13 Feb Weekly Roundup, 13.02.2015: Eye care, health education and an increase in CSR spends

In this week’s roundup we share details of a new eye care facility, focus on digital education, list India’s CSR spends and showcase the winners of a social entrepreneurship challenge.

Assam-based ERC Eye Care has opened its first hub hospital in Sivasagar on February 6, 2015. Using its award-winning eye care products and services, ERC plans to provide basic eye care to the underserved people in the district and neighboring areas. In December 2013, Ennovent Impact Investment Holding and Ankur Capital along with Ennovent Circle members, Beyond Capital Fund and Sadeesh Raghavan had closed an angel investment round in ERC Eye Care. Speaking about the launch of ERC Eye Care’s first hub hospital, Peter Scheuch, Managing Director at Ennovent said, “Ennovent’s Impact Investment Holding invested in ERC as we believed in their unique model of providing affordable, quality eye care. At that time, ERC aimed to expand their operations by starting their first hub hospital and it makes everyone at Ennovent very happy to see this plan come to fruition.”

Bodhi Health Education delivers low-cost, efficient training systems for rural health workers on tablets, smartphones and computers. Bodhi tailors the training content to the needs of community health workers, many of whom have limited formal education. The success in building Bodhi can be attributed to their participation in a three-day boot camp in Singapore organised by the DBS-NUS Social Venture Challenge Asia. This competition provided them with access to experienced mentors who helped them to validate and refine their business model and challenge them to establish partnerships overseas.

Information Technology companies in India are likely to triple their Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) spend over the next three years, according to the head of NASSCOM. The IT sector currently spends an estimated Rs 2,500 crore towards CSR which is expected to rise to Rs 8,000 crore.

The reduction in costs of producing energy from the sun makes it feasible for both small entrepreneurs and big business to enter the solar energy sector. The government of India earlier targeted the installation of 20,000 MW of solar power in India. This target has now been increased to 100 GW of solar power. Thus, solar energy has transitioned from being merely corporate social responsibility to opening up a sea of opportunities within a span of four to five years.

Finally, SAANS from Bangalore (Winner), Godavari Women Weaver’s Services Producer Company (GWWSPC) from Mandapeta, Andhra Pradesh (first runners-up) and Ultrasafe Ultrasound from Kolkata (second runners-up) emerged as the top three most promising social ventures at the Tata Social Enterprise Challenge 2014-15. The Challenge had aimed to find India’s most promising early-stage social ventures, while creating an ecosystem for social entrepreneurships.

As impact partners for the DBS-NUS Social Venture Challenge Asia 2015 Ennovent is hosting a series of business modelling workshops across four cities in India- Jaipur, Kolkata, Pune and Hyderabad.