As part of Sankalp Forum’s continuing efforts to showcase high-impact social enterprises to Indian and global media, CNBC Awaaz’s show Entrepreneur met Sankalp winner from the Health, Water and Sanitation sector Banka BioLoo. The episode focused on enterprises providing sanitation services. Banka BioLoo stood out as a company that offers unique and cost effective solutions to human waste management.

Sankalp Enterprise Nav Durga Metal Industries featured in Economic Times for creating cooking solutions for the country’s BoP and providing cheap and affordable biomass fuel for the disenfranchised.

Nearly 1,000 members of the impact investing community congregated at the Sankalp Unconvention 2013 last week. The fact that this industry has grown so rapidly is anecdotally visible in the turnout at this event – while one would expect social enterprises and investing funds; the breadth of representation from other players was impressive: from incubators, international aid agencies, journalists, and academia to even tech consulting services, marketing and branding specialists.

As the sector grows and the conference evolves, some interesting and nuanced themes emerged.

Rise of the angels: For some time now, the angel investing community has become active in the impact investing space and this feels like an increasingly growing tribe. This was evident at Sankalp too as several members of the Indian Angel community took active roles at the event. Reena Mithal, an angel investor who backed a vocational education enterprise last year (LabourNet), had interesting experiences to share. As an angel, one has a choice of creating a diversified impact portfolio or putting all of one’s might behind one company, Mithal noted. She chose the latter, but believes it all depends on one’s risk taking appetite and how involved one wants to get with the enterprise.

This year’s Sankalp Forum, coyly named the “Unconvention Summit” after its link up with Villgro, had a heavy focus on impact investing. Sessions ranged from ways to encourage more angel investment in India, to innovations in financing social enterprises and approaches to align donors’ agendas in fostering the sector.

But an important undercurrent to the entire summit was a question that Vineet Rai, managing director of Aavishkaar, posed in one of the opening sessions: Is impact investing living up to the claim of impact?

This is an important consideration that extends to the social enterprise sector more broadly (and it’s something past Sankalp events have explored as well—I previously wrote about them here and here).

Without measurable and well-defined social impact, social enterprises differ little from regular businesses, which also achieve ancillary social benefits such as employment generation, and the delivery of quality goods and services. But should social enterprises measure their impact at the enterprise level? How much should that impact count -and to whom? And how often should the measurements take place?

These are hot topics of debate, but but it’s clear that for policymakers and mission-driven funders to find impacting investing and social enterprise valuable, positive social impact must be attained. And diverting significant amounts of donor or public funding into the social enterprise sector should also require that this impact be achieved more cost-effectively than their non-profit counterparts or the status quo.

What mechanisms are in place to ensure that impact investors and the enterprises using their capital work to maximize the social impact that distinguishes their name? While none of the summit’s sessions explicitly addressed this subject, various participants touched upon the issue.

Competing for the Sankalp-Artha Grand Prize Award are enterprises that together form a vibrant mix of companies looking to solve important grassroot problems, from ‘bio-breaks’ to ‘honey traps’ and more.

At the Sankalp Unconvention Summit 2013, startups in the space compete not just for recognition and cash prizes but also to catch the eye of impact investors, hidden among the 1,000 odd delegates that are attending India’s biggest international social entrepreneurship summit at The Renaissance Powai in suburban Mumbai.

It’s hard to favour one over another. But the hottest favourites this year seem to be Banka Bioloo, a social enterprise that is the first to commercialise Defence Research and Development Organisation’s Bio-digester technology for human waste management, and Barrix Agro Sciences, which has revolutionised pest management with its pheromone product.

The Annual Sankalp Summit is being held in Mumbai and we spoke to the director and co-founder of this first global platform, Aparajita Agrawal
Sankalp Forum is the first platform globally that has social enterprises at its core and under its activities they organise the Annual Sankalp Summit in Mumbai. This summit sees participation from more than 1000 global delegates. Aparajita Agarwal, director and co-founder of the forum spoke to us about it all. Excerpts from an interview…

You head the world’s largest social enterprise and impact investing platform – Sankalp. How did that come about?
I started working with Intellecap (the convener of Sankalp) nine years ago, when the company was just an idea in the Founding Team’s head. We wanted to bring about market-based approaches into the development world. We wanted to bring about a paradigm shift in the way social development and social innovation was done in India. It took us four years of rigorous work at Intellecap with investors, entrepreneurs, financial institutions, development agencies and government agencies, to identify the critical gap that existed between capital providers (funders) and capital seekers (enterprises). Sankalp Forum was really born out of that intent. We launched it in 2009, as the platform that will connect social enterprises with impact investors. For me personally, I started out on advisory projects around knowledge and capacity building in social enterprises and livelihoods space and it was a natural progression to take lead in building Sankalp Forum. Also, I have my bearings in this space for the past 13 years, having done my management focused on livelihoods and natural resources management.

‘Sankalp Forum’ one of the world’s largest aggregation of social enterprises beings in Mumbai, april 16’th.

The Sankalp Forum brings together impact based social enterprises that are geared towards building solutions for an under-served population.

These are enterprises that work across India to create impact – in the areas of healthcare, education,clean energy (renewable), technology for development and agri businesses.

In attendance will be representatives from UNDP, USAID, The World Bank, IFC, Village Capital, Villgro, German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ), Department of Industrial Development (DFID UK Governments grant arm ), GIZ ( German Governments grant arm) , Akshaya Patra, Deshpande Foundation, Ashoka Singapore Advisory Council, Legatum and other stakeholders in this will be swarming Renaissance Powai on 16th, 17th and 18th of April 2013.

Sankalp’s Annual Summit is the largest social enterprises focused gathering in the World. In its 5th year, Sankalp’s Annual Summit has now become the largest social enterprise focused gathering in the world, and in 2013 it partnered with Unconvention to become the Sankalp Unconvention Summit.

Young Turks, over the past eight years, showcased entrepreneurs attempting to address real problems in education, healthcare, skills development and access to finance through innovative models. The show partnered with the World Economic Forum and the Schwab Foundation to recognize social change agents via the India Social Entrepreneur Awards for the last eight years.

This year YT join hands with the Sankalp Forum and Intellecap Initiative. Sankalp recognises and supports innovative, sustainable, high impact social enterprises. Over the last four years, it has mentored 100’s of social entrepreneurs and facilitated over USD 120 million in equity investments in more than 30 enterprises.

The Sankalp Social Enterprise Awards were organized to recognise the best social enterprise models in five major categories. They are agriculture, food and rural business, clean energy technology, education, vocational training, healthcare, water and sanitisation and technology for development.

Although there are no official rankings, it sure appeared like last year’s Sankalp Forum was the largest social enteprise conference in India. But by linking up with Villgro, which runs the UnConvention – also focused on harnessing entrepreneurship to assist the poor – it’s now indisputable that Sankalp is THE largest conference of its kind in India, and perhaps anywhere else in Asia.

Considering the rapid scale up of the conference, I wanted to find out what Sankalp would look like in 2013, specifically on April 16 through April 18 – the dates of the conference in Mumbai. For more, I spoke with Sankalp Forum Director Aparajita Agrawal. The theme of this year’s summit is ‘Looking Beyond Impact: Seeking Transformational Change’. As a media partner for the Sankalp Forum, NextBillion readers can receive a 30 percent discount by the exclusive partner code “SUSPD” while booking your seat. For more details on agenda and to register, click here.

Scott Anderson: This year Intellecap, which created the Sankalp Forum and Villgro, the creator of Unconvention, teamed up. The result is the Sankalp Unconvention Summit 2013. Beyond the name, how has this partnership affected the conference?

Aparajita Agrawal: The move to come together with Villgro’s Unconvention was a first step towards consolidating the social enterprise space in India. There are several fragmented efforts to support social entrepreneurs in various ways, but such collaboration between two industry leaders will amplify what can be achieved.

It is well understood that Social Enterprises work at some of the most pressing problems we have as a society and country. They have a clear aim to maximize impact and social sustainability while being sustainable themselves. If the need to bring about positive impact among underprivileged populations is at the core of a social enterprise’s reason to exist, how is this then measured?

Are numbers the best way to measure impact? Have numbers served social enterprises well in their journey? Should we tell stories and not focus on the numbers? What does BIG data say, or not say?

How much impact, along the value chain, can a social enterprise claim for? Can a farming livelihood enterprise extend its impact to say it has been responsible for its stakeholders sending their children to private schools to be educated? How can impact be communicated?