Mr. Vijay Mahajan, the Mentor
is an Indian social entrepreneur and the Founder and CEO of the BASIX Social Enterprise Group [www.basixindia.com] engaged in livelihood promotion of low income households in over 20 states in India and six developing countries. Has written a book named ‘Models for innovation diffusion’, has been educated from Indian Institute of Management Ahmedabad, Indian Institute of Technology Delhi, Princeton University. His idea of ‘Livelihood Finance’ has been successfully tried out as an innovation. ‘Micro Finance’ makes money for the investor, while ‘livelihood finance’ creates wealth.
Mr. Mihir Sahana, the Promoter
has a basic background of agriculture and postgraduate degree in rural management from IRMA and a mid career post Graduation Degree in Development Studies from The University of Manchester, UK. He has worked for more than 15 years with a host of national NGO, INGO, Corporate and Government. His initial career with PRADAN (Professional Assistance for Development Action – a national NGO working across India) exposed him to the grassroots realities of rural poor and he worked with PRADAN’s Natural Resource Management Team. His stint with the Bihar State Dairy (a state government enterprise) and then in Dabur has helped him pick up necessary skills of achieving steep targets, sales and marketing and also developing a good understanding both the corporate and a government run enterprises. He finally shifted to the livelihood sector and joined an international and corporate NGO, IDE International, with a mission to promote livelihoods of small and marginal farmers by identifying, developing and promoting appropriate technologies using principles of marketing to achieve scale and sustainability. He joined the Sr. Management Team of BASIX and has been involved in developing a host of innovative products and processes by provisioning of financial services both in the farm and non-farm sector, provisioning of innovative business development services and developing linkage with corporate and technology provider like Pepsico, ITC, ICAR institutions etc and institutional development services in collaboration with various Government Department.
Ms. Sangeeta Naik, a post graduate in Mathematics
has 23 years of varied experience in the field of Data Management, Social research, institution building and grounding business activities. Mid way in her career, while forming village level and Cooperative level women cooperatives, with average membership size of village level cooperative was 100, her efforts in creating basic health awareness had led to 45% reduction in consumption loan. With introduction of Mushroom as an enterprise, she could prove that Ladies are Leaders if suitably assisted. In BASIX’s triple bottom line values (People, Planet, Profit) it was imperative for her to test out the principles of ‘livelihood finance’ in creating gender neutral group collaborations constituting of the ‘poor’, ‘not so poor’ and the ‘entrepreneurs’. She has been the spot on team-lead.
Mr. Kunal Ranjan, an IT enthusiast
has been instrumental in bringing out the grand initiative to the world forum.
The villagers of Bandhavgarh
with their dreams and enterprising nature, are the silent team members who pushed the experiment, innovation and effort to reach its crescendo.