GIZ-Samhita Social Ventures launches Corporate-Startup Partnership for BoP market

New Delhi, Aug 12 (KNN) In a bid to foster mutually beneficial partnerships between corporates and social enterprises to pilot innovative solutions for the Botton of Pyramid (BoP) market.  The Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) in association with Samhita Social Ventures announced Pilot Innovative Solutions for the BoP market.

The main focus of the initiative is to identify and tackle a problem in the BoP market at a ready to pilot stage. These can either come from a social enterprise or a corporate. The Innovative solutions deploys criteria that studies disruptiveness, scalability and replicability and their potential for collaboration among others.

The support provided under the initiative includes the identification of the right pilot partner for these solutions, the development of the partnership model between the corporate and the social enterprise for piloting the solution, the design of the pilot, the providence of technical assistance to execute the pilot as well as the monitoring of the impact created through the partnership by conducting a base line and mid-line study.

Considering the importance of conducting pilot of new products and services in the journey of start-ups, besides, validating the product it provides the opportunity to understand whether the product or service creates the desired buzz among potential customers and what are the challenges that the sector is most likely to face.

However, start-ups besides funds need the right partners to pilot their solutions, especially those products addressing the difficult to reach BoP market. Corporates can play an important role in supporting social enterprises in piloting their products. They can provide access to their distribution network or provide operational, financial or marketing support among other things.

One of such partnerships recently supported by GIZ in association with Social Enterprise Aravind Eyecare deployed a new eye screening and detection solution developed by Bosch in Aravind’s Vision Centres. Besides providing valuable insights in the functioning of the device, the pilot majorly contributed to an increase in the footfall of people being checked by the vision centers by an average of 144 per month, being a 21% rise. It was also observed that the detection rate of diabetic retinopathy increased by 17% over the same period, along with a simultaneous rise in glaucoma detection by 8%; thus having a positive impact on the BoP.

Social enterprise that seek to pilot innovative solution may visit https://goo.gl/forms/jYgXoBY8Mgg0GsPf2

Corporates that are innovating for the BoP market and are looking for a social enterprise may apply at https://goo.gl/forms/NEU00ECrgmi3GOTv1 

(KNN)