Awarding Excellence in Social Entrepreneurship

MUMBAI, India - Oct. 18, 2013 - PRLog -- Mumbai, October 18, 2013-The Jubilant Bhartia Foundation, which organizes the SEOY India Award in association with the Schwab Foundation for Social Entrepreneurship today announced the finalists of the Social Entrepreneur of the Year (SEOY) India Award 2013.

The winner(s) will be chosen by a distinguished jury and announced at an awards ceremony on November 11, 2013, in New Delhi.

The finalists of the SEOY India Award 2013 are shaping change in fields as diverse as health, financial inclusion, human rights and employability and skilling. For the finalists, large-scale transformative change is a priority. They are actively nurturing collaborations with government, business and the citizen sector for the replication of their ideas, both within India and abroad. Another common strand that runs through their work is that they work in hostile and inaccessible geographies (i.e. the Naxalite ‘red’ corridor, drought-prone zones, and areas with high incidences of violence). Taken together, the finalists are seeding thousands of first-generation entrepreneurs/change agents in excluded territories, laying the foundations of a truly Inclusive India.

According to Hilde Schwab, Co-founder & Chairperson, Schwab Foundation for Social Entrepreneurship “India remains one of the most dynamic regions for social entrepreneurship and the India Awards consistently attract a high quality of social enterprises. This year, we are also very excited to see an all women finalist pool. They are all working on highly inspiring visions and innovative strategies across critical areas including skill training, livelihoods development, disease control and empowerment of women.”

Congratulating the finalists, Shyam S Bhartia, Chairman & Managing Director and Hari S Bhartia, Co Chairman & Managing Director Jubilant Life Sciences and Founder Directors of Jubilant Bhartia Foundation, said, “SEOY India Award recognizes the efforts of social entrepreneurs  working as change agents for the society through innovation, sustainability, reach and social impact. We are delighted to see the transformative change that the finalists of this year have brought to the society”.

The SEOY India Awards received a record 209 applications. Through a five-stage selection process, the four finalists shortlisted after on-site visits, background research, reference checks and multiple rounds of deliberations. For the first time in the SEOY India Award, all the finalists are women social entrepreneurs, making this a special year for Social Entrepreneur of the Year India 2013.

Brief Descriptions of the Finalists

Mallika Dutt

Breakthrough Trust

Breakthrough is using media, arts and popular culture to change the mindset, behaviour and practice of gender-based violence. It combines large-scale public service campaigns with local partnerships and youth trainings on the ground, to move individuals and communities to act against violence.

Campaigns developed by Breakthrough on burning issues of violence trigger multiple community projects and individual stories of change. It has pioneered scientific impact measurement processes to measure the behavior change that campaigns create, both at individual and community levels.

Over 15 years, Breakthrough campaigns, such as Bell Bajao (Ring the Bell), have reached more 130 million Indian viewers in multiple phases, won international awards and been adopted by governments and civil society of 6 countries. More than 100,000 individuals and organizations have been trained in 5 state. Breakthrough is now partnering with organizations across South Asia, Brazil and South Africa to transfer its insights and blueprint.

Chetna Vijay Sinha

Mann DeshiMahila Bank and Mann Deshi Foundation

The Mann Deshi Group of Ventures, headquartered in Mhaswad, Maharashtra, is transforming rural women from daily wage earners into role model entrepreneurs. The Group manages three institutions that together enable rural women to set up new livelihoods and triple their household incomes:  a women-owned rural cooperative bank that extends a range of financial services, a rural mobile MBA school that offers management and entrepreneurship training, and a chamber of commerce for women entrepreneurs that facilitates new social networks as well as market and policy linkages.

Working largely in agricultural and drought prone regions in the Deccan Plateau, Mann Deshi has enabled 185,000 women to save, 10,000 to own property and 42,000 to set up businesses and emerge as developers of their local economic and social eco-systems. By 2020, MDM aspires to launch 1 million rural women entrepreneurs through partnerships with social enterprises and mainline financial institutions of the country.

Dr Shelly Batra

Operation ASHA (op ASHA)

Operation ASHA  is tackling the fractured delivery system of India’s TB control program through a doorstep TB detection and treatment service that is low-cost, high quality and accessible for the poor. Powered by technology and community ownership, the op Asha model partners with the government to deliver its C-Dot program to the last-mile. op Asha runs a network of 234 TB treatment centresin slums that are managed by local entrepreneurs and unemployed youth who are trained as professional TB counselors. In rural geographies, op Asha’s mobile treatment service reaches village patients on motorbikes. Its e-Compliance Initiative (a portable biometric patient identification system) has ensured rigorous tracking of patients and reduced default rates to 3%.

In 8 years, opAsha has reached 6 million TB patients in India and Cambodia, treated patients with a 90% success rate and lowered the cost of treatment by 15 times of that of other service providers. The model is now being replicated to Uganda and Dominican Republic through partnerships.

Mrinalini Kher and Kishor Kher

Yuva Parivartan (YP)/ Kherwadi Social Welfare Association

Yuva Parivartan is making employability and skill training accessible and affordable to the large segment of India’s BPL youth who live in remote and hostile regions. It is building last-mile access, through a web of Livelihoods Development Centres and mobile training camps that penetrate deep into inaccessible tribal areas. Together they offer a wide bench of quality skill training programs to youth at one-tenth the fee of other providers. Over four years, YP has skilled 100,000 youth in 16 states, of which 60% have been placed in jobs or set up their own ventures. A majority of its young customers live in tribal heartlands affected by naxalism and terrorism.

To dramatically scale its services, YP is professionalizing and aggregating small community organizations, tutorial centres and training institutes that operate in remote areas into a nationwide employability network. With 200+ partners and NSDC on-board, YP aims to skill 10,00,000 excluded youth by 2015.