Business Ideas, Motivations, People / Stories, Social Entrepreneurship

Mother Earth

Mother Earth believes in satisfying it’s customers while nurturing the environment and building on the strengths of marginalised rural communities to include them in sustainable livelihoods and overall prosperity.

Mrs. Gita Ram, co-founder, craft activist, mentors the company, and has been its principal social investor providing it with loans of upto 150,000 USD without collateral, at less than market interest. She is the leading light in Industree’s quest to uphold a tradition of volunteerism. This is essential to keep the balance of this venture that hopes to benefit the economically under privileged, through a for profit enterprise where often the discrepancies of free market wages, between urban management and rural producers can be quite extreme.

Neelam Chhiber is co-founder Industree, a social enterprise that connects rural producers to urban markets. Industree has obtained investment from Future Group, India’s largest retail chain to build a retail brand called Mother Earth, which is part producer owned, 14%. Industree is converging backwards to create a complete solution to fair and equitable distribution of returns from consumer to producer.

Business Ideas, Motivations, News, People / Stories, Social Entrepreneurship

Agricultural Innovator

GV RAMANJANEYULU

Agricultural Innovator

BY SOPAN JOSHII

In about 20 lakh acres of farms in 4,000 villages of Andhra Pradesh, farmers today manage crop pests without spraying pesticides.

GV Ramanjaneyulu, 37, took premature retirement from the Directorate of Oilseeds Research in Hyderabad. “I didn’t want to wait till my retirement to do the right thing,” he says.

Click Here for the full story from Tehelka

Business Ideas, Motivations, Networking, News, Social Entrepreneurship, Technology

Indo-US Joint Clean Energy R&D Center

Indo-US Joint Clean Energy Research and Development Center (JCERDC) is proposed to be established under a joint initiative between the Government of India and the US Department of Energy. The center is envisaged to undertake collaborative R & D to advance clean energy technologies by teams of scientists, technologists and engineers from India and the United States, and related joint activities, needed to deploy clean energy technologies. To achieve this objective, the Indo-US JCERDC will support multi-institutional network project costs using public-private partnership model of funding support.

The initial priority areas under the Indo-US JCERDC are:

Letters of Intent to participate in the JCERDC are invited from Indian academia, research institutions and industry partners together in a consortia mode.

ELIGIBLE GROUPS

  • Awards will be made to a consortium with the knowledge and experience to undertake first-rate collaborative research programs. These consortia will leverage existing resources and physical infrastructure.
  • The application should be jointly submitted by the U.S.-Indian researchers who would be members of the Consortia based on their mutual interests, priorities and strength.

On receiving the LOI, a prestakeholder meet will be organized, following which the final call for proposal will be made. Funding will be competitively awarded through a joint review process, solely on the basis of the merit and feasibility of the final proposal.

The program will be coordinated by the Department of Biotechnology (DBT) and the Department of Science and Technology (DST), Ministry of Science and Technology, Government of India and administered through the binational Indo-US Science and Technology Forum (lUSSTF).

Submission Deadline: 26 September 2010
For more details visit: www.indousstf.org

Business Ideas, Business Plans, Motivations, Networking

Eureka!2010, Asia’s largest business plan competition

The Entrepreneurship Cell, IIT Bombay presents Eureka!2010, Asia’s largest business plan competition as certified by CNN. With a total prize money of Rs. 21 lakhs (50000 USD), free legal and financial consultancy, intensive mentoring and an online platform to provide solutions to participants’ queries, Eureka! 2010 is truly a road to enterprise.

To register, visit: www.ecell.in/eureka
The winners of Eureka! 2010 will get a chance to pitch their idea in front of a panel of investors and Venture Capitalists from Indian Angel Network and Mumbai Angels. All the participants will also get access to the Knowledge Library of the Mentor Square by registering for Eureka! 2010. IBM has associated with Eureka! 2010 and will provide IBM softwares to the qualified teams for development, testing & training purposes, through the worldwide Academic Initiatives program. The top 50 teams will be provided intensive mentoring for a period of more than 6 months with free Financial and Legal Consultancy by Firms like Nishith Desai Associates, Sand Hill Counsel and India Nivesh. The final winners will avail extensive mentorship program by Mentorsquare for 3 months.

Team E-Cell
www.ecell.in

Business Ideas, Motivations

Refrigerator without Electricity

Former President APJ Abdul Kalam called him a ‘true scientist’. Mitticool, a clay refrigerator that works without electricity had turned the world’s attention to its creator Mansukhbhai Prajapati, a craftsman based in Gujarat.
Presenting the national award to Mansukhbhai in 2009, President Pratibha Patil appreciated his work and asked him for a Mitticool. Scientists and journalists from across the world have visited his unit to see how he makes eco-friendly products at a low cost. A school drop-out, he has achieved a feat that many in the world envy today.
The simple and unassuming Mansukhbhai is not keen on money. His ambition is to make more low-cost and eco-friendly products for the masses. “A good majority of Indians cannot buy a fridge as it is expensive. Besides this, electricity bills and maintenance cost is also high. Mitticool is an eco-friendly product which has no maintenance costs. It also retains the original taste of vegetables, says Mansukhbhai who has sold 1500 units so far.
“I failed in the tenth standard. But I was not disappointed as I knew that I was capable of making something new,” says Mansukhbhai who holds a patent for Mitticool.
People who considered him as incapable, now look up to him. They say, “you are the pride of our community!” He has been popularising earthen products since 1988. The only drawback for him is the lack of stores to sell them. The products are mostly available in Gujarat and in some stores in Mumbai and Pune only. Besides, the low-cost fridge, he has developed a water filter, non-stick tava and a pressure cooker all made of clay. And he has many more innovative ideas.

Click Here for his website

Business Ideas, Finance, Motivations, News

Boman on a Roll

Boman Irani is all set to host a business game show, The Pitch, that aims to encourage budding entrepreneurs. The 10-episode show will eliminate one contestant every day and the winner would be awarded Rs. 5 crores to start his business. The show which will be telecast on business news channel UTV Bloomberg, will shortlist 10 people with entrepreneurial skills.

Business Ideas, People / Stories, Social Entrepreneurship

Futuristic innovations from a college dropout!

You can zoom, at a maximum speed of 120 kmph, in his car that runs on compressed air!

You can also ride a cycle without pedalling or drive a solar-gas hybrid car…all you have to do is visit a small garage in Assam.

Kanak Gogoi, a modest innovator who has studied only up to class X, has spent years making these futuristic vehicles.

Click to continue reading…

Business Ideas, Social Entrepreneurship

Nike makes football jerseys from recycled bottles!

Sreelatha Menon

The world goes green with the world cup, as players take bottles to the field. This season the football extravaganza was not all about great football, but about a green revolution that has taken the world of sports by storm.

Recycled plastic PET bottles collected from landfill sites in Taiwan and Japan have been used to make the jerseys worn by players from Brazil, Portugal, Netherlands, USA, South Korea, Australia, New Zealand Serbia and Slovenia all national teams sponsored by Nike.

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