Entrepreneurship Session on Venture for Social Enterprise Designing, Implementing, Scaling Social Enterprise/ CSR Solutions for the Benefit of Marginalised Populations

FICCI Ladies Organisation (FLO) organised a very interesting and informative Entrepreneurship Session on “Venture for Social Enterprise- Designing, Implementing, and Scaling Social Enterprise/CSR Solutions for the Benefit of Marginalised Populations”, on May 28, 2015.

The speaker for the session was Daniel McQuade, Director –Venture for All®, hosted by the Columbia Business School. Daniel has worked with and volunteered at many non-profit organizations in capacities ranging from being a Founder, President, Executive Board Member & Trustee along with providing over $5M in grants to a wide range of non-profits institutions focusing on education and health and wellness programs.

The programme was organised with the objective of exploring and developing the idea for a social enterprise and enhancing knowledge on innovative approaches to help design a successful social enterprise. The speaker highlighted on the basic elements of a potential business plan and helped identifying the right target group and formulates successful approaches to build stakeholder relationships.

FLO President, Archana Garodia Gupta said, “In conjunction with the FLO mission – The Power to Empower, the objective of this Entrepreneurship Session is to empower the members with the right information towards contributing meaningfully to economic and social development. In essence, it is an amalgamation of the business acumen and skills of an entrepreneur and social causes endeavouring to change the society for the better. “

Mr McQuade highlighted the paradigm shift in the CSR scenario from being “Optional to Mandatory”. He said, “Sustainable CSR is now vital to your business success…It’s more than a recycling program, a green building or sustainable products…it’s worth billions.

He further added that the 3Key enablers to an effective sustainability approach include ——

• Vision and Strategy
• Governance structure
• Monitoring and reporting

The session provided a deeper understanding about social enterprise, including the challenges and rewards.It was a well-attended session, with members actively participating in the Q & A session

Latika Kohli, FLO member was the Day- Chair for the programme. Vinita Bimbhet, Sr. Vice President FLO gave the vote of thanks. Vasvi Bharatram, Vice President, FLO coordinated the programme.

Key Takeaways from the session:

• OPPORTUNITY IDENTIFICATION -­- Articulating the problem to be solved and focusing on the potential benefit to the target group affected by the problem
• MODEL DEVELOPMENT — Turning your new social venture idea into a scalable model
• CUSTOMER DISCOVERY —- Testing your assumptions about the alignment between your service offerings and targeted customers
• EARLY PRODUCT/SERVICE DEVELOPMENT — Building minimal viable products/services to test customer acceptance and use
• KEY PARTNERS — Understanding the local ecosystem to facilitate important Relationships to help support customer needs holistically
• FUNDING MODELS — Identifying sources of funding, the stages and creating sustainability
• IMPACT METRICS —- Identifying critical indicators for benchmarking, measurement & monitoring
• TEAM LEADERSHIP — Selecting team members with the right mix of knowledge and skills