A team of five students of Indian School of Business (ISB) here has made it to the finals of the global social enterprise contest, Hult Prize Competition 2014, and stands a chance to win seed capital of $1 million.

The largest student competition in the world is an initiative of Bill Clinton, President of the Clinton Global Initiative, in association with the Hult Prize to tackle non-communicable diseases in urban slums.

The ISB team, consisting of Ashish Bondia, a primary care physician, Manish Ranjan, Ramanathan Lakshmanan, Aditi Vaish and Pranav Kumar Maranganty, is participating in the event with the its concept of NanoHealth.

“This concept combines technology and a novel business model to establish local health networks and bring cost-effective healthcare to the doorstep of urban slum dwellers,” Bondia told Business Line .

At the moment, the team is not willing to share other details except that it would be launching a pilot either in Hyderabad or in Patna very soon to establish the validity of the concept.

The path for the ISB team so far was a tough one. Over 11,000 teams from more than 300 global universities participated in the competition and 170 teams were invited to the regional finals held in six cities across the world. Out of this, six teams have been selected for the final.

According to Aditi Vaish, the team is excited about the journey so far. “We have diverse backgrounds but came together in ISB with a common thread of interest in social enterprise,” she said, adding that the team was positive about the outcome in the finals.

The six finalist teams are from France, Spain, USA and Canada. All the teams will go through an accelerator programme that provides mentorship and support with up to seven weeks of stay in Boston. The teams will make their pitch at Clinton Global Initiative’s annual dinner hosted by former US President Bill Clinton at New York in September.

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