Sankalp Forum has announced partnerships with the Artha Platform and Global Alliance who have aligned their support for these grand prizes
Mumbai, January 28, 2014: For the second year running, Sankalp Forum announced partnerships with Global Alliance for Clean Cookstoves and Artha Platform towards offering cash benefits and business support to promising social enterprises selected through the Sankalp Awards, India’s most prestigious in their category. Under this partnership, Artha Platform and Global Alliance have extended their support for the prizes of USD 55,000. The partnership will focus on spurring innovation in emerging markets by catalyzing investments & other resources into promising startups.
Artha Platform has aligned its support towards the Sankalp-Artha Grand Prize providing a cash grant investment of USD 40,000 to the grand winner of Sankalp Awards 2014. Global Alliance for Clean Cookstoves will offer the recognition of Sankalp-Alliance Award for Innovation in Clean Cooking Solutions 2014 and a cash grant of USD 15,000.
“Spurring innovation in emerging markets through increased investment has been a core strategy for the Artha Platform. Partnering with Sankalp Forum, we aim to bring greater recognition and resources to early stage enterprises, while building an ecosystem infrastructure that makes it easier for investors to discover and act,” said Audrey Selian, Director – Artha Platform.
Commenting on the Clean Cookstoves recognition, Radha Muthiah, Executive Director of the Global Alliance for Clean Cookstoves, said “There is a need to create greater investor interest in the clean cooking solutions value chain. In partnership with Sankalp Forum, we are keen to demonstrate potential and scalability in the sector.” The association was formed against the backdrop of a social need that sees nearly 3 billion[1] people across the world exposed to household air pollution, which causes illnesses and even death.
“We worked with Artha and Global Alliance in the past, and have seen how effective these partnerships have been towards accelerating scale by opening up new networks & bringing wide-spread recognition to early stage startups,” said Aparajita Agrawal, Director – Sankalp Forum.
The winners of both awards will be selected by specially constituted juries of investors and industry leaders and will be recognized at the 6th Annual Sankalp Summit scheduled for April 9 – 12, 2014 in Mumbai in 2014.
Sankalp Awards are India’s leading social enterprise recognition platform. This year, Sankalp Awards received applications in high-impact categories including Agriculture, Food & Livelihoods; Clean Energy and CleanTechnology; Education and Vocational Training; Financial Inclusion; Health, Water & Sanitation; Technology for Development; Women Empowerment who will compete for the grand prize.
Of all the applications received, 45% enterprises are led by women entrepreneurs, and 20% of them originate from low income states and northeast India. Furthermore, 85% of the applicants are expecting to raise a cumulative institutional capital of INR 1500 Crores approximately in the next one year; out of which 53% demand is for debt financing and balance is an equity demand.
About Sankalp Forum
Sankalp Forum, 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 mobilizes a community of entrepreneurs, investors, enablers and policy-makers to encourage innovation, facilitate scalability, and drive consensus on matters that aid social enterprise development.
Sankalp’s Annual Summit is the largest social enterprise focused gathering in the world, and in 2013 it partnered with 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.
Sankalp Awards have sourced over 450 sustainable enterprises, enabled 200 mentoring connections and facilitated over USD 120Mn of equity investments into more than 30 enterprises. Vetted through a rigorous 3-month process by a panel of global investors, the Awards bring recognition to the most sustainable and scalable social enterprises that are doing business across India.
For more details: www.sankalpforum.com
About the Artha Platform
The Artha Platform, an initiative supported by Rianta Capital Zurich, is an online community that is dedicated to building relationships between impact investors/donors, social entrepreneurs and capacity building support organizations in India. With a mission to support small and growing enterprises working towards the benefit of the bottom of the pyramid, the Platform offers a virtualized window for better information exchange and collaboration between stakeholders around due diligence, and also runs the Artha Venture Challenge.
For more information: http://www.arthaplatform.com
About the Global Alliance for Clean Cookstoves:
The Global Alliance for Clean Cookstoves is a public-private partnership hosted by the United Nations Foundation to save lives, improve livelihoods, empower women, and protect the environment by creating a thriving global market for clean and efficient household cooking solutions. The Alliance’s 100 by ‘20 goal calls for 100 million households to adopt clean and efficient cookstoves and fuels by 2020. The Alliance is working with its public, private and non-profit partners to help overcome the market barriers that currently impede the production, deployment, and use of clean cookstoves in developing countries.
For more information, please visit www.cleancookstoves.org.
Clearly, thanks for an explanation.