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The Centre for Innovation, Incubation and Entrepreneurship (CIIE), a start-up incubation centre at the Indian Institute of Management-Ahmedabad, in partnership with Village Capital, on Tuesday announced the selection of two ventures for investments worth $50,000 each.
The start-ups’ peers in the Last Mile start-up accelerator have selected Bodhi Health Education and Parvata Foods for investments to advance their ventures, according to a spokesman.
The announcement was made at the culmination of a four-month accelerator programme which brought together high-potential start-up ventures that are increasing access to underserved populations. With support from The Rockefeller Foundation, The Last Mile is a joint initiative of Village Capital and CIIE, which uses the peer-selection model. Entrepreneurs themselves decide which two companies should receive funding.
Bodhi Health Education, founded by Abhinav and Shrutika Gridhar, leverages low-cost mobile technology coupled with eLearning to create scalable, high quality training solutions for bottom-of-the-pyramid health workers. The venture aims to train 60,000 frontline community health workers over the next five years in India and developing countries in Asia and Africa. They plan to use the investment for developing additional curriculum and courses for frontline health workers and to set up a business development team.
Parvata Foods is a socio-commercial enterprise started by IIM-A alumni Anurag Agarwal and Siddhi Karnani, with the aim of building a value chain in fruits, vegetables and spices (both fresh and processed) from Sikkim and other backward States in North-Eastern and Eastern India. They intend to elevate the living standard of farmers in difficult/ hilly areas by integrating them with the main value chain. At present operating in Sikkim, a complete Organic State in N-E India, their primary products are ginger, turmeric, buckwheat, chilli, pineapple and mandarin. The investments will aid in setting up and running an organic spice processing plant in Sikkim.
The Last Mile accelerator was supported by a range of investors, philanthropists, and organisations, including the Rockefeller Foundation, Zoomdojo, CIBA, James Lee Sorenson Global Impact Investing Center, Aashish and Dinyar Devitre, Munoth Capital Market, Rianta Capital Zurich, and Sattva India Opportunities Company Ltd.
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