Talk with Anirudh Agarwal | Example of Grameen Veolia

Anirudh Agarwal, Research Fellow at Copenhagen Business School

Grameen Veolia is part of the family of the Grameen Bank. Bangladesh lies in South Asia. It is around Ganges. And the water there is not clean and contains lot of arsenic & other heavy materials which cause physiological problems when consumed. The Grameen Bank knew what the social problems are, knew how the market is. But they didn’t have the technologies. So, they found a Veolia and formed a joint venture to address these social problems.

Identify a social disequilibrium and convert that disequilibrium into an opportunity. And then use a lot of creative means to address that opportunity such that it becomes a sustainable business proposition. Once you have identified a social opportunity. Reach out to people: different stakeholders, politicians, funding agencies, your customers. Find the right set of people to work with and then write a business plan/a project proposal. And then basically look for the right funding agent, opportunities to create a social enterprise.

This blog post is based on my learnings from the course on ‘social entrepreneurship’ offered by Copenhagen Business School through Coursera (2014).