Genesis is a social entrepreneurship competition that aims to bring together social entrepreneurs, students, NGOs, innovators, incubators, corporations and financiers and encourage them to come up with innovative ideas which are socially relevant and feasible.

The competition is hosted by the India chapter of Asia-Pacific Student Entrepreneurship Society at IIT Madras.

The competition is open to all students and working professionals (including NGOs) who have ideas that are innovative, feasible and can benefit society. 50% of the registered members of every team that enters this competition should be students. Rs. 300,000 will be awarded as seed funding to winning teams to start their ventures.

Last year's edition began with an impressive series of workshops from social entrepreneurs from organisations such as Aavishkaar, Infrasys and The Spark Group.

Beyond the competition, I would urge students keen to explore the opportunities in social entrepreneurship to attend this event.

Even as we await the final schedule, we can expect the workshops to be organized in January 2008 and the business plan competition to continue through February.

I look forward to attending Genesis 2008 and to meeting any NextBillion readers.