24 Jan Weekly Roundup, 24.01.2015: From Tiger conservation to social innovation

In this week’s roundup we promote tiger conservation practices, list the trends in social innovation and share news about investments, programs and competitions in the social impact space.

We would like to end this week with some excellent news that the tiger population in India has increased by 30 per cent since 2011. With the figure climbing from 1706 to 2226, India is now home to 70% of the world’s tigers. Tiger conservation practices that had proved successful in India is likely to be adopted in other countries. India is also willing to donate tiger cubs to the international community and play a key role in global tiger conservation.

2015 is widely expected to be a game-changing year in the field of social innovation. To be ahead of the curve, it is important to be creative, forward-thinking and incredibly innovative when it comes to designing new products, services and brands. We list the ten top social innovation trends of 2015, which can be transformed into actionable opportunities which can become for-profit enterprises in the year to come.

The Xavier School of Management in Jamshedpur will host the 7th edition of the National Conference on Social Entrepreneurship from 31st January to 1st February, 2015. The theme of the two-day conference is The Young Changemakers: Youth as Social Entrepreneurs. The conference provides young social entrepreneurs and sector professionals a platform to share their stories, challenges and innovations while creating opportunities to learn from each other and develop solutions and partnerships.

In some investment news, Villgro Innovations has raised Rs 20 crore (over $3.2 million) from Michael & Susan Dell Foundation (MSDF) for incubating and funding education startups. Across three years the social enterprise incubator plans to fund and mentor startups operating in the school education and skills development space.

Three social ventures – SAANS from Bangalore, Godavari Women Weaver’s Services Producer Company from Andhra Pradesh and Ultrasafe Ultrasound from Kolkata – have been selected as the ‘most promising’ in the third edition of the Tata Social Enterprise Challenge 2014-15. The challenge aims to create an ecosystem and support early-stage social entrepreneurships. SAANS – a low-cost, easy-to-use mechanical device to help keep newborns’ lungs open during troubled breathing – were declared as the winners of the challenge.

Through Ennovent’s Discover Challenges you can design and run public competitions to globally source innovations. Client benefits include global visibility, diffusion of knowledge and opportunities to scale