Nobel Peace Prize winner Prof. Muhammad Yunus’s social business accelerator, Yunus Social Business (YSB), and Tata Trusts on Friday unveiled the Indian Corporate Action Tank (ICAT), the country’s first incubator for large organisations to create social businesses that will address problems in areas like healthcare, nutrition and sanitation in a financially sustainable manner. Prof. Yunus was conferred the Nobel for his work in the social sector, including setting up Grameen Bank, a microfinance organisation in Bangladesh.
The incubator, a year-long programme, will help corporates from varied industries to develop business ideas and a pilot plan to translate them into projects on the ground, a statement said. The incubator has been co-designed by the Boston Consulting Group. ICAT will commence its programme in early February with a cohort of six to eight companies, it said.
“A very clear goal is to make a sustainable difference to the quality of life of the mostly underserved communities we work with,” Ganesh Neelam, Head – Innovation, Tata Trusts told The Hindu . “We can get the corporates to see what we’re doing on ground and bring in their expertise to strengthen and improve it. Four partners have already signed up with us. We will give them technical, mentoring and field-level support to make them understand the challenges, how relevant social business will be for them as corporates, and how they can impact the community.”
YSB, according to the website, is a social business accelerator that focuses on incubating and financing social businesses globally. A social business is a company that combines the strengths of social development and the business world. It is created with the sole purpose of solving a social problem in a financially sustainable manner.
“The guru of social businesses is talking of how it ran one for 100 years,” Prof. Yunus said. “Tata is the global leader in what we’re talking about today. A century ago, they removed personal profit from their whole business and created a trust. They said, ‘we’re not here to make money but to solve problems’. They bring experience, leadership and credibility to this.”
