Beyond Profit spoke to Sameer Kalwani, Chief Technology Officer of Sankalp 2010 winner Sarvajal, about its technological advancements and measuring social impact.

What has being a Sankalp winner meant to Sarvajal?

Winning Sankalp 2010′s Health, Water, and Sanitation Award for an Emerging Enterprise has aided Sarvajal in two ways. Being a young organization, we wanted to make sure we were moving in the right direction. Gaining the approval of Sankalp’s experienced judging panel reaffirmed our business model. The questions the panel posed also helped us adjust our methodologies, getting us closer to a sustainable, scalable solution that encourages the spread of clean water throughout India. What made the outcome even more beneficial was the network that emerged out of winning the award. After Sankalp we were able to establish a couple of partnerships that have helped us bring our solutions to other parts of India that we were not operating in before.

» Continue reading “Why We Measure Impact”

This story originally appeared in our March 10, 2011 e-magazine. Click here to subscribe.

Sarvajal’s innovative business model makes clean, affordable drinking water accessible in rural India.

In an ideal world, centralized utility systems pipeline affordable, drinkable water to every household in the rural Indian landscape. Reality, however, is different: building utilities is expensive and time-consuming, especially for dispersed, heterogeneous, rural populations. The long payback period deters the private sector from taking on the challenge. In the absence of pipelines, transporting water—a low-cost and heavy substance—is expensive. With diesel prices rising and pothole-ridden roads abounding, last mile distribution is difficult, and adding long distance trucking costs to the price of water immediately puts it out of the poor’s reach. » Continue reading “Water Challenges in Rural India”

By Geetanjali Shahi, a Researcher at the Centre for Development Finance

Beyond Profit’s recent article, “Is India Really a Hotbed for Social Enterprise?” discusses how India is experiencing a boom in the social entrepreneurship space and most of the case studies on successful social enterprises are from India. This should not come as a surprise, as these are the responses to problems the country is facing. » Continue reading “Demand Estimation Should be a Social Enterprise’s First Step”

By Pooja Rani Bhatia

The number of companies considering themselves social enterprises has dramatically increased in the past ten years, and has become the “new” thing this season. Although oft misunderstood simply as “do-gooders,” socially driven ventures promoting market-based approaches are actually making a bigger splash than ever, especially in the drinking water space. In a recent study on consumer perceptions and demand dynamics of filtered drinking water, the Rural Market Insight (RMI) team at Centre for Development Finance (CDF), in partnership with Sarvajal, winner of the Sankalp 2010 Awards, identified five key factors that underpin the biggest issues facing today’s social enterprises such as sustainability and scalability. » Continue reading “5 Ps To Make A Social Enterprise ‘P for Perfect’”