Whilst certain sectors in India are booming, poverty, lack of education and health issues remain for hundreds of millions of people across the country. UnLtd India is built on a belief that it is individuals working at the grassroots - not necessarily the government, or the established NGO sector – that can bring the critical new ideas, energy and resources that are needed to solve these problems.
Our mission is find, fund and support early-stage social entrepreneurs - individuals with new ideas, passion and entrepreneurial skills - to solve the social problems around them. We do this by providing a mix of start-up finance and intensive hands-on support before almost any other funder or support agency will engage. Our model is unique in India, the evidence from other countries shows that it can create enormous impact, and we have a clear ambition to scale to support thousands of individuals across the country.
Our vision is to transform millions of lives across India by being the catalyst for thousands of socially-conscious leaders to create innovative, sustainable, high-impact solutions to India's most critical problems. To achieve this, we are running an initial scheme that will support 200 social entrepreneurs over three years in two locations, Mumbai and Tamil Nadu. This will enable us to build robust foundations for an organisation that can scale up across the country. Though we will continue to raise funding from the UK and across the world, our ambition is to become a primarily India-funded organisation.
Funding
We rely on individual and institutional donors to carry out our work.
To date, we have received funding and commitments of funding of approximately £300,000 from donors including ICICI Foundation, KPMG Foundation, Erach & Roshan Sadri Foundation, UKIBC, Skoll Centre at Oxford University, UnLtd and a number of high net worth individuals.
Legal status & trustees
In India, we are currently a project under Impact Foundation (India), which has 80G status (the equivalent of charity status) and FRCA status (which enables us to import money from overseas).
In the UK, we operate through the Social Entrepreneurs' Trust, registered charity no. 1053569.
Our UK trustees & advisors are:- Joel Cadbury, CEO Longshot Group.
- Rashmi Chandaria, Director of CATISA & Director The Indus Entrepreneurs Network, UK.
- Stephen Lloyd, senior partner at Bates Wells & Braithwaite.
- Alpesh Patel, CEO of the Praefinium Group.
- Michael Norton OBE, UnLtd founding trustee.
- Salman Mahdi, Managing Director Deutsche Bank Private Wealth Management.
- Mynoo Blackbyrn, founder of the Inspired Leaders' Network.
Further information
- Contact: Thalbir Shokar, UK representative of UnLtd India:
- Email: thalbir.shokar at unltdindia.org
- Tel: 07957 381 622
- Visit our website: www.unltdindia.org
- Watch a video about our work
- Read coverage of our work in the Hindustan Times
- Become a fan on Facebook
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