Past Global Finals
2011 Global Finalist Teams
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Beti Halali, International Institute for Water and Environmental Engineering (2iE), Burkina Faso [Global Finalist] Currently in Chad, 95% of homes are made from mud brick and more than 91% of urban population lives in slums. Beti Halali plans to address this housing crisis through an enterprise for the fabrication and distribution of eco-friendly building materials and the construction of homes based in N'Djamena. Its mission is to make more modern, sustainable, ecological and economical homes accessible to the Chadian population. Its eco-friendly building materials provide about 50% cost savings compared to cement homes while resulting in minimal environmental impacts through the use of agricultural byproducts. Additionally, Beti Halali offers a financing system based on a popular savings and credit mechanism in Africa: the tontine. This allows customers to avoid loans with exorbitant interest rates (>15%). Custom-built homes are designed to meet customer requirements while adapting to their financial capabilities. Beti Halali will promote sustainable urban development through increased access to decent and healthy housing. DeepScan, Thammasat Business School, Thailand [Global Finalist] DeepScan Company Limited aims to provide affordable high-performance cancer detection devices to reduce death rate from cancer globally. The first version of our product targets cervical cancer. Cervical cancer kills 300,000 women a year and 80% of these deaths occurred in developing countries including Thailand. The main reason is the lack of early detection. Currently, less than 10% of all hospitals in Thailand can perform complete cancer checking and analysis. In addition, because of the current time consuming and painful process, most women go to the hospital at very late stage which leads to less than 40% chance of survival. DeepScan offers real-time and immediate cancer detection, allowing doctor to identify the cancer cell right on the spot. With DeepScan, patients can have cancer check near their homes since an early stage, giving them more than 90% chance of survival. DeepScan provides profitable return to investors and saves thousands of live. Edumile.org, University of California, Berkeley, USA [SIA Finalist] Edumile.org is a non-profit firm that leverages from the continuous growth in peer-to-peer investing (estimated at $5 billion by 2013) and the widespread belief that - ‘education is a fundamental right’. It is an integrated trust & support based micro-lending model effectively addressing three problem areas; lack of finances, lack of guidance and motivation, and lack of useful information. Edumile enables micro-loans through social investors to reach students pursuing higher education in India. Students graduate and repay the loans. Edumile restructures the existing model of social peer-to-peer lending with assurance, transparency and trust by making right partnerships, eliminating intermediaries and ensuring the most affordable loan terms for students and their families. A student’s education goes beyond financial support and Edumile’s passion as well as its competitive advantage lies essentially in its focus to address the gamut of problems faced by students in low income groups (~130 million families in India and more worldwide). It will ensure the enrichment of students, their families and eventually the community. FINDG One Drop, Milpark Business School, South Africa [Global Finalist] FINDG Ltd is a South African company committed to developing innovative and revolutionary water purification products primarily for the rural communities and Municipalities. The product offering, One-drop, is made from a non-hazardous, non-chemical solution produced through the formation of ions in the water, free of harmful chemicals and toxins. For millions of people living in the rural communities without running water who have to rely on non-piped raw water for their daily needs, One-Drop products will be able to purify contaminated water that gives rise to water-borne diseases. Our solution brings a portable purification system that does not require advanced physical distribution network. The One Drop products will be supplied through the community owned and operated distribution centres. This will increase employment and activate social entrepreneurship in rural communities. IKAWA, Liverpool University / Imperial College London, United Kingdom [Global Finalist] Over 2.25 billion cups of coffee are consumed in the world every day, the majority of these by drinkers in industrialised economies. In contrast, some 25millon small holders in developing countries grow over 90% of the world’s coffee. IKAWA is serving an alternative approach to the coffee trade that is more equitable and tastes better. The IKAWA approach enables a coffee supply chain where growers are able to supply drinkers directly with un-roasted coffee beans. By simplifying the supply chain the IKAWA allows farmers to capture more of the money paid by coffee drinkers. For coffee drinkers, IKAWA has designed an experience that allows them to turn un-roasted coffee beans into coffee they can drink. This experience offers better tasting coffee and increased sense of connection them with the grower. iziWasha, Gordon Institute of Business Science, South Africa [Global Finalist] Five billion people globally do not have access to a washing machine. Women in emerging markets spend hours every week washing clothes by hand – time which could be spent generating income, growing food or caring for children. iziWasha is a low-cost, IP-protected, manual laundry device which improves the lives of women in low-income communities and saves water. It uses 20 percent less water than a traditional hand wash, 40 percent less a machine and no electricity. iziWasha will be sold globally at an average price of $10 through female micro entrepreneurs and retailers. Over 2,000 units have already been sold in South Africa and distributors from India have expressed interest. iziWasha has been endorsed by the United Nations and is being featured by Reuters and other media. iziWasha is the first in the iziLife suite of sustainable solutions for women in emerging markets MAGNiVY, Prasetiya Mulya Business School, Indonesia [SIA Finalist] MAGNiVY works in the business of rehabilitating and utilizing the mangrove ecosystem. The first project is located in Aceh Singkil, Indonesia, which was impacted by 2004 Tsunami dan 2005 Nias earthquake disaster. Rehabilitated mangrove area will be utilized as aquaculture sites, using silvo-fishery method that doesn’t harm the surrounding environment. Aquaculture products will be marketed both to the local market and to overseas markets to meet the high demand of these products. The sales revenue will then be used to run mangrove rehabilitation in larger area. Through its business model which empowers local people and the Cooperative Union, MAGNiVY is bringing about a sustainable business to ensure financial and social returns to its stakeholders. NextDrop, University of California, Berkeley / Stanford University, USA [Global Finalist] PAANI, University of Dhaka, Bangladesh [SIA Finalist] According to WHO, arsenic contamination scenario in Bangladesh is the largest mass poisoning of a population in history. Right now, 77 million people of Bangladesh are exposed to arsenic contaminated groundwater. PAANI™ comes with an affordable and sustainable solution of arsenic poisoning to the people at the bottom of the pyramid, who otherwise cannot afford any of available solutions. PAANI™ provides arsenic free pure drinking water at only $.00057/liter to these poor villagers through its innovative business model. The business model will use a community based distribution channel forming small community clusters [of usually 10 families]. For an easy adaptability, it will employ local women, PAANI-Sisters as its representative to supervise those clusters; creating job opportunity for more than 50,000 poor women who are otherwise unemployed. Thus, the business will create a value of $25.5 for each $1 invested as well as save millions of lives. Prakti Design, Mines de Paris, France [Global and SIA Finalist] Today half the world's population relies on biomass for their cooking needs. The biomass stoves or fires they cook on produce toxic fumes that kill almost 2 million people a year. These fires also consume over twice the necessary fuel and contribute to global warming and deforestation. Prakti Design is a for-profit company that designs and disseminates fuel-efficient, clean-burning cookstoves for the base of the pyramid. We advocate a human-centered design tailored to regional cooking practices and received good feedback to date. The whole community is impacted with a wide range of stoves, micro-financing schemes, and distribution -both by existing networks and trained salespersons- promoting local economic development. Following successful pilots that have improved the lives of 25,000 people in South India and Nepal, Prakti plans its first full-commercial distribution to roll-out from this July in India. Sanergy, MIT Sloan School of Management, USA [Global and SIA Finalist] Sanergy is permanently reducing sanitation-related disease in Africa’s slums by making sanitation accessible, affordable, and sustainable. 2.6 billion people in developing countries lack access to basic sanitation. The resulting disease kills 1.6 million children each year and costs countries as much as 6.4% of GDP in lost productivity. We are starting with the 8 million slum dwellers across Kenya that live in areas with minimal water access and no sewage infrastructure. Our team of engineers and entrepreneurs from MIT takes an innovative, systems-based approach to create a scalable and profitable model for sanitation provision. We franchise a dense network of small-scale sanitation center to local entrepreneurs throughout the slums. We then collect the waste to convert it into electricity sold to the national grid and organic fertilizer sold to farms. At each step, Sanergy creates jobs, opportunity, and profit, while addressing serious social needs. SMILE Floss, Thammasat Business School, Thailand [Global Finalist] SMILE Floss is the first organic dental floss producer in ASEAN. Thai silk is one of world’s premium quality silks and cultural heritage of Thailand. We create value in silk supply chain by repurpose pure silk supplied from silk farmer to produce “Organic Dental Floss”. Organic Dental Floss is made of Thai pure natural silk coated by coconut oil and natural bee wax. With the wonderful characteristic of silk in flexibility and gentle, SMILE floss helps reducing gum bleeding and better than synthesized dental floss. Our goal is to help Thai silk farmers from a reduction of silk production from overseas competition and create business competiveness for silk farmer families in rural area. We offer alternative sustainable business for more than 3,000 families while preserving Thailand’s heritage and native folk wisdom. Solar Light Pillow Project, Columbia University, USA [Global Finalist] The mission of the Solar Light Pillow Project is to develop cost-effective, solar-rechargeable lighting products in order to make light more affordable, more portable, and more sustainable for all of our customers. The company has designed and developed a prototype of its first product, the Solar Light Pillow, named after its distinctive shape which resembles a pillow. The Solar Light Pillow is an inflatable, lightweight, waterproof solar lantern that can be efficiently packed and shipped flat. The product is designed to address the need for an easily deployable, portable light in emergency and disaster relief situations. It can also be used for camping and outdoor recreation and in areas of the world lacking access to electricity. Our multidisciplinary team consists of graduate students with diverse backgrounds in design, engineering, business and international development. Tilapiana, Brigham Young University, USA [Global Finalist] Tilapiana works with rural entrepreneurs in the developing world to design, manage, and implement village-level fish farms. Using a franchise business model, the village entrepreneur (franchisee) is provided with everything required to run a successful fish farm. Just as traditional franchises provide a "business in a box" Tilapiana provides a "profit in a pond" and empowers its franchisees to profitably grow fish, close nutritional gaps, and lift themselves out of poverty. TreePlanet, Handong University, Korea [Global Finalist] Plant a tree and help saving the earth with a tap on a smartphone or a click on the internet with TreePlanet. We make it a fun and easy experience for people to contribute in planting trees through smartphone applications, social network services and websites. Companies sponsor by promoting ads in our service for the benefit of gaining eco-friendly brand image, and NGOs can manage the fund using the back-end fund management system for transparency. TreePlanet has begun a forest rehabilitation project in Indonesia of 4000 ha. and we are expanding worldwide. We are the connecting bridge between people, companies, and NGOs. 2010 Finalist TeamsBlended Value Finalists Amandes, Prasetiya Mulya Business School, Indonesia Amandes was established with a mission to provide affordable safe drinking water for remote coastal people in Indonesia. Currently, around 1.8 million Indonesians live in those areas. They use rainwater and brackish water as their main source of drinking water because of unavailable freshwater sources. Amandes uses seawater distillation system fully powered by solar energy. It applies a business model that developed not only as an operational system but also as a financing and expansion strategy. This model optimizes mutual benefit and close interdependency between the investor and the local communities through a joint cooperation program. Amandes offers an attractive financial return as well as enhances social benefits such as reduction in healthcare and household costs, reduction in carbon emission and enhancement in local economic growth. Amandes business can also be replicated in other countries which have the same water issue for remote coastal communities. AYZH, Rural Technology Business Incubator, IIT, India AYZH (pronounced ‘eyes’) is a new venture taking a for-profit approach to developing, commercializing, and scaling low-cost, high quality products that rural women want and need to help improve their standard of living. Under the leadership of founder and CEO Zubaida Bai, the first product AYZH is bringing to market is called JANMA focused on women’s health. JANMA is an inexpensive ($2) clean birth kit addressing the global issue of maternal and child infection and mortality due to unclean birth environments. JANMA is sourced and assembled in India by rural women, creating economic opportunity in the communities we serve. We distribute JANMA through an established network of local pharmacies, clinics, and women-focused nonprofit/nongovernmental organizations. For more information, visit http://www.ayzh.com. Bags of Hope, Guanghua School of Management – Peking University, China Our company is dedicated to promoting a program named Stacks of Straw, Bags of Hope. We create job opportunities for millions of rural women who are bound to the land in remote areas making very low income to support their families. We provide training for them to process straws to weave bags and promote the distinct local culture through bag design. In this way, we can also prevent tons of straws from being burnt as fertilizers, reducing significant CO2 emission. We plan to sell those straw bags at high-end supermarkets in major cities in China. 30% of our profit will be donated to schools in areas we have cooperation relationships to purchase books. We firmly believe if you give a man a job, you help him only for some time; if you offer a man better education, you help him for a lifetime. BlueDrop, Haas School of Business – UC Berkeley, USA One child dies every 15 seconds from preventable waterborne diseases because one-sixth of humanity still struggles to meet their basic need for water. BlueDrop is a for-profit company that has developed a low-cost water chlorination system, designed to provide safe drinking water to people living on less than $2 per day. Since 40% of purified water sources are re-contaminated before consumption, chlorine is a more effective method of treating biologically-contaminated water because it continues to disinfect after the initial treatment. The BlueDrop system can produce chlorine and automatically dose it into water in off-grid areas. The robust design can be made in India with locally-available materials, making it easy-to-maintain in resource-constrained areas. Micro-franchises will provide clean water to communities and sustainable financial revenues to micro-entrepreneurs and our company. This summer, we are launching in Eastern India where we have strong partnerships with NGOs and government agencies. C-Crete Technologies, MIT Sloan School of Management, USA Concrete is the most widely used manufacturing material on the planet. The key strengthening ingredient in concrete is cement, whose production expends considerable amount of energy and contributes to 5-10% of CO2 emissions worldwide, making concrete the biggest climate change culprit outside of transportation and electricity-generation. C-Crete Technologies has engineered an innovative cement which is stronger than typical cement, while reducing both energy consumption and CO2 emitted during the cement manufacturing process. Freehap, Chulalongkorn and Thammasat Universities, Thailand We, Freehap are not sure if our World is getting happier. We believe that this problem should be considered more seriously and we must find realistic and measurable ways to help improve World Happiness together. We will build a platform to find out how happiness can be improved for different types of people. This platform will be simple and fun to participate. The data will be both useful for improving happiness of our everyday life with our family and friends and also be helpful in projects that aim to help other people to solve specific problems. You can find out more about us at http://www.freehap.com. Let’s be Happier Together, Freehap! Makane, ESSEC Business School, France In Senegal, 58% of the population cannot access salubrious and sustainable housing. Makane addresses the issues of housing and poverty by building socially, technically and ecologically adapted houses for underprivileged populations in rural areas of Senegal at a very low price. In order to do so, Makane relies on: Nest For All, Ecole des Mines de Paris, Harvard Business School, Ecole Polytechnique Nest For All will provide affordable quality maternal and child healthcare to a large low and middle income urban population in West Africa. Nest For All will extend a network of hospitals and clinics aimed at achieving quality of service, WHO standards, profitability and scale concurrently. The network will address the main shortcomings that patients see in the current public offering. Nest For All will institute a culture focused on service, on reducing transportation and waiting time spent for a visit from 4.5 hours currently to 1 hour and a commitment to quality healthcare delivery. Furthermore, our integrated model will aim at following mothers and children’s health from the prenatal and delivery phase all through childhood. For doctors, the company will provide substantial professional development opportunities and financial upside, allowing them to focus on care delivery (80% of their time vs. 50% today) and fostering best management practices. Ruma, Harvard Business School, USA Of the 250 million people in Indonesia, 3/4 live below $2.5 a day, and 2/3 have mobile phones. Ninety percent of these users buy prepaid minutes instead of paying a monthly bill. Ruma sells a business-in-a-box that enables small entrepreneurs to sell prepaid minutes. We buy minutes at a discount from 10 telecom operators and store them in our server. When a customer buys minutes from our entrepreneur, we send the minutes electronically via SMS thereby reducing the need for a physical voucher. We worked with Grameen Foundation to develop this model, which is essentially the next evolution of the Grameen Phone. As of March 2010, we’ve deployed a network of 2,000 entrepreneurs, $3,000 worth of minutes to 80,000 customers each day. Seventy percent of our entrepreneurs were below the poverty line when they joined; now 100% are profitable. We plan to launch a jobs market, micro-insurance and retail application using our prepaid minutes platform. Winduction, London Business School, UK Winduction is to commercialize a revolutionary small wind turbine. Their patented and proven design (a prototype is currently running in Ireland) allows small wind to be cost-competitive with grid-parity in many developed markets, enabling cost-effective distributed generation and small wind to become a reality. Winduction holds the IP rights to a generation and control system that acts as an ‘electronic gearbox’, enabling significantly better performance than any existing small turbine, minimal mechanical stress for increased safety and uses off-the-shelf components such as an induction motor. Additionally, this high efficiency is nearly flat across the operating wind speed range, a technical advantage unique to the company. Winduction will bring cost-effective microgeneration to mature and developing markets around the world, including 25% of the global population who have no access to grid electricity. Re:Motion Designs, Stanford University, USA With 80% of the world’s amputees living in developing countries, there is a profound need for low-cost lower limb prostheses for the developing world. Modern assistive technology has the potential to re-mobilize lower limb amputees, but at a cost typically in the thousands of dollars. Re:Motion Designs is a for-benefit venture that provides high performance, extreme-affordability prosthetics for the 20 Million amputees in the developing world. Our initial product, the JaipurKnee, is a polymer-based polycentric knee joint that can be manufactured for less than $20 USD, and has been featured by Time Magazine, CNN, BusinessWeek and Fast Company as a major innovation of 2009. Compared with existing low-cost prosthetic knee joints, the JaipurKnee provides a new class of stability and gait efficiency for above-knee amputees, and is currently in field trials in India with over 700 patients fitted to date. For more information visit http://www.remotiondesigns.org. SIA Finalists AgriSolutions, Great Lakes Institute of Management, India With advanced methods of doing agriculture and implementing best practices from across the world, AgriSolutions intends to transform the agriculture industry in India. In Andhra, the use of traditional methods of cultivation leads to high costs, low yields and tedious processes. With heavily fragmented land holdings and an average acreage of less than 2 acres, it is very difficult for farmers to adopt any technology by themselves. The increase in labor costs and cultivation costs has made agriculture an unviable practice. AgriSolutions uses agriculture equipment for rice cultivation to aid the farmers for nursery, ploughing, planting and harvesting the crop with the best practices available. These result in a considerable reduction in cost, increase in yield and also improve the productivity of land by more than 30%. AgriSolutions uses vermi-compost units, godowns and machinery operations as the means to provide employment to traditional laborers in need of work. BLISS (Business and Life Skills School), MIT Sloan School of Management, USA BLISS aims to reduce exploitative labor and increase literacy in communities where school-age youth must choose work over education to meet household cash needs. It brings working youth to school by offering monetary incentives that are sustained through the sale of crafts created in vocational classes. In addition, it offers a business skills curriculum that encourages financial independence and entrepreneurship. In the process, BLISS promotes indigenous art in the form of socially conscious products, and increases participants’ earning potential—thus changing community attitudes towards the usefulness of education. BLISS has an edge over free/subsidized educational programs because it directly tackles the financial opportunity cost of attending school, and over cash incentive schemes because it can self-sustain via its craft sales. BLISS has a successful pilot project in place for 38 Afghan refugee girls in Pakistan, who previously provided labor at carpet looms for up to 14 hours a day. For more information visit http://www.bagsforbliss.org. Punô, Ateneo de Manila Graduate School of Business, Philippines Punô is a social enterprise that seeks to reduce post-consumer waste through more sustainable retail systems. It leverages its social impact through varied distribution methods that deliver quality, affordable and locally produced eco-friendly household and personal care products that utilize less packaging and encourage more environmental awareness in consumer practice. Its distribution systems provide retailers an alternative that is not only more environmentally sound, but more economical. Punô also encourages an ecosystem with community producers of natural household and personal care products, integrating their goods into Punô's distribution systems without the constraints of conventional retail packaging. Punô’s sustainable retail systems are unique, utilizing a combination of massive base of pyramid distribution networks, to mid-level, mainstream commercial retail. Vitanutril®, Reims Business School, France Vitanutril® produces and sells spirulina-based food in Burkina Faso allying the strengths of spirulina, an algae with an exceptional mix of proteins, minerals and vitamins, and the expertise of a network of local saleswomen well trained on nutritional education. Vitanutril®’s main objectives are to alleviate malnutrition by producing an additional product line of tasty and affordable spirulina-based food targeted towards the poorest and to foster the development of local social micro-enterprises by setting up an economically viable and sustainable structure that can be replicated across Africa. WE CARE Solar, Haas School of Business – UC Berkeley, USA WE CARE (Women’s Emergency Communication and Reliable Electricity) Solar is a social enterprise that saves lives of childbearing mothers and infants in developing regions by providing obstetric health facilities with solar power for lighting, mobile communication and essential medical devices. Pregnancy-related complications cause over 500,000 maternal deaths annually, primarily in Africa and South Asia. Life-saving obstetric care requires reliable lighting, communication and electricity. Approximately 300,000 health facilities worldwide lack this basic infrastructure. WE CARE Solar has developed and field-tested the Solar Suitcase, a user-friendly, portable, plug-and-play solar-electric system that ensures electricity, lighting, and communication for maternity care in low-resource settings. In addition, WE CARE is leveraging and building local market-based capacity and partnerships to distribute, install and maintain these systems. The Solar Suitcase facilitates timely and effective emergency care and reduces maternal and infant morbidity and mortality, thus enhancing family productivity, strengthening health systems, and improving markets for renewable energy.
2009 Finalist TeamsAvi Clinics, Haas School of Business Avi Clinics envisions transforming rural healthcare in India by using telemedicine. Merely 3% of India’s qualified medical staff lives in rural India compared to 70% of its overall population. The current rural public healthcare infrastructure is woefully inadequate. Moreover, qualified doctors are reluctant to establish private practice in rural areas because of poor civil infrastructure. As a result, there is an abundance of qualified doctors in urban areas, where only highly specialized doctors eventually become successful in establishing profitable private practices. Avi Clinics intends to bridge the gap between rural patients who seek quality healthcare and the qualified urban doctors who struggle to sustain profitable practices. Avi Clinics will enable doctors in urban centers to provide medical services to rural patients over a wireless long distance network called WiLDNet, which was pioneered by Professor Eric Brewer of UC Berkeley. Castor & Pollux, Sasin Graduate Institute of Business Administration, Chulaongkorn University Castor & Pollux develops and commercializes LeptoSpotTM, a diagnostic kit for leptospirosis, a serious but neglected bacterial disease affecting 10 million people a year with 500 million at risk worldwide. Despite having inexpensive and widely available cure, leptospirosis kills so many people because it is difficult to diagnose. Its symptoms resemble those of many other diseases and its diagnosis requires complicated lab equipment and highly trained technicians, which are unavailable in rural areas of tropical countries where leptospirosis outbreaks predominantly occur. LeptoSpotTM solves this problem by using the nanogold technology and antigendetecting technique to provide early detection capability, simplicity of use, and affordability. It comes as a ready‐to‐use 0.5‐ml solution requiring no complicated labs or experienced technicians. Early and effective diagnosis leads to timely and suitable treatment which can lead to more lives saved. EcoFaeBrick, Prasetiya Mulya Business School EcoFaeBrick, in conjunction with Faerumnesia, produces high quality and low price bricks by utilizing the abundant cow dung in Godean and Sayegan, Jogjakarta. The utilization of the cow dung will not only solve the hygiene problem but also reduce the exploitation of the unrenewable clay. The replacement of firewood with the cow dung methane biogas in the combustion process brings a lower production cost with a more environmental friendly process. EcoFaeBrick also empowers rural people through close partnership with local communities. Using business model which involves the housing developers, NGOs, and local communities, EcoFaeBrick builds a sustainable market demand to ensure an interesting financial return to the investors. The EcoFaeBrick’s expansion plan focuses on areas with rapid development and high concentration of cattle farm. EcoFaeBrick offers a feasible solution for rapidly developing areas not only in Indonesia but also in other emerging countries. Gearch, London Business School Gearch is a Google powered search engine and portal that uses all the money generated by the searches to plant trees in tropical countries. Gearch provides search users the same result as Google and allows users to track their individual contribution by their “tree counter”. Once a user has a full tree, they choose the country where it will be planted and name it, giving a sense of ownership and achievement. This is reinforced by Gearch’s social networking component, which highlights the cumulative power of the small actions of many people. Gearch is already profitable and has planted over 200 trees in four different developing countries. We aim to plant almost 1m trees a year by 2012 and 74m trees a year by 2025. All our profits are reinvested into trees or other environmental projects. We work with highly reputable partner NGOs and our accounts will be audited and transparent. mPEDIGREE LOGISTICS, Tuck School of Business, Dartmouth mPedigree Logistics provides pharmaceutical companies with robust anti‐counterfeit solutions appropriate for emerging markets, with added value via mobile marketing and granular supply chain oversight. The WHO estimates that up to 30% of drugs sold in developing nations are fakes, containing little to no active ingredients or laced with malicious chemicals. The growing global counterfeit drug market is estimated to reach US $75 billion by 2010, forming about 10% of all global pharmaceutical trade. Our technology leverages the power of 4 billion cell phones worldwide. With our service, consumers can check their drugs before use with a simple text message. Genuine manufacturers can reclaim market share lost to counterfeiters while boosting sales with targeted advertisements at the point of purchase, a world‐first innovation. Pesinet, ESSEC Business School Pesinet is a not‐for‐profit international organization delivering a simple prevention and earlycare system for countries lacking medical resources. Pesinet was designed to offset the weaknesses of existing public healthcare systems and provide affordable healthcare services for children and pregnant women thanks to the periodic and cost‐efficient monitoring of key health data. By leveraging mobile technologies, proximity groundwork and a powerful micro‐health insurance system co‐financed by relatives outside the country, the service manages to significantly reduce mortality rates and emergency treatments and opens up job and learning opportunities for employees. For a monthly fee affordable to low‐income families, subscribers get periodic home‐based health check‐up by local agents, remote medical monitoring by the doctor of the local community health center, early‐detection and treatment of diseases and access to discounted medication. Pesinet started in Mali and is already demonstrating promising results in the field. Future deployments are planned in Burkina Faso and Niger. Pioneer Healthcare Services, Indian School of Business Many rural areas in India do not have accessible, affordable and professional healthcare facilities. In an effort to address the concern of this majority of population, we propose building a network of hospitals in rural areas that will be served by a 100‐bed central city hospital in a “Hub and Spoke” model. The city hospital at Chennai, a city in the state of Tamil Nadu, India will serve two 25‐bed rural centers, one each at Ponneri and Guduvancheri, two villages near Chennai. This is a high‐volume low‐cost model with emphasis on maximum resource utilization. Extensive use of Telemedicine and 24‐hr ambulance support will be the predominant means of connectivity. Local people would be trained as paramedical personnel for generating local employment. The total initial investment is estimated to be USD 3.8 million with an ROI of 36.11% over five years. The SROI has been calculated to be at 497%. Mauka, Columbia Business School Despite the much talked about growth phenomenon in India, the population below poverty line remains at 25% and stems from symptoms of a larger problem – unemployment, now at a staggering 7.2%. Ironically, due to the absence of an organized semi‐skilled sector, there is a dearth of people available for semi‐skilled jobs. Mauka thus aims to make a direct positive impact on these unemployed urban youth. Through the formation of a centralized call center, Mauka will assemble a cadre of individuals from disadvantaged backgrounds that have completed training programs through our partner organizations in any one of three specified trades: electrical work, plumbing, and auto repair. Our call center’s target segment includes corporations and households in need of reliable semi‐skilled technicians. As such, Mauka aims to bridge the gap between some of India’s harshest extremes through a multi‐fold plan to uplift urban youth through guaranteed job placement post‐training. SolarCycle, George Washington University School of Business SolarCycle's primary innovation is a low‐cost reflective material made from used plastic bags and the interior of metalized chip bags that can replace mirrors in solar concentrating applications for developing countries. We've designed this product to help low‐income urban Africans turn a local trash problem into a cheap, green and revolutionary new product that can assist rural people with both solar cooking and water pasteurization. SolarCycle will address the staggering environmental damage and negative health effects caused by contaminated drinking water and indoor air pollution in the developing world with its two products. A solar cooker made from our material would be durable and the most affordable on the market. Additionally, we have developed a novel pasteurizer design that takes advantage of a large collection area made possible by the low cost of our material to purify water for an entire village for ten years for only $350. UMMEED, S P Jain Institute of Management and Research, Mumbai, India Menstrual hygiene has been an unattended basic need, shrouded by myths and taboos. Majority of Indian women use cloth and other unhygienic means for protection during menstruation which often leads to vaginal infections, skin irritations and embarrassing stains in public. It also results in increased dropout rate of girls from schools, and decreased productivity in workplaces. UMMEED proposes a socially viable and commercially sustainable business model that runs on the principle ‘of the women, by the women, for the women’. We provide easy access to affordable sanitary napkins and create awareness among rural women on menstrual hygiene. Involving rural women right from production to distribution, we empower them economically by providing employment opportunities while also creating a huge social impact by providing access to better health conditions. Our model gains a competitive edge over local manufacturers in terms of quality and over MNCs in terms of affordability and accessibility. SIA Finalists ArtIsAn Art, Indian School of Business ArtIsAn Art is an enterprise driven solution to eliminate poverty and build sustainable livelihood opporunities for artisans. Artisans lack access to capital and institutional support resulting in an inability to participate in markets effectively. ArtIsAn Art aims at eliminating unfair appropriation of artisan wages by middlemen and at the creation of sustainable demand for artisan wares. ArtIsAn Art will form artisan collectives that help organize artisan communities and build efficiencies on the supply side. It will stimulate the demand for artisan products through extensive brand building and marketing via multiple sales channels. Funds will be made available to artisan collectives by facilitating capital access through banks, microfinance institutions and collective artisan corpuses. Artisan Art will set industry standards for ethical sourcing and fair trade practices. It will create sustainable livelihood opportunities for artisan communities and cause an increase in the absolute earnings of artisans and thus enable not only current but also future generations of artisans to practice their livelihood with fairness and dignity. Auto TB, UC Berkeley More than one‐third of the world’s population is infected with tuberculosis. Improved diagnostics are crucial in combating this growing epidemic. AutoTB’s device automates sputum microscopy, thereby decreasing analysis time, increasing sensitivity and eliminating human error present in current procedures while integrating into existing infrastructures and remaining affordable for developing countries. The medical and economic benefits of this device will provide a competitive advantage over existing technologies and make it marketable to NGOs and governmental health departments. Bright Mind LABS, University of Auckland There is fantastic educational gaming made for the likes of Nintendo. And it works. BrightMind Labs are applying these proven principles to meet psychological needs. By creating world‐class, clinically robust computer games that young people actually want to play, they aim to bring the therapist’s couch into the living room. Immersive gaming will be developed for the likes of depression, anxiety and post‐traumatic stress disorder. But first, BrightMind Labs will test and perfect their business model with their first product – a game created to teach children on the autistic spectrum to recognise and respond to emotions. Cambodia Project, Inc., Columbia Business School Cambodia Project, Inc. (CPI) is a not‐for‐profit organization committed to developing high quality secondary education for underserved children in rural Cambodia. CPI works in collaboration with communities to provide innovative and replicable school models, high quality transformative educational resources, and better trained teachers in both the public and private education systems. Each school will incorporate environmentally‐friendly technologies such as rooftop terraces, solar voltaic panels, and rain‐water capturing structures to supply fresh water. Based on CPI's model, each school will become financially self‐reliant and locally‐managed by the end of year five. CPI’s funding model incorporates resources from tuition, microfinance, agriculture, vocational and trade skills, and volunteer tourism. GoalSpring, Haas School of Business GoalSpring’s first product, DebtGoal, is an online subscription service for households revolving credit card debt. Our mission is to relieve the crippling effect that debt has on people and their communities. DebtGoal accommodates all debt accounts, including credit cards, auto loans, student loans, and mortgage debt. DebtGoal provides: (1) an organized and view of debt accounts with the best pay‐down strategy, (2) optimized monthly payments, saving users thousands in interest, (3) the insight to help users take control of their credit scores, (4) help negotiating with creditors and other recommendations to accelerate debt pay‐down, and (5) regular progress reports and payment alerts. DebtGoal helps customers increase their credit score while they make progress on their debt balances – differentiating it strongly from other “get out of debt services” such as Credit Counseling and Debt Settlement. |