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OUR STORY
Villgro USA is a Global Network of Social Enterprise Incubators
Our work began 20 years ago in India, where 21.9% of the population still lives below the poverty line. Social enterprises, using the power of the market, have shown the ability to innovate, attract funding and ultimately scale.
But early-stage entrepreneurs often lack the skills, networks and capital to turn their ideas into reality. We therefore support incubators and accelerators who work with entrepreneurs, and fund entrepreneurs directly.
OUR GLOBAL MISSION
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Launch 30+ Social Enterprise Incubators in the next 5 years
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Reach 1000 Enterprises in the next 5 years
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Create 3x the Impact in 25% of the time
To scale this impact further, Villgro USA, has been established as a 501-C-3 organization to establish a global network of Social Enterprise incubators and to support the activities of the many Villgros.
Our initiative of establishing and bootstrapping a network of incubators makes sharing of knowledge repositories, best-practices and cross-geography learnings through peer-learning possible.
THE TEAM
BOARD OF
DIRECTORS
Paul Basil, Founder
Mr. Basil is Founder of Villgro. Over the last decade, he has incubated over 130 innovative enterprises, creating over 4000 jobs, touching around 5 million lives in villages across India. He also co-founded Menterra Venture Advisors, a seed stage, impact fund that makes venture investments in for-profit, impactful enterprises.
Apart from the core of his mission, which is incubating early stage, innovative businesses, Paul also has contributed to building the social enterprise eco-system in India.
Arun Venkatesan, Co-Founder & CEO
Arun Venkatesan is Co-founder and CEO of Villgro USA. Till June 2019, he was CTO of Villgro India, leading their health sector investments. He has over 15 years of experience in materials R&D, device development and forward integration of technology into tangible, marketable entities. He has a Ph.D. in Chemical Engineering and has done post-doctoral research in fuel-cell materials development and micro-fuel-cell fabrication.
Azad Oommen
Azad Oommen is the co-founder of Global School Leaders. He serves on the boards of the Central Square Foundation and the India School Leadership Institute. He has been associated with the American India Foundation in India, City Year in South Africa, and the Congressional Hunger Center in the US. He has an MPA from the Woodrow Wilson School at Princeton University.
Dr. Anand Narayan
Dr. Anand Narayan has 15 years of experience in Intellectual Property. He formerly served as VP of Engineering at TensorComm, a Colorado start-up that specialized in capacity enhancing technologies for wireless communication systems. He was the co-founder of SELCO Labs and a Committee Member of ASME. He has a Ph.D. in Chemical Engineering from the University of Colorado at Boulder.
Dr. Jasmin Patel
Dr. Jasmin Patel, Ph.D. serves as an Advisor at Windmill Health Technologies Private Limited and Aarin Capital. Previously, he has held key positions in Aarin Capital, Fidelity Growth Partners, Novartis, McKinsey & Company among others.
He has a Ph.D. in Medicinal Chemistry from Duquesne University, and an M.B.A. from Wharton. He also spent two years as a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Scripps Research Institute in California.
Nadine Freeman
Nadine Freeman has been with Ashoka for the past 23 years as the Co-Director of Ashoka Globalizer and joined the Ashoka US Fellowship team in 2018.
She has an M.B.A. from Anderson, UCLA and a BA from Washington University, St. Louis.
Jenny Everett
Jenny Everett, until recently, was the Managing Director of the Aspen Network of Development Entrepreneurs (ANDE) – with whom she was actively engaged for the past 12 years – and managed ANDE's entire international team.
She has an M.B.A. from Stern School of Business, NYU and a BA from Davidson College.
OUR HISTORY
Founded in India in 2001, Villgro is a non-profit foundation whose mission is to create, enable and support globally, enterprises that have innovative solutions that directly impact the base-of-pyramid population.
Villgro is focused on creating impact at the BoP by inspiring, funding, mentoring and supporting early-stage, for-profit, innovation-driven enterprises in the sectors such as Agribusiness, Education, Employability, Healthcare Energy.