Sankalp-DFID

CORPORATE

Businesses that empower women to

 receive honour and an opportunity to get

 cash grant of INR 5 Lakh.

For the third year running, Sankalp-DFID Recognition for Women Empowerment continues to encourage businesses that focus on empowering women and young girls, with this year witnessing a 50% growth in applications, moreover a majority of these applicants are focusing on low income states.

The Sankalp-DFID Recognition for Women Empowerment is an endeavor to build greater awareness about gender equity in business and bring necessary resources to scale up innovative business models that that have a potential to help millions of women and young girls to obtain better access to products and services and/or increase their livelihoods.

This year, the recognition saw a 50% increase in the number of applications compared to last year. Of these more than 70% of the enterprises have been started by women entrepreneurs with majority of them having their home town in Maharashtra, Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh. Interestingly, almost 50% of the applicants in this category have an operational focus in one of the low-income states and/or the north eastern states. Nearly 66% of these enterprises are looking to raise institutional capital over the next one year with a whopping demand of almost 300 Cr.

Sankalp Forum and DFID (UKAID) have shortlisted  16 enterprises as semi-finalists for women empowerment category, who are receiving intensive guidance from India’s top incubators to prepare for the next round. The top three entries will be selected as finalists by an executive jury consisting of impact investors and industry veterans in January. One of these finalists will be considered for a cash grant of INR 5 lakh and an opportunity to be funded by Samridhi Fund - a social venture fund managed by SIDBI in collaboration with DFID.

Last year, the Recognition was won by InVenture, a global social enterprise offering an innovative fast-paced mobile technology that provides a credit scoring and reporting platform to financial services institutions in emerging countries. By leveraging mobile technology along with real time-data, it facilitates financial and social inclusion for businesses all over the world.

Information on the enterprises shortlisted as semi-finalists for the Sankalp-DFID Recognition for Women Empowerment 2014 is available on sankalpforum.com.

About Department for International Development (DFID)

For several decades, Government of UK’s Department for International Development has been actively working with the Government of India to help India achieve its own poverty reduction priorities and the Millennium Development Goals.

India is a growing global power and an important partner for the UK. As India’s economy grows, poverty reduces and India has ever greater prominence in world affairs, the UK’s development partnership with India is evolving.

In November 2012, the UK and India agreed to move to a new development relationship, ending the UK’s financial grant aid to India. The UK will responsibly complete by 2015 all our commitments to on-going projects. All new programmes will focus on sharing skills and expertise in priority areas such a growth, trade and investment, skills and health, or on making investments in private sector projects which create opportunities for the poor while generating a return. We will also strengthen our partnership with India on global development issues like food security and climate change.

For more information, please visit: https://www.gov.uk/government/world/organisations/dfid-india

About Sankalp Forum

Sankalp Forum (www.sankalpforum.com), an Intellecap initiative, recognizes & supports innovative, sustainable, high impact social enterprises. It builds an enabling ecosystem for early-stage businesses, channels impact investments, and engages over 11,000 stakeholders globally through collaborative year-round initiatives. It has developed an involved community of entrepreneurs, investors, enablers and policy-makers to encourage innovation, facilitate scalability, and drive consensus on matters that aid social enterprise development.

Since 2009, Sankalp’s Annual Summit has been the largest social enterprise focused gathering in the world and in 2013 has partnered with Villgro’s Unconvention to become the Sankalp Unconvention Summit. The Summit brings together more than 1,000 delegates, thought leaders, industry experts, policy makers from around the world to voice, discuss, debate issues, trends and solutions that aid social enterprise development.

For more information http://sankalpforum.com/