“Social Enterprises, The Next Destination For Entreprenueurs”: A Talk By Mr. Mahesh Kanumury
Date: Fri May 02, 2014 - Fri May 02, 2014
Location: Asian Confluence Centre, Shillong , Hosts: Asian Confluence
Location: Asian Confluence Centre, Shillong , Hosts: Asian Confluence
An interactive session was organised by Asian Confluence where Mr. Mahesh Kanumury, founder and managing director of Arivali Partners, addressed a cross section of the society and emphasised on the aspect of innovation as a tool to foster developmental initiatives in North East region of India. The brainstorming session was an initiative of Asian Confluence under its innovation talk series.
Mr. Kanumury’s Arivali Partners is a venture capital firm, specializing in social enterprises benefiting the bottom of the pyramid and provides advisory and investment services to for profit social enterprises that have the potential to become $1B+ organizations and impact 1M+ lives. His focus areas are the rural economy and clean energy and he is already working in Meghalaya and Tripura in the region.
In his talk Mr. Kanumury highlighted several examples about innovations where the rural poor are provided with an opportunity to save their money in banks something they could never think of earlier. Another innovation which he talked about was to make readymade precast homes welded up to a size which are later stationed in the rural belts, a low-cost housing initiative that could immensely benefit the poor. Although such houses are better than normal houses in terms of structural properties and finishing, the major drawback, he informed, was that once manufactured the houses cannot be renovated. A very unique disruptive patented innovation which he spoke extensively about was nano-technology based nutrient that has shown remarkable results in the field which include significant increase of yield, reduction of pesticides and fertilizers and increase in the quality of produce. “This disruptive technique can create far reaching impact especially to small and marginal farmer and improve the quality of the soil which has been degraded with the use of excessive of chemical and fertilizer,” he said. He also said that this particular technology is disrupting conventional agricultural wisdom in a number of dimensions.
He also pointed that India has a massive problem of arid lands and fuel. Such problems, he reckons, could be solved by way of commercial growth of Pongamia plantation. “Pongamia, hardy plants, grows in dry and arid lands, and its fruits can be crushed / refines to generate biodiesel. Then it can put into the diesel engine and the pulp can be used as bio-fertilizer and bio-pesticides. The entire process is net-carbon nutrient no net-pollution in the air,” he said adding that these plants have the ability, over 15 to 20 years time, make the soil fertile. “So the farmers’ can increase income by 5 to 10 times by planting these trees, with environment benefit, farmer benefit company benefit,” he added.
The interactive session deliberated many key issues. Mr. Mahesh opined that to implement a small good idea at the micro level can be a good idea in the region. In regards to Meghalaya, he emphasised on making the state a test bed for all the innovative companies, with plausible support from the government, so that it can truly benefit from such initiatives.
