This time last year, we published a report charting the rise of social venture incubation around the world. One place where this kind of Good Incubation is really taking off is India:

• Impact accelerators - The Villgro Incubator, based in Chennai, supports experienced entrepreneurs looking to develop for-profit business that support agriculture, education, energy and healthcare in rural areas.

• Co-working spaces - Bombay Connect is Mumbai’s first member-only co-working space for social ventures, offering space, support and events.

• Social Venture Academies - Dasra is an Indian philanthropic foundation that runs Dasra Social-Impact, a training program for leaders in nonprofits and social ventures which provides funds, networks and teaching to support scale-ups.

• Impact angel networks - The Intellecap Impact Investment Network, set up in 2011, is India’s first angel investment network focused on plugging the demand for funding from pre-VC Indian social enterprises in region of 100,000-500,000 USD.

• Social Venture prizes and competitions - The Artha Venture Challenge is a national challenge for Indian social entrepreneurs interested in agriculture, energy and livelihoods. It supports cohorts of up to 15 social entrepreneurs and provides the opportunity to pitch for up to US$50k of matched funding.

Our new project

Over the next year, we’ll be collaborating with the Department for International Development to understand the landscape of social venture support in India, and to identify exciting new models of support.

We’ll also explore how organizations like DfID could make their support more effective and impactful.

We’ll be taking a particular focus on the lower income states, where support is comparatively thin on the ground, and business ecosystems are far less developed.

We’ll publish the results of our research later this year, so look out for that, but also for an ongoing programme of activities with incubator managers and investors.

Collaborate with us

We’re already working with some great partners and programmes like Innovative Ventures & Technologies for Development, Bethnal Green Ventures, Villgro, and Intellecap  and we’ll be at the Sankalp forum in Delhi in April.

We’d like to help build the connections between UK and India in this important area, as well as helping social venture incubators to improve their impact, so please drop us a line if you’d like to help.

To get in touch, contact [email protected] and if you are interested in more inspiring innovation stories worldwide, take a look at Learning from Global Innovation.

Photo Credit: World Bank Photo Collection via Compfight cc