Sankalp Forum announces 14 Indian social enterprises as Sankalp Awards Finalists for 2015
New Delhi, India, March 18, 2015: Sankalp Forum, an Intellecap initiative, today announced 14 high impact finalists of Sankalp Awards 2014 – India’s leading social enterprise recognition platform. The finalists have been shortlisted from across critical needs sectors including – Agriculture, Food and Livelihood; Clean Energy and Technology; Health, Water and Sanitation, Education and Vocational Training; Financial Inclusion; Technology for Development; and Women Empowerment.
The Awards create a well-rounded enabling platform for early-stage enterprises that show the maximum potential to scale and drive impact. Director-Sankalp Forum, Aparajita Agrawal said, “We are excited to see great innovations focused on tackling social challenges at the BoP. This year, our finalist pool comprises 63% first generation entrepreneurs highlight the need to build more robust ecosystems to enable startups to go to scale.” She added, “Cumulatively, these finalists are looking to raise INR 40 crore, and our in-house impact angel network I3N, is supporting many of them in these efforts.”
These finalists will be evaluated through a rigorous process by a high profile jury comprising industry captains like Sunil Wadhwani of iGate, Vikram Gandhi of Asha Impact, Satya Bansal of Barclays and Audrey Selian of Artha.
For the first time, Sankalp Finalists will also be leveraging a special partnership between Sankalp Forum and crowd-funding platform Ketto to get going on their fund-raise targets. Ketto is an online crowd-funding platform co-founded by actor Kunal Kapoor, and focused on social causes.
Sankalp Finalists are also competing for Sankalp People’s Choice Awards to be decided by their popularity on social media and funds raised among other parameters.
List of Finalists:
| Enterprise Name | Sector | Geography |
About |
| Swami Samarth | Clean Energy | Maharashtra |
Develop and sell clean cookstoves and improve quality of indoor air and women’s health |
| Brun | Healthcare | Delhi |
Device for feto-maternal health monitoring. Designed under Stanford BioDesign Program |
| The Better India | Education | Karnataka |
India’s fastest growing positive news website |
| Eco Corner | Livelihood | Maharashtra |
One of the only retailers of ecofriendly products to have established presence through shop-in-shops & online channels in last 3 years |
| Ekam Eco | Sanitation | Delhi |
Sanitation player with a waterless urinal technology called Zerodor |
| Janta Meals | Agriculture | Haryana |
Affordable meals < INR 30 to blue collar workers in Delhi / NCR |
| Sampurnearth | Sanitation | Maharashtra |
End to end decentralized waste management services for households and corporates |
| Krishi Star | Agriculture | Maharashtra | Provides capital and know-how to build farmer owned processing units, taking farmers up the value chain from raw material to processed food to boost margins |
| ReMaterials – ModRoof | Tech for Dev | Gujarat |
Makes slum roofs with recycled materials providing superior shelter |
| Guru-G Learning Labs | Education | Karnataka |
World’s first gamified platforms for teaching and teacher training |
| Medula Healthcare | Healthcare | Maharashtra |
Affordable preventive, curative and health services and insurance for the base of the pyramid |
| Drinkwell Systems | Water | West Bengal |
Provides clean drinking water through its technology in arsenic –affected areas affordably |
| Parvata Foods | Agriculture | NCR | One of the first organized players to supply organic produce from Sikkim and other Himalayan states to NCR and the export markets under its own brand / co-brand name. |
| I Say Organic | Agriculture | Delhi |
Ecommerce farm-to-fork organic food supplier. Connects organic farmers direct to consumers
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