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.

Mentoring, News

Mentor Edge

MentorEdge is an initiative by Mentors and Experts across India to provide hand-holding, mentoring and networking support to aspiring entrepreneurs. It is a country wide structured network of mentors aimed at helping entrepreneurs get the winning edge through advisory support on various strategic and operational decisions.

MentorEdge helps create synergistic relationship between mentors and mentees. Initiated by Centre for Innovation Incubation and Entrepreneurship (CIIE) in October 2009, MentorEdge has received immense interest from mentors and mentees alike and hopes to bridge an important gap in India’s entrepreneurial ecosystem.

Networking, News

Open Architecture Network

What is the Open Architecture Network?

The Open Architecture Network is an online, open source community dedicated to improving living conditions through innovative and sustainable design. Here designers of all persuasions can:

• Share their ideas, designs and plans
• View and review designs posted by others
• Collaborate with each other, people in other professions and community leaders to address specific design challenges
• Manage design projects from concept to implementation
• Communicate easily amongst team members
• Protect their intellectual property rights using the Creative Commons “some rights reserved” licensing system and be shielded from unwarranted liability
• Build a more sustainable future

What is our goal?

Far from replacing the traditional architect, the goal of the network is to allow designers to work together in a whole new way, a way that enables 5 billion potential clients to access their skills and expertise. The network has a simple mission: to generate not one idea but the hundreds of thousands of design ideas needed to improve living conditions for all.

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

Finance, Networking, News, People / Stories

Entrepreneurs As The New Asset Class

Forget about technology, market size and products. VCs should invest in the entrepreneur.

My new lens on investing: Entrepreneur equity. Specifically, equity in all the commercially productive activities of a person’s career. I want to invest in the innate drive, talent and potential of a person. I want to invest in what they’re working on now, what they’re thinking about next, and whatever they dream up in the future. When it comes to exceptional talent, I’ve stopped worrying about technology, market sizes, product-market fit, etc. I just want to invest before the valuation gets frothy (seed is so 2010).

Click Here for a new, refreshing point of view………

Courtesy : Nauzad Tantra

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

Finance, Motivations, Technology

Call for R&D Proposals

Department of Scientific and Industrial Research (DSIR) proposes to strengthen the interface between industry, R&D Establishments and academic institutions and provide support for the journey from proof of concept to commercialization. Support could be 50% of eligible project cost or higher, if justified.

Last Date for submission of Applications is 30 September 2010

Click Here for the Full Ad

More information on their website www.dsir.gov.in