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Global Social Venture Competition is a prestigious global level business plan competition organized by Haas School of Business , Columbia Business School, London Business School, Indian School of Business, University of Thammasat, ESSEC Business School. The Global Social Venture Competition occurs over three rounds, the last of which takes place at the Haas School of Business at UC Berkeley. During each round of the competition, social entrepreneurs present the social, financial, and environmental values of their business, gaining valuable feedback from and exposure to some of the greatest minds in social innovation. Great Lakes Institute of Management is the only Business school from India that is representing India in global finals this year. More than 150 colleges participated in Asia regional and out of it 24 got selected for Regional finals first round. Out of which 7 were selected for 2nd round and 3 for finals. AgriSolutions from Great Lakes Institute of Management got selected in Best Social Impact Assessment category to compete globally in Global finals. Team Consists of Gurava Reddy Maruri (Team Leader), Harshdeep Singh Rapal, Karthikeyan Dhanabalan, Achyuta Madabushi and Anirudha Nataraja. The team reached global finals and traveling to Haas School of Business to represent Asia in Social Impact Model Assessment Category which is going to be held from April 21st to 23rd. GSVC Asia resultsTeams selected for the GSVC Global Finals at Haas School of Business, Berkeley during April 22 – 23, 2010 are as follows:-
Best Social Impact Assessment model:-
Participants in Asia Finals GSVC Preliminary Round results
Teams selected from the national round in South Korea organised by Social Venture Competition Korea.
Teams selected from the national round in China held at the Guanghua School of Management, Peking University.
Team AgriSolutions of Great Lakes Institute of Management is the only team from a business school representing INDIA in World Wide Finals of Global Social Venture Competition. In a freewheeling chat the team elaborates on their project and future plans. 1. What is the project about? And what is its motto? Are you the finalists of Asia chapter? What is the next step of the competition? The business plan proposed by the team is named AgriSolutions. AgriSolutions proposes to collaborate with farmers for rice cultivation and provide them services which help in enhancing the crop yield, increase the productivity of land and ease the farmers from the tedious manual processes. The agricultural yield in India is one of the lowest in the world and its contribution to the GDP has been falling drastically. The agriculture in India is in a sorry state and with very little efforts being done by the private players, it is bound to continue the downward trend. With the introduction of AgriSolutions, we propose to bring the best practices and the latest technology being used elsewhere in India and the globe. About 110 universities have participated in this event this year. The regional rounds were done in China and other Asian countries. The 24 teams that made it to the Asia Finals were invited to ISB for the Asia Finals held from 4th-7th March. The teams presented their plans to the panel of judges which consisted of eminent personalities from the Social and Business Venture world. Six teams out of the 24 progressed to the second round. Out of the six, team AgriSolutions made it to global finals in Best Social Impact Assessment Model category, to be held at the Haas Business School, University of California, Berkeley. The World Finals will be held from 21st April to 24th April. 2. How are you planning to take your project forward given that it has the potential? The project has generated tremendous interest when we discussed it with the farmers of Guntur region in AP. We have done the groundwork for the same and plan to launch the plan with 700 acres in the Guntur district. This land belongs to 30 farmers of the region who have shown keen interest to partner with us for the launch of these operations. We are going to collaborate with NABARD, Agriculture Department of Andhra Pradesh, Agriculture Equipment manufacturers, Micro Finance Institutions, Banks and Agriculture Universities to help us with the latest technologies and trends to help farmers for finance, better yield and land fertility. Slowly, we plan to increase to bring about 18000 acres in Kharif season and 6000 acres in rabi season under the plan in next 5 years. (Can be tripled depending on the farmers willingness by using 24X7 operations - which reduces the cost of cultivation drastically) The land area to be covered will be spread across the West and East delta regions of the district. At this point, the farmers grow only the local varieties of rice in the region. Going forward, we also have plans of introducing cash crops and agro processing units which will add more value to the operations. We are looking for self employment opportunities for farmers and laborers who lose their jobs because of automated services using Vermicompost units, godowns, poultry farms and dairy farms etc which provides sustainable income for them and hence improves their livelihood. 3. Have you tried talking to VC/PEs? How much investment do you think it might require? The IRR (Internal Rate of Returns) on our venture are around 35% for the first 5 years and also needs continuous capital investment. And the payback period starts form 5 years which is mostly unacceptable to Venture Capitalists. However we were approached by few investors who are interested to fund our project during our presentation at ISB in Asia Finals and we are considering the options. In our case, we are looking forward for the government help, financing from banks like NABARD, Social Venture Investors. Failing which, we will approach Angel investors and Social entrepreneurs who Gurava Reddy worked with since last few years. We require about Rs 1.8 Cr. For launching the operations in the first year and another Rs 8 Cr. Over next 5 years for expanding the operations. We plan to stabilize the operations by the fifth year when the payoff starts. 4. Have you heard from anyone who would like to fund your project? Yes. We were approached by two investors who fund projects like this. They were very interested in our project and asked us to contact in case we are looking forward for funds. This happened during our presentation in ISB during preliminary and final rounds. |
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