventually they met with Schultz who showed interest in the company. Following a series of meetings, Starbucks said they wanted to buy the company and ultimately grew it to a multinational brand. Expanded profits allowed Starbucks to double donations per bottle sold to support water projects.

Thum left Starbucks in 2008 to begin a new project also inspired by Africa. He saw boys and young men armed with assault rifles and decided he wanted to disarm them. Fonderie 47 was founded to recycle guns into high-end jewelry and art. Every piece sold would incorporate metal from an AK-47 and be engraved with the serial number of the destroyed weapon. The company boasts of more than 34,000 assault rifles removed from conflict and post-conflict regions to date.

It’s difficult not to think about the US when referring to gun violence, so Thum took it a step further on the advice of his wife. Liberty United launched in 2013 to transform illegal guns and bullets in the US into jewelry and art. As the company describes, “Gun violence is rampant in the United States, but it doesn’t have to be.”

Thum was recently asked in an interview with The Motley Fool how he would grade corporate America on addressing the needs of all stakeholders – customers, employees, shareholders, vendors, and the world.

“Publicly traded companies are really built to serve shareholders,” he said. “The best competitors in an industry will get an ‘A’ in this category, based on whether they are delivering the results that the shareholders hoped for when they bought the stock. All other stakeholder considerations are subordinate and are managed to optimize the operation to deliver on their strategy and related objectives. If the companies get A grades by serving these other groups it is because it is competitively expedient.”

Thum suggests that companies who can “win the future” are the ones that invent “engines that have zero greenhouse gas emissions, foods that make our taste buds deliriously happy but don’t give us diabetes, and so forth”. Companies would have to go beyond not doing any damage or beyond reducing negative impact for the survival of the human race through the next century if rising economies are to consume and strive to consume at the same level of people living in the US.

Purpose is critical to success, he adds, and rather than seeing it as a responsibility, it is an opportunity for companies.

Finally, to striving social entrepreneurs, he advises, “Pursue your idea as soon as you can. Make your product and try to sell it to someone. If it works, you’re in business and you can iterate; if it doesn’t you can figure out why and try again.”

The first step in a 1000 mile journey

Phase 1 results are out! Your journey towards that glorious victory has just begun. Team Kalpavriksha congratulates all finalists! We hope you are as excited as we are. Get ready for a thrilling and learning rich experience! We wish you the best of luck and look forward to seeing you as proud winners on our campus!

 

Milestones in a beautiful journey…

Kalpavriksha has seen participants pitching their unique ideas and being recognized in various other platforms as well. Here’s to the teams who have made their mark and made us proud!

-Team Farms and Farmers, one of the finalists at Kalpavriksha 2012 has been grated Ashoka Fellowhsip for an idea which aims at maximizing profit per unit area of land for small and marginal farmers

-Kalpavriksha 2012 winners were granted a seed fund of INR 1 Million by Morarka Organic for their business plan which would empower rural farmers to have greater ownership within the food value chain

-In 2011, the event featured in Global Entrepreneurship Week and received an international entry from Harvard Business School for the first time

-Segito Technologies, winner of Kalpavriksha 2011 in social enterprise category, went on to become a finalist in GSEC (Global Social Entrepreneurship Competition) 2011

-Team Pragati Prayas with their business plan “Aahar: Meals for Poor at INR 5”, winner of Kalpavriksha 2008 went on to win GSEC’09 at Foster Business School, Seattle

-Kalpavriksha 2007 winner’s plan is being backed by Andhra Pradesh government for implementation in their state

-Since its national launch in 2006, Kalpavriksha has seen immense participation from students (average ~100) and sponsorships from big corporate house like Infosys, Tata Groups, Deloitte and Cognizant

Let’s hope even greater heights lie ahead for our participants of Kalpavriksha’14!

Kalpavriksha-The wait is over! Register now!

“Social entrepreneurs are not content just to give a fish or teach how to fish. They will not rest until they have revolutionized the fishing industry ” – Muhammad Yunus.

The stage is set, take your first step.
Registrations open.
Phase 1 : Submission deadline is 14/Oct/2014, EOD.

Best two teams to get Prize money worth Rs 75,000 !!

For more information visit: http://irisiimi.com/iris2014/kalpavriksha/