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Angel investor company, Indian Angel Network (IAN) that invests in start-ups and early stage ventures has launched an incubation programme in association with Deutsche Gesellschaft fur Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) GmbH, and the Small Industries Development Bank of India (SIDBI), to empower entrepreneurs in building sustainable and scalable businesses in the social impact space.
The incubator aims to incubate and nurture over 100 social enterprises serving the base of the economic pyramid. The focus of this incubation programme is to help create and breed sustainable enterprises which will create a positive impact and also create wealth for the promoters and returns for investors.
GIZ and SIDBI have partnered with IAN to leverage its large pool of mentors from some of India’s most successful and renowned entrepreneurs. IAN has over 300 investors and mentors, who are accomplished entrepreneurs or professionals. The intention is to provide strategic thought leadership, high quality mentoring and financial investment to sustainable ventures.
The aim is to ensure that socially beneficial organisations grow and are not dependant on subsidies or philanthropic monies. This initiative would help bring money, mentors and market access to impact focused start up companies.
Mohit Goyal, co-founder, IAN said, "In a country of the size and scale of India, socially relevant start ups which can make a difference to society are of great importance. Often we see passionate entrepreneurs create local centres of excellence, but they do not have the experience and vision to scale those ventures nationally. IAN’s intention is to create a significant difference in creating social impact by helping and guiding passionate entrepreneurs scale up their ventures so that the work done in pockets is extended over a larger population and geography.''
The IAN-GIZ-SIDBI Incubation Programme for Social Enterprises is open to all the social impact start-ups based in India. Shortlisted applications will be assigned business mentors from the IAN mentor, investors pool. The programme is designed such that the incubatee will undergo a 6 to 9 month incubation period, refining its business plan, sales strategy, some customer endorsement and access to angel investors and other funding sources.
In a statement, Stefanie Bauer, Advisor Private Sector Development, GIZ said, ``Under our new bilateral cooperation programme funded by the German Ministry of Economic Cooperation and Development, GIZ and SIDBI are aiming to strengthen the eco system for start ups and social enterprises in India. We know that capital alone is not the challenge for bringing business models to scale. Much more efforts are needed to increase the number of scalable and investible social enterprises that develop solutions in important sector such as healthcare, water, sanitation, energy or education.''
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