For the first time in India, Ashoka, the world’s largest network of social entrepreneurs, brought together 20 international social entrepreneurs working on economic inclusion and leading entrepreneurs from the private sector, to match social innovations with the resources needed to achieve global scale.

Among the participants at the Ashoka Globalizer, held between February 28 and March 2, were business entrepreneurs such as Nihar Kothari, Director of the Patrika group of companies; social investor Ravi Venkatesan, former Chairman of Microsoft India and present Chairman of Social Venture Partners India; serial entrepreneur R. Ramaraj, former CEO Sify; and scientist Tralance Addy, Director at the Stanford Institute for Innovation in Developing Economies. They shared their insights into growth strategies and drew on their experiences to help social entrepreneurs create the best strategies and partnerships.

The event, held at IIT Madras Research Park, was supported by the eBay foundation. The topic of the summit was ‘Economic Inclusion’. The eBay foundation is pairing up with Ashoka Globalizer to help scale up the most promising ideas to generate abundant economic opportunities and increase access to critical goods and services at fair prices to disadvantaged groups around the globe.

Day one of the event focussed on ecosystem solutions. In this session, the participants collectively mapped barriers in the economic inclusion ecosystem. The sessions on day two saw social entrepreneurs refine their previously prepared strategies and implement them in action-oriented dialogues with fellow participants. On the final day, participating social entrepreneurs gave insights on current challenges and lessons learnt on such related subjects as leadership, and organisational and personal development.

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