Villgro and Intellecap Partner to Build a Comprehensive Ecosystem for Social Entrepreneurs

Villgro and Intellecap to jointly host Asia’s largest “Sankalp Unconvention Summit 2013”, with regional events in smaller cities, to provide knowledge, training, incubation , funding and investment support to innovative Social Entrepreneurs. 

Today, Villgro and Intellecap announced a strategic partnership that will use the extensive experience and networks of both organizations to assist social entrepreneurs developing innovative business models across India. This combination of resources and expertise will promote a broader national-level collaborative plan to identify and nurture competitive enterprises focused on creating market solutions for the Base of the Pyramid.

Intellecap launched the Sankalp Forum in 2009 to create a supporting environment for socially driven small and medium enterprises. Its Annual Summit has been Asia’s largest social enterprise event, connecting entrepreneurs with impact investors year after year. Villgro incubates, funds and supports early stage innovative social enterprises that impact the lives of the rural poor. Its flagship event, Unconvention offers social enterprises a multitude of resources such as networks and knowledge to take ideas to market.The two organizations will now jointly organize the annual “Sankalp Unconvention Summit” in Mumbai in April 2013 to create a substantially larger gathering of entrepreneurs, investors, donors, policy makers and other stakeholders, with over 1,000 delegates expected over the three days. Year-round, the Intellecap-Villgro partnership will ensure greater provision of and access to incubation, advisory and mentoring services and more frequent and better-prepared introductions to investors. More critically, the partnership will focus on bringing events and programs sponsored by Intellecap and Villgro to smaller cities and new regions around India where ecosystems for innovation and social entrepreneurship are underdeveloped or nonexistent.

Villgro and Intellecap will together provide a comprehensive range of initiatives to deepenand expand the Indian social enterprise ecosystem. Villgro plans to inspire, discover and nurture budding entrepreneurial spirits through its program ‘Unconvention-L’, a series of local events in Tier 2 and 3 cities across India. Unconvention-L, with Intellecap as a supporting partner, also hopes to develop city-specific hubs of entrepreneurship that become catalysts for future activities. In addition, Intellecap, largely through the Sankalp Forum, will continue to design and deliver capacity-building workshops that provide technical knowledge and skills to social enterprises and will expand these activities to a variety of locations across the country, with a particular focus on the Low Income States. Intellecap will also continue to offer its Investment Banking, Consulting, and Knowledge Services to social enterprises across the country while also managing and supporting its Impact Investment Network (I3N) for “angel investors” seeking investment opportunities in young social enterprises.Paul Basil, Founder and CEO, Villgro stated: “It’s time that action moved from Mumbai and Delhi, deeper into other cities across India. Through this partnership, we hope to inspire, discover, mentor many more innovative social entrepreneurs and thereby create vibrant local ecosystems.”

Anurag Agrawal, Chief Operating Officer of Intellecap stated: “We are very pleased to enter into this partnership with Villgro. Together we will be able to build a substantially broader and deeper ecosystem for social enterprises across India based on the relative strengths and different experiences and expertise of the two organizations. We are expecting the Sankalp Unconvention Summit in April 2013 to be a larger and better event than ever, and we are looking forward to collaborating with our partners at Villgro to make this happen.”