Investing in India

After a heavy week of meeting with NGOs and the communities in which they work, today was a welcome change of pace. Ascending to the third floor of a not-particularly inviting building on a busy street, we arrived at Unlimited India's quiet, serenely lit office in nearby Bandra, but not before a short hold-up on the stairs because, due to office policy, everyone must remove their shoes before entering. The UnLtd India staff works barefoot, pouring over CNN.com or what must have been project proposals on their individual laptops, drinking tea and chatting to one another. We were offered coffee and tea and led up the red, cast iron spiral staircase to an open loft space, in which half of us sat on pillows on the floor.

Pooja Warier, co-founder and director of UnLtd, provided a short intro to the organization – UnLtd India is an NGO incubator and, by focusing on start-ups, UnLtd assists new NGOs financially as well as developmentally. After a rigorous application process, selected organizations are provided short-term (0-4 years) seed funding, opportunities for idea development, networking, project implementation, scaling of their project (moving it beyond a single community, if they do so choose), general advisory support and assistance through governmental bureaucratic processes (similar to gaining 501c3 status in the US). Fact: 3.1 million NGOs currently exist in India, however most newly established NGOs fail within their first year. UnLtd seeks to support people with a really good idea, and help to ensure they do not fall victim to the same fate.

This support comes in a variety of ways, whether it be in one-on-one meetings between a grantee and an UnLtd associate, who provide grantees a “magic mirror” to help them see possible futures depending on the steps they take in the development process, or simply spending time at the HUB, the space in which we had our meeting, which is meant to be an open, readily available space for grantees or, as Pooja said, “anyone with an idea,” to meet, or at more formally structured workshops, networking events or presentations.

Pooja and her team, Karen and Rosham, took us through the processes of how individuals go about applying to UnLtd funding and support, and the timeline thereafter. They gave wonderful examples of projects they fund, from an after school soccer program to decrease drop-out rates, to training of farmers in bee keeping and provision of bee boxes, to increase their farm's income, UnLtd truly has no limits on the kind of ideas they support and encourage.

We stayed put of the next two hours, and met with Acumen Fund, which supports enterprise through beginning stages, particularly those working on socially beneficial projects across India. Their philosophy and model is not unlike UnLtd India; investing in local NGOs and projects, promoting the consistent creation jobs and high-quality opportunities for social betterment. The projects they support are absolutely incredible, ranging in target populations and focus, from the low-cost women's health hospitals to clean water accessibility to local ambulance services. Like UnLtd, a major focus for the initiatives they support is scalability – expanding beyond a single community to the general population which could be positively impacted by such a project.

It was so interesting (and exceedingly anticlimactic) to hear that Acumen, an international NGO, with millions of dollars and a host of rockstar projects in the works, has very little in the way of impact evaluations to measure the efficacy of their investments. They admitted it as a major challenge, which is pretty disconcerting, as impact evaluation is such a major part of public health and development programming. This reminded me of a conversation we had as a group in Mumbai – Dr. Parrish brought up a conversation during which social entrepreneurship was questioned as the future of NGOs, or if it was just a passing fad. Of course, sustainability of projects and initiatives is key to their survival, and it makes sense that those which can self-sustain have the best chance of not only surviving, but making the most impact. However, if it can't be proved whether or not they are making an impact, how can a potential investor tell whether or not an investment in a certain project will be worth it? Am I, as a public health student, missing something when I ask whether or not it is difficult to gather at least benchmark data – such as the number of participants in a program or the number of materials distributed at the same point each year – to evaluate a project? Are they still doing good work, even if they don't have numbers to back up their work? All of these questions are essential to deciding whether social entrepreneurship is the way of the future, or will soon be a thing of the past.... and I am very interested in the impact all of the organizations and projects we have seen will make within their communities in the future.