Rural Resurgence

Updated on: Thursday, February 09, 2012

XLRI School of Business and Human Resources, Jamshedpur hosted the 4th National Conference on Social Entrepreneurship recently at the campus. The theme of this year’s conference was ‘Entrepreneurship for Rural Revival.’

It explored the opportunities and challenges for social entrepreneurship ventures in the rural sector. By bringing the stakeholders in the sector together, the conference has aimed to help craft an ecosystem for mutual partnerships and collaborations.

This is the Fourth National Conference on Social Entrepreneurship organised by Social Initiative Group for Managerial Assistance (SIGMA), under the aegis of Fr Arrupe Centre for Ecology and Sustainability, XLRI.

The inaugural speech was given by Pravesh Sharma, IAS and MD SFAC. He began with stating the challenges in the field, the iniquitous distribution of wealth and also emphasised that it depends on us as to how we use our demographic bulge and make it into surplus rather than allow it to drift towards demographic deficit.

The inaugural ceremony was followed by a panel discussion on the ‘Opportunities and Challenges facing Rural Revival.’ The panel comprised Pravesh Sharma, Siddhartha Tata, agriculture portfolio manager at Acumen Fund India and Paul Basil, founder & CEO at Villgro Innovation Foundation.

Day two of the conference began with a panel session on ‘Models of Sustainable Farming.’ This session began with a speech by Gijs Spoor, founder and CEO of Zameen Organic.
The session on ‘Innovations in Rural Revitalization’ was moderated by Dr Sharad Sarin, a faculty member of marketing at XLRI. Dr Sarin made the session lively with wit and wisdom interspersed within some serious thought provoking content.

The last session focused on Emerging Rural Ventures - eVidyaloka, the founders of which are Venkataraman Sriraman and Satish Viswanathan.

Day three of the conference began with ‘Creating Markets for Rural Producers.’ Dr Vinita Vishvanathan, secretary and CEO Udyogini, kick started the discussion by sharing her experience in establishing a novel set-up known specially for women empowerment.
The final session of the conference dealt with ‘Building Self-Reliant Rural Communities.’ Elango Rangaswamy, former panchayat president of Kutumbakkam (a village in the Thiruvallur district of Tamil Nadu) spoke about creating prosperity for the poor by building network growth economies.

Rural Resurgence

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