Leading Indian companies unite to launch social businesses
Yunus Social Business in India and Tata Trusts have jointly rolled out an initiative—Indian Corporate Action Tank (ICAT)—in Mumbai to create corporate social businesses in a bid to address social issues such as nutrition, healthcare, sanitation and housing.
The ICAT will also drive innovation for the poor, Yunus Centre said in a statement yesterday.
Sudhir Mungantiwar, finance minister of Maharashtra; Deepak Vasant Kesarkar, state minister for planning of the state, chief executives and senior officials of leading corporations of India also took part in the India Social Business Forum.
The companies that have so far publicly announced their decisions to have joined the ICAT are Tata Trust, Tata Steel, RPG Group, and Danone India.
Another 10 companies have signed up and are waiting to complete their organisational procedure to be able to announce their participation in the collective initiative, according to the statement.
The ICAT will be India's first platform for large corporations to create in-house corporate social businesses that leverage their core business skills to address social problems in a financially sustainable way.
“The Corporate Action Tank, India is an exciting idea. It is the beginning of an entirely new business ecosystem,” Nobel Peace Laureate Muhammad Yunus said at the launch. “Personal-profit-centric businesses can create social businesses to solve human problems -- that is the message of this initiative.”
The founder of Grameen Bank said a group of top Indian corporate houses are joining hands not to discuss the necessity of getting businesses to pay attention to the social problems around them, but to roll up their sleeves for getting busy with actual problem-solving through social business methodology.
“This is a historic moment for India, and also for the whole world.”
Ganesh Neelam, head of innovation of Tata Trusts, said: “At Tata Trusts, we believe that focused, innovative and replicable interventions in close coordination with the community are the future of sustainable development.”
“With an increased corporate focus on creating impact on ground, the Indian Corporate Action Tank will act as a spring-board to create social businesses that will enhance the quality of life of the underserved communities.”
Neelam said Tata Trusts will provide guidance to these social businesses in terms of understanding the challenges on ground and provide its strong community connect towards piloting them and ultimately scaling up the businesses in close coordination with community institutions.
Senior officials from Sodexo India, Mahindra, UTV Group, RPG Enterprises, Apollo and Wockhardt were also present at the launch.
The ministers along with Prof Yunus also launched a new social business fund in Bengaluru bankrolled by Vinatha M Reddy from her family foundation.
The fund—Yunus Social Business Fund Bengaluru—has an initial capital of $2.5 million and will invest in social businesses in Karnataka and neighbouring states. Reddy is the founder of the leading Indian microfinance bank Grameen Koota.
Yunus was also a keynote speaker at the annual philanthropy forum organised by Azim H Premji, chairman of WIPRO, and Jamshyd Godrej, chairman of Godrej & Boyce, together with Microsoft Founder Bill Gates.
The Bangladeshi economist also appeared at a literature festival called Tata Lit Live, at the National Centre for Performing Arts in Mumbai, on a special panel with P Chidambaram, former finance minister of India, to speak on "Banking for the bottom billion".
On Saturday, the microcredit pioneer addressed the CEOs of 10 Tata companies in an exclusive meeting organised by Tata Group.
Source Link: http://www.thedailystar.net/business/leading-indian-companies-unite-launch-social-businesses-1318462
Source: The Daily Star
Updated Date: 13th March, 2017