This past Saturday, Sehat First held an inauguration ceremony for its first health clinic in the village of Chashma Goth, a remote fishing village on the coastal outskirts of Karachi.
Sehat First is a social enterprise that provides quality health consultation services and pharmacy services to lower income communities. Each clinic provides healthcare support to patients using an e-sehat (health) tele-consulting application that remotely links up doctors and specialists with their patients via the Internet.
Remote. That is what really resonated when I saw the location of the village. Even though it was only thirty minutes outside Karachi, the population was sparse with limited access to many social services like health facilities and education centers. These are the forgotten...
Editor’s note: New blogger Ajay Nair is a Portfolio Associate based in New York City. He holds degrees in medicine and public health.
What role can markets play in providing health services to the poor in developing countries? This was the theme of Acumen Fund’s Health Breakfast last week, which was presented by Omer Imtiazuddin, Acumen’s Health Portfolio Manager.
Omer started out by discussing how 40 to 60 percent of the population in our geographies (India, Pakistan and East Africa) currently use the private sector for health services (For example, see How Private Health Care Can Help Africa, McKinsey Quarterly). These services are generally not available to the base of the pyramid at an affordable price. Consequently, in India for example, 24 percent of all people...
Last night, I was part of an overflow crowd squeezed into an overheated room, waiting 15, 30, 45 minutes to hear a speech on the future of social entrepreneurship. For whom do 200-plus people squeeze into a room set for 75 on a random Thursday night in the middle of June: Muhammad Yunus? Bill Drayton? Jeff Sachs? No, no and no again.
Not to say that Neil Blumenthal, Eni Bakallbashi, Lalita Advani and Bhakti Mirchandani aren’t worthy of the attention – they absolutely are. But when you get down to it, people came to last night’s event, “The Value Chain of Social Entrepreneurship: How Young Professionals Can Get Involved,” not to hear from a superstar speaker, but rather to get actionable, inspirational advice from their peers.
Bhakti, for instance, suggested that aspiring...
Congratulations to Aravind Eye Hospital for being awarded the 2008 Gates Award for Public Health, which carries a $1 million prize. Aravind joins rare company – previous winners of the Gates Award include the Rotary Foundation, Bangladesh Rural Advancement Committee, The Carter Center and other public health luminaries.
The award is well-deserved. We have known Aravind since Acumen Fund was first established, and although Aravind was one of the first organizations supported by us, it is Acumen Fund who stands proudly on the shoulders of Aravind and not the other way around. Dr. Venkataswamy, who sadly passed away in 2006, founded Aravind in 1976 at the age of 58. His goal: eradicate needless blindness in India.
Dr. V. and his team – mostly family members, including his seven...
Today, Acumen Fund welcomes a new class of fifteen Summer Associates – undergraduate and graduate students who will spend their summers working closely with our team. These associates bring a wealth of real-world and academic experience to bear on our work, and we’re very pleased to have them with us. Some will spend the summer in our New York office; others will be based out of our offices in Nairobi, Karachi and Hyderabad.
These Associates – much like our Fellows – represent Acumen Fund’s commitment to building talent in the social sector. Not only will we benefit immensely from the Summer Associates’ work, but we hope they will leave us in 11 weeks with a better understanding of the role of business in driving social change.
By way of introducing them to our broader...
Yesterday morning, E+Co Executive Vice President (and Acumen Fund ally) Christine Eibs-Singer kicked off a morning summer associate training with the great news that E+Co had won the Financial Times award for sustainable investor of the year. We’ve always been fans of E+Co’s work and approach, and want to congratulate their entire team on this well-deserved award.
Christine was leading a session on E+Co’s strategy and approach as part of a training we had coordinated with the Aspen Network for Development Entrepreneurs. The training is bringing together 3 to 8 summer associates from each of E+Co, Root Capital, Agora Partnerships and Acumen Fund (generously hosted by Lehman Brothers) to kick off the associates’ summer work.
During introductions, I noticed some real differences...
Last week, Yasmina Zaidman led a Net Impact Issues in Depth call, on which she shared Acumen Fund’s model and our rationale for focusing on entrepreneurship as an approach to addressing critical issues related to poverty. Listen to the call - “Entrepreneurial Models for Addressing Poverty in the Developing World” - at the Net Impact site (paid members only). Issues in Depth calls provide paid Net Impact members with the opportunity to interact with various representatives of business and social sector organizations. Topics covered include corporate social responsibility, nonprofit management, international development, social entrepreneurship, cause marketing and more.
Based on recent and upcoming topics, there seems to be a real interest in the role of enterprise in the...
Can you imagine a world in which water is so scarce, it has to be transported to your community via a government-operated train or if the only safe way for you to consume your morning glass of water is via a dirty pond with a 12-inch long filtering straw? Believe it or not, for billions of people across the world, quick fixes like these are their everyday reality.
1.2 billion people lack access to safe drinking water; 2.4 billion lack access to improved sanitation (UNEP). Adrien Couton, Acumen’s Water Portfolio Manager, cited these statistics – and others – at Acumen Fund’s Water breakfast this week. Despite such sobering numbers, I came away from the breakfast with a sense of hope that even though there is no silver bullet, we are getting closer to understanding how to...
As I walked into Desmond Tutu Center in New York on Thursday night, I wasn’t quite sure what to expect from the social networking event hosted by Good Capital. Good Capital is an investment fund aiming to accelerate the flows of capital to social enterprises, and they successfully convened an incredible group of colleagues, investors, and friends.
Just to give you a sense of the event, my first conversation was with two women from Scojo Foundation, an Acumen Fund investee that reduces poverty and generates opportunity through the sale of affordable reading glasses. I then had the pleasure of talking with Tim Freundlich, a partner at Good Capital, who - among other things - told me of the upcoming conference they are hosting in San Francisco in October. This was followed by a...
Pangea Day is an international event that will bring the world together through film.
In a world where people are often divided by borders, difference, and conflict, it’s easy to lose sight of what we all have in common. Pangea Day seeks to overcome that - to help people see themselves in others - through the power of film. (Watch Pangea Day organizer Jehane Noujaim’s TED Talk about the concept; Noujaim is a 2006 TED Prize winner.)
Live events in Cairo, Kigali, London, Los Angeles, Mumbai and Rio de Janeiro will be linked for a program of powerful films, live music, and visionary speakers including Queen Noor of Jordan, CNN’s Christiane Amanpour, musician/activist Bob Geldof, and Iranian rock phenom Hypernova. Pangea Day is a live broadcast - in seven languages -...
This past Tuesday in New York, Acumen Fund hosted a breakfast featuring Aun Rahman, our Pakistan Country Director and longtime Acumen Fund employee. The event began with Omer Imtiazuddin – Acumen’s health portfolio manager – introducing Aun. Before joining Acumen Fund, Aun worked for five years in economic and strategy consulting at Charles River Associates in Boston, specializing in financial modeling and quantitative analysis. Aun joined Acumen in 2003 as a Fellow, working for 18 months our investee, Saiban, to structure and incubate an affordable commercial housing project in Lahore and to develop the organization’s management information systems.
In 2005, he became Acumen Fund’s Country Manager in Pakistan. Originally from Karachi, Aun came to the United States...
I have had the privilege of interning with Helen Ng, Acumen Fund’s Housing Portfolio Manager, for the past couple of months, and I wanted to share some perspectives with you. I hail from the private sector and am currently a business school student at Columbia here in New York City. It’s been a fantastic ride here at Acumen Fund, and an eye-opening one at that.
One thing that I learned quickly was that Acumen Fund truly embraces the importance of addressing problems faced by the BoP with a business mentality. When we look at potential deals, the first litmus test is always: “is this an economically-viable business model?” With several ex-Wall Street-ers at Acumen, concepts such as cash flow and ROI invariably work their way into discussions about potential and current...
Dorah’s Senye Clinic in Kibera has a new addition today: A small refrigerator that allows her to add immunizations to her list of services.
“I’ve always had to send customers to immunize their children elsewhere,” Dorah describes. “No smart business-person sends customers away.”
With limited resources, Dorah has to work extra hard to meet customer demands. But she continues to find innovative ways to meet her customers needs. And they respond … Dorah is one of the most successful franchisees in the network.
I arrive to Senye today just in time to see Grace bring her 2 month old son to the clinic. Grace could take Trevor down the road for free immunizations, but chooses to pay the small fee at Senye because: 1) Dorah met her demand and 2) Dorah...
Yesterday in New York, I had the pleasure of attending a round table organized by the Council on Foreign Relations entitled The Commercialization of Microfinance: The Good, The Bad and The Ugly. Moderated by CFR Senior Fellow Isobel Coleman, the discussion featured comments from Mary Ellen Iskenderian (of Women’s World Banking) and Roshaneh Zafar (of the Kashf Foundation.)
I arrived early, set up my laptop and grabbed a bite to eat (if you’re curious, the CFR building is beautiful and they do a good lunch spread). Before I was through my sandwich, the room had filled to capacity and CFR staffers were scrambling to set up overflow seating – there’s clearly a lot of interest in the recent controversy surrounding microfinance. It was quickly apparent that women outnumbered...
What’s big, red and innovative all over? No, it’s not Clifford’s supremely creative cousin – it’s Entrepreneurship@Cornell. A university-wide initiative, Entrepreneurship@Cornell is unique in bringing together students, faculty, alumni and outside experts across a range of sectors (hospitality, biotech, real estate, venture capital, law and more were all represented at the event I attended last week). Other universities could learn from Cornell’s approach – a truly multidisciplinary program is hard to find in academia, so kudos to the Big Red for getting this one right.
I went to Ithaca last Thursday and Friday to participate in Entrepreneurship@Cornell’s annual celebration. The 2 day event featured a gala dinner, entrepreneur expo and – of course...
Last week, Jacqueline and I attended the Global Philanthropy Forum, a three day conference convening donors, social entrepreneurs, political leaders, academics and activists to discuss problems and solutions in the areas of global security, human rights, violent conflict, resource scarcity and health.
Bishop Desmond Tutu gave an inspiring and wide-ranging talk at the opening plenary, notwithstanding a bad case of the flu. He spoke of the recent violence in Kenya and the vulnerability of any country to a similar situation when colonial structures persist, leaving one group as top dog. He spoke of his hope that Zimbabwe will come through its current difficult period and that Robert Mugabe will step down or otherwise leave office. Even so, Tutu warned, there is a long road for recovery ahead...
“Great” is often thought of as better than “good.” Not in this case. What I mean to say is that GOOD is great; GOOD Magazine, that is. We at Acumen Fund are happy to congratulate longtime ally Jonathan Greenblatt on his new job: CEO of GOOD Magazine, another Acumen Fund ally.
We’ve worked with Jonathan through WorldChanging, the Global Entrepreneurship XPrize, and Ethos Water - which he co-founded, sold to Starbucks and helped scale. (As of today, Ethos has raised over $6.2 million dollars towards clean water projects in the developing world.) We are thrilled to know that we can continue working with him now that he’s at GOOD.
And just a reminder, when you subscribe to GOOD, your subscription fee is donated to Acumen Fund. GOOD magazine, good cause!...
I just returned from an energizing trip to the University of Virginia, which is both Jacqueline’s and my alma mater. At UVA, I taught two classes in the business school’s newly developed Integrated Core Experience (ICE) program - one on Acumen Fund and the other on Social Venture Capital. The students - all undergraduates - were an engaged and inquisitive group. Throughout the 7-week course, the students are exploring different ways to approach global poverty, ranging from a charity-based model to a market-based approach.
There were two really exciting things about this trip. First, I continue to be energized by the way top universities are integrating the field of social entrepreneurship into their core curriculum. This is really an essential piece of what we are doing in our...
Last night, Acumen Fund hosted the Muslim Finance Professionals Association of New York for an event entitled “NY MFPA and Acumen Fund evening.” (Suggestions for better event titles are welcome.) More than 40 people gathered over snacks and drinks to hear Omer Imtiazuddin and Adrien Couton, Acumen’s health and water portfolio managers, describe our social investment fund business model and methodology.
Spirited Q&A followed Omer’s and Adrien’s remarks, ranging from questions on Acumen’s rate of return to how we define and measure social impact. Particularly interesting were repeated calls for those in the room to use their extensive networks – the Indian and Pakistani diasporas, local finance professional associations and university alumni networks – to...
Today, April 1, marks Acumen Fund’s seventh birthday. Seven years; the so-called age of reason, a time for making the move from fledgling organization to an institution - with a robust heart and mind, legs growing stronger all the time and still abounding with energy. Reflecting today, I’m amazed at how quickly time has passed, how much has changed, how much has been accomplished, how we’re just getting started.
Seven years ago, we set out to build an institution that would help change philanthropy, build more focus and accountability into solving big problems, and use the market as a guide to listening to poor people as customers and not as passive recipients of charity. We were a team of four with no road map. I remember our first COO, Dan Toole (now an Advisory Board...
I remember my time at the Skoll World Forum last year as one of my favorite weeks during the fellowship. The opportunity to spend time with the fellows and share our stories, reconnect with Acumen Fund, and participate in inspiring conversations around social entrepreneurship was truly a magical experience. I was very excited to return this year and was even able to convince IDEO’s CEO, Tim Brown and Co-Creative Officer, June Fulton Suri, to join me.
The Forum did not let anyone down and the excitement I felt upon arrival has stayed with me since. The energy and optimism around social entrepreneurs and those supporting them is incredible. Participating in discussions about scale, microfranchising, and climate change were especially stimulating and the lens of culture, which was a focus...
For me last week, it was a week of reunions, inspiration, and hope. We kicked it off with the 2008 Fellows’ Mid Year Meeting. The 3-day reunion allowed us to reconnect as a group, discuss challenges the fellows face in the field, share success stories, brainstorm solutions, support the fellows’ career development and - perhaps most importantly - just be together.
We designed the Acumen Fund Fellows Program to provide much-needed support to our investees, and to build leaders to push the sector forward. It is our sincere hope that they will do it together and support each other for many years in the future. As such, ensuring that the fellows grow as a cohort is an important dimension for us as an organization.
The importance of community was never more front and center than during the...
I had the privilege of participating in a panel during this week’s Skoll World Forum about performance measurement. Called Mirror, Mirror On The Wall What’s the Impact of This All?, I was joined by Joe Madiath of Gram Vikas, Jeroo Billimoria of Aflatoun, David Bonbright of Keystone and Fay Twersky of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. I think that, in the past five years, there has been a remarkable convergence among both funders and practitioners in our community regarding the need to develop rigorous performance metrics. Thankfully, there’s also an emerging consensus around the need to be careful about how much impact can be attributed to our various programs.
Roger Martin, Dean of the Rotman School of Management and a Skoll Foundation Board Member summarized the areas of...
Thursday afternoon of the Skoll World Forum also offered so many interesting panels that the choice of which to attend was hard. Editor’s note: this was not the first time Ann had a hard choice of panels this week. I buzzed between a panel called “Mirror, Mirror on the Wall, What’s the Impact of this All?” which tackled social impact and metrics to track it (Acumen’s Chief Investment Officer, Brian Trelstad, was a panelist) and another called “Addressing the Talent Gap,” on which Acumen’s Talent Manager, Deepti Doshi, was a panelist.
Marc Freedman, CEO of Civic Ventures, was also on the Talent panel and described his organization’s initiatives redirecting mid- to late-career executives in the private sector to work with social entrepreneurs and innovators addressing...
I had the honor to play a small part in the last session of the Skoll Foundation’s World Forum this year.
The first speaker, Paul Collier - author of The Bottom Billion: Why the Poorest Countries are Failing and What Can Be Done About It - is a longtime hero and advisor to Acumen Fund. He spoke of the need to move beyond thinking about the bottom billion as consumers of products but rather as producers. He went on to talk about the need to think in broader terms about bringing a combination of business skills, public finance to enable the business environment, and real and concerted public action to bear. Mr. Collier also discussed the critical need to focus on job creation and on bringing affordable basic services like water, healthcare, housing, energy and education to...
Last week, 600 individuals — including a number of leading professionals from India who sacrificed their Holi, Easter, Eid Milad and/or Navroz holidays with their families – gathered in Philadelphia for the 12th annual Wharton India Economic Forum. This conference was founded in 1996 by then-Wharton student, Vinnie Badinehal, now Managing Director at Merrill Lynch (the lead sponsor for the conference), who recognized the value of a shared dialogue on the opportunities and challenges in India, long before India was in the media spotlight.
What was perhaps most exciting to me, as an Acumen Fund team member, was that every panel - not just the development panel - talked about the need for more inclusive growth in India, to take into account the 70 percent of the population that lives...
Thursday morning’s break-out panels were difficult to choose among. I had every intention of visiting several, but ended up staying the full two hours at the panel called “Hybrid and For-Profit Business Models,” moderated by David Brancaccio, host and senior editor of NOW on PBS.
The room was packed. Tina Seelig, Executive Director of the Stanford Technology Ventures program talked about an international competition in which business school teams are given 5 days and one Post-It pad to come up with a project that “creates value” under any definition. 95% of the projects submitted were social enterprises.
We also heard from Tralance Addy, President and CEO of Waterhealth International (WHI), an Acumen investee. Tralance described a dam - built 40 years ago in...
The opening session of the Skoll World Forum last night was a terrific reminder of the value of bringing different perspectives together and having the chance to stop and listen and reflect on the work that we do. The two most memorable speakers in the formal program, in my opinion, were Phil Hope, the Minister of the Third Sector in the UK, and Karen Tse, of International Bridges to Justice, a network of legal clinics and public defenders working for judicial reform around the world.
The Minister’s comments were the most forward thinking and provocative about the social enterprise that I had heard from an elected official: he talked about how social enterprises can tap into capital markets, how we might be able to create a social stock exchange, and the need for more transparency and...
(Photo: Gabriel Kadidi)
It has been several weeks since both Pakistan and Kenya began to experience political and social unrest.??As Jacqueline initially reported (here??and here), Acumen Fund???s communities on the ground remain safe, but the environment in both countries has taken a decided turn for the worse.
The past weeks in Kenya have been heartbreaking. Tremendous excitement about an election year has turned to frustration over the process and its impact on the country???s stability.?? Kenya was on the rise as an economic model for East Africa. Acumen Fund investee Jamii Bora had overcome legal obstacles to begin to realize the dream of Nairobi???s poorest to build a new town for its members. By December, nearly 500 homes were under construction???Dedan ??? JB???s bicycle messenger...
This past Sunday, March 4, nearly 1,000 people gathered to learn and exchange ideas at Harvard’s business school conference on “Social Enterprise.” The phrase is sufficiently broad to cover a wide range of issues, from socially responsible business to business-like social change and everything in between. The aim of the conference, according to its co-chairs, is to engage a broad set of institutions across sectors to “turn dreams into reality,” and the theme of bringing pragmatic approaches to achieving lofty goals for social justice was woven strongly throughout the day’s discussions. Victoria Hale exemplified this in her opening keynote when she talked about the way that her non-profit pharmaceutical company was engaging with corporations, foundations and governments to...