Contributor.

Nilima Achwal
The Female Founders Lab

Nilima Achwal is the founder of The Female Founders Lab, a global, virtual ecosystem of female impact entrepreneurs creating ventures that will radically transform our world to be more regenerative, sustainable, holistic, democratic, and just.

Nilima is a globally recognized entrepreneur, speaker, venture coach, and writer working to transform systems and industries through social entrepreneurship. Previously, she founded a taboo-breaking social venture called Iesha Learning, bringing sex education and gender sensitization to half a million middle schoolers across India. She also conceptualized and launched a social enterprise incubation program that was funded by the Rockefeller Foundation, which succeeded in raising seed capital for early-stage entrepreneurs in sustainable energy, holistic education, inclusive finance, regenerative agriculture and food systems, and new paradigm healthcare.

Nilima has been published and featured in VICE, USA Today, and Harvard Business Review, was named in the top 100 global social entrepreneurs by Echoing Green and top 8 tech ventures by TechStars India, has given two TEDx talks, has starred in a reality show about social entrepreneurs reaching 10 million viewers, and has published 15+ business case studies for Kellogg School of Management and Ross Business School.

Follow her on Twitter at @niliach.

 

 

 

Articles by Nilima Achwal

  • Nilima Achwal

    Sankalp Unconvention Summit 2013: The Global Hotspot for Innovation

    Though the ecosystem is fairly developed in India, with innumerable incubators, investors, and facilitators, it is the entrepreneurs who continue to push the boundaries of innovation in India, capitalizing on the country’s rapid growth and optimism, and fighting head-on with the harsh realities of rural distribution, need-finding and scaling in a country where consumer tastes change every 100 kilometers, and institutional bureaucracy and corruption.

    Categories
    Social Enterprise
    Tags
    social enterprise
  • Nilima Achwal

    Indian Philanthropy Forum 2013 Focuses on Adolescent Girls, USAID

    The 4th annual Indian Philanthropy Forum by Dasra, as usual, brought together philanthropists and investors to discuss trending social issues in India today and brainstorm effective ways of engagement with the social and social enterprise sectors. This year a salient theme emerged through every session: the empowerment of adolescent girls.

    Categories
    Social Enterprise
    Tags
    philanthropy, poverty alleviation, social enterprise
  • Nilima Achwal

    Building India’s Social Enterprise Ecosystem – Where it Matters

    While the dozens of conferences, competitions, incubators, impact investors, and online platforms have ushered in a new wave of dedicated social entrepreneurs, they still only reach urban-educated entrepreneurs. For these entrepreneurs, the connection to rural India can be as unfamiliar as a foreign country. Recently, different platforms have begun to reach out beyond the busy metropolises.

    Categories
    Uncategorized
  • Nilima Achwal

    From Blueprint to Scale: Turning Research into Action

    The Mumbai launch of Monitor’s sharply insightful From Blueprint to Scale: The Case for Philanthropy in Impact Investing marked the last stop on its world tour. India – the home of Monitor Inclusive Markets and several of the case studies explored in the report – was an apt landing point for the panelists to reflect on the insights garnered from across the globe that will help them to further develop and put into action the ideas from the report.

    Categories
    Uncategorized
    Tags
    business development, impact investing
  • Nilima Achwal

    NexThought Monday: European Impact Investing – Poised to Grow or Largely Irrelevant?

    Last year, Ashoka’s Germany Director, Felix Oldenburg, took on – and took apart – impact investing as we currently know it, challenging it on a few specific points. Now, we share a telephonic debate between Oldenburg and Johannes Weber, founder of Social Venture Fund, the first pan-European social venture capital fund, who contests Oldenburg’s assumptions to push forward the dialogue on our much-discussed, much-anticipated new space of impact investing.

    Categories
    Impact Assessment, Social Enterprise
    Tags
    impact investing, social enterprise
  • Nilima Achwal

    Weekly Roundup: Planting the SEED

    Social enterprises face a number of extreme challenges that are difficult to surmount in the first few years, at the center of which is the challenge of creating viable, scalable business models around their social innovations. That’s why Villgro, a social enterprise incubator in Chennai, India, has created an intensive training program geared to speed up the business model refinement process for entrepreneurs who have not yet raised external investment, with the aim of helping them to raise their first rounds of funding.

    Categories
    Social Enterprise
    Tags
    social enterprise
  • Nilima Achwal

    The Power to Give Strategically: Indian Philanthropy Forum by Dasra

    The opulent Taj Mahal Palace hotel in Mumbai set the stage for high-net-worth individuals, socially-conscious investors and foundations, and corporate leaders to discuss the state of strategic giving in India. According to keynote speaker Matthew Bishop of The Economist, a “good billionaire” is increasingly becoming defined as one who, Bill Gates-style, thinks twice before simply writing a check.

    Categories
    Uncategorized
    Tags
    corporate social responsibility, impact investing, philanthropy
  • Nilima Achwal

    MobiPrize: Moving Minds, Moving the Urban Poor

    If you are a social entrepreneur who has an innovative and replicable solution to local and global transportation challenges, you are eligible to win the MobiPrize: US $5,000 and a trip to Rio+20 (the United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development, June 20-22, in Rio de Janeiro) and top-notch mentorship sessions with global experts in sectors relevant to transportation, livable and sustainable communities, business and social enterprise.

    Categories
    Technology, Transportation
    Tags
    transportation
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