Winners of India's Top Social Enterprise Honors Announced


MUMBAI: The rigorous Sankalp Social Enterprise Awards announced their 6th set of winners after an application, evaluation, and mentoring process that lasted over 6 months. Out of the 165 applications received only for operational, revenue-earning early stage enterprises, 24 finalists were selected. These were companies with the highest potential for immediate scale. Interestingly, 21 of these 24 finalists have operations in India’s low income states like Jharkhand, Chattisgarh and Odisha.

Aparajita Agrawal, Director – Sankalp Forum, said, "The true impact potential of social enterprises is at the base of the economic pyramid, therefore seeing an operational focus in low income regions of India is extremely encouraging." She added, "This year's process also had about 46 percent of the finalists in growth stage, seeking equity to tap newer geographies and markets. In fact, the average ticket size that each enterprise is looking to raise in equity is close to INR 9 crore."

The winners for 2014 are:

Agriculture, Food & Livelihoods: Swayambhu Biologics

Swayambhu has created a revolutionary and proprietary compost technology titled Accelerated Rapid Biological Intervention Technology, which is a first of its kind in the world.  It composts bio waste in 14 days as against the existing 90-120 days. ARBIT PROM is directly sold to sugarcane farmers through schemes promoted by respective industries and the money is collected through their payment adjustment systems. In one crushing season alone, Swayambhu processed 25000 tonnes of pressmud producing 15000 tonnes of PROM reaching out to 3000 farmers and 15000 acres in 4 industrial areas and expects to grow exponentially.

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