.: Enrich Engage Enable :.

On Saturday May 9, 2009, the final round of judging for the competition was held in Hubli. Each contestant was given 15 minutes to present and the judges were given 10 minutes for questions. From this process, five were selected as winners of the competition. Winners will each receive a prize package consisting of seed capital and business development vouchers.

The judges who participated in the final round consisted of analysts and executives from financial services, business development firms and social ventures in India such as Acumen Fund, Firefish Networks, New Ventures, Unitus Capital and Yes Bank.

The following candidates have been selected as the winners for Enrich Engage Enable (presented in alphabetical order by first name):

Mahesh Hegde, Kedar Computer Services
Mala Giridhar, Chetana
Raghavendra Bhat, Royal Indian Vanilla
Raghavendra Dipali, Global HR
Ravindra Hegde, Ohm Namah Shivah

To commemorate the completion of the program and the efforts of the contestants, an awards ceremony will be held in Hubli on Friday, May 15th.

Enrich Engage Enable is a market-based social enterprise business plan competition held in Northern Karnataka. The program aims to support and incubate social entrepreneurs with scalable enterprises that can create substantial social impact and sustainable profits.

The final round of competition was a culmination of nearly five months of selection, training and preparation. The competition was launched in December 2008, culminating in 80 applications. Of the 80 applications, 30 entrepreneurs were subsequently selected after a rigorous screening and selection process. These 30 entrepreneurs then participated in a 200-hour training program from February to April in order to develop high-quality business plans with the aid of industry mentors and TechnoServe staff.