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Featured Event: Sankalp Unconvention Summit 2014: There’s still time for NB readers to register at a discount

Sankalp Unconvention Summit 2014 is set for April 9-11 at Hotel Renaissance, Powai, in Mumbai. NextBillion is serving as a media partner for this year’s summit, and there’s still time for NextBillion readers to register by using the discount code: NXTBSUS.

The summit is the flagship event of Intellecap’s in-house initiative, Sankalp Forum, a platform for social entrepreneurs. Over the years, Intellecap notes it has enabled over 300 social entrepreneurs to find investors, mentors and scale. With investors (both impact and mainstream), entrepreneurs, policy-makers, academic and representatives from large corporations from over 30 countries, Sankalp’s Summit showcases how inclusive development may be achieved with the contribution of market-led approaches. Below are some of the key speakers, launches and sessions of the 2014 summit.

Some of the speakers in this year’s line up include:

  • Sir Ronald Cohen, chairman of Big Society Capital and widely regarded as the father of venture capital and social investment

  • Dr. Aravind Srinivasan of Aravind Eye Care

  • Monique Villa, CEO of the Thomson Reuters Foundation

  • Zia Khan, vice president of Strategy & Evaluation, Rockefeller Foundation

Here are just a few launches planned at the summit:

  • PRISM, a first fund rating tool for impact investment funds

  • An Impact Investment Report taking stock of the evolution of impact investment in India.

  • Monitor-Deloitte’s report: “Beyond the Pioneer,” which is a follow up to its “Bridging the Pioneer Gap” report of 2012. (See a past NextBillion post on the report here).

Key sessions:

  • A “reverse pitch” by corporations to start ups: In this session, enterprises get to sit back and relax, while corporate leaders do all they can to convince them of why they should pay attention to what they are doing, and work with them on delivering social impact. Expect the unexpected in this pitch session with a twist.

  • Global Enterprise Showcase: Hear from enterprises from India, Bangladesh, Afghanistan, 11 countries in Africa as they pitch on stage.

  • Inclusive business/CSR Reinvented: As the call to multinationals for more inclusive business approaches grows stronger, the question that everyone is asking if MNCs and large Indian corporations are making real strategic choices and thinking about building real businesses from the inclusive agenda. This session will look at at inclusion from many angles, including direct product or service development or delivery that reduces the vulnerability of those living at the base of the pyramid. The session also explores creating livelihood opportunities or indirect support through incubation, alignment, investment or acquisition to scale smaller social enterprises that have better understanding of the inclusive opportunity.

  • A session on impact bonds: A new asset class with a development meaning.

Upcoming Twitter chat

In a run up to conversations at the summit, Intellcap has organized a Twitter chat to discuss how the pioneer gap may be bridged. The chat will take place on at 15:30 IST on April 4 under the hashtags #pioneergap and #SUS2014. More details can be found here. A few of the questions the chat will address include:

  • What is the role of pioneering capital in enabling scale?
  • What is the role of social entrepreneurs in this?
  • What comes after scale?
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