NextBillion - An Initiative of the William Davidson Institute at the University of Michigan

Geeta Goel, country director, India, of the Michael & Susan Dell Foundation, talks about the need for responsible capitalism

In India, we work in three areas: Education, livelihoods and financial inclusion. All of these are focussed on the urban low-income group. For education, we have a vision of how to improve learning levels, or fill learning level gaps. For livelihoods, we look at how to create more aspirational job opportunities, and in financial inclusion, we look at how the low-income group can access similar kind of banking services—whether it is savings, credit or insurance—as you and I do.

Globally, we work in three countries—the US, India and South Africa. The mission of the foundation is the same, in terms of impacting children. In the US, we focus on education—K-12 levels, as well as higher and college education. We run a strong scholarship programme for college completion. We also work in the heath sector, centred around healthy living. A large part of our impact investing in the US has been in the area of education. In South Africa, our key focus areas have been education and livelihoods. We just impact-invested in South Africa, in the area of livelihoods.