Two weeks ago I was honored to represent Upaya at the 2013 Clinton Global Initiative! We received widespread praise for our work -- so many attendees were impressed by what our partners have accomplished, against great odds. At the meeting, Upaya made a Commitment to Action to create dignified jobs for the ultra poor, primarily women, in India by October 2014 by doubling the number of enterprise partners in our LiftUP Project network.
Social Performance Metrics report 24% increase in the per capita income of MILK ROUTE dairy farmers
Committed to rural transformation, MokshaYug Access (MYA), the company behind the brand MILK ROUTE, in association with Upaya Social Ventures, released its first Social Performance Metrics report for 2012-2013. MYA undertook this evaluation to measure the social impact of its dairy business and assess the benefits MILK ROUTE has had on the lives of dairy farmers. The survey was conducted over a course of four months in 2012 and covered a total of 1,486 households across 269 villages in the districts of Tumkur, Mandya and Kolar.
According to key findings of the survey:
- MILK ROUTE households reported a 24% higher average per capita income when compared to their counterparts (Control Group households).
- By virtue of access to high quality cattle feed and veterinary services, MILK ROUTE households produced milk that consistently beat the industry’s average yield parameters, as measured by percentage fat and non-fat solids. These higher yields provided an additional 10% in earnings per litre for the households.
- MILK ROUTE households were also able to provide, on average, 5.5 more litres of milk per month to their children compared to households that were not suppliers of the MILK ROUTE dairy. The choice to consume more at home versus selling the milk demonstrated greater income security in general.
- As a result of increased, regular and transparent compensation combined with a support system that included access to training, high quality feed, and veterinary services— nearly 41% of all MILK ROUTE households reported dairy as their primary livelihood versus 25% of households before MILK ROUTE was introduced.
Harsha Moily, Founder and CEO, MokshaYug Access said, “One of MYA’s key objectives is to create income certainty for the farmers through our First-mile focus. It is encouraging to know that our efforts of transforming rural households are paying off. The social performance metrics survey helped us analyze our progress in our farmer centric approach and also helped us understand the gaps and what we need to do next to take this to the next level.”
Sachi Shenoy, Executive Director, Upaya Social Ventures added, “We believe in partnering with businesses that transform lives by creating dignified job opportunities. It is encouraging to see that MYA has had an impact on the lives of so many dairy farmers in Karnataka. This is just the beginning and we look forward to growing our association with MYA.”
METHODOLOGY: The data collection for MILK ROUTE involved both quantitative and qualitative approaches and relied on the usage of standard survey tools to directly collect and assimilate data from farmers. The SPM evaluation was carried out in three districts of Karnataka, namely Kolar, Mandya, and Tumkur. A total of 1,486 households were surveyed from 269 villages and fall into one of two groups: those who are suppliers of the MILK ROUTE dairy and those who are not (Control Group).
The process of narrowing down which MILK ROUTE households to survey included three tiers of selection criteria. In the first tier, milk procurement estimates were taken for each district to help in the selection of MILK ROUTE villages. Based on the percentage of milk procured from each district, a proportional number of sample villages were selected. Thus, 49% of the MILK ROUTE households were selected from Tumkur, 40% from Kolar, and 11% from Mandya, which roughly aligns with the fact that 48% of the total milk collected by MILK ROUTE comes from Tumkur, 44% from Kolar, and 8% from Mandya. In the second tier, the selection of individual villages was further qualified through purposive sampling. The only villages eligible for selection were ones that provided over 80 litres of milk per day to MYA. The third tier involved a random selection of households based on the short list of villages prepared through purposive sampling.
Control Group villages were selected in order to establish a proxy baseline to aid and assist in comparison. The selection of Control Group villages was completed through a matching process. This exercise involved each MILK ROUTE village being matched to a Control Group village based on key parameters such as economic activity, demographic profile, access to infrastructure, and distance to the nearest city. The selection of Control Group households was also purposive, i.e. those who did not own cattle were screened out.
To download a copy of the report,
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Upaya Welcomes Neal Winterhof as Director, New Initiatives
Upaya Social Ventures is proud to announce that Neal Winterhof has joined as the organization’s Director, New Initiatives. Working with the global Upaya team, Neal will lead the development of new strategies, tools, and relationships for the expansion of Upaya’s job creation capacity.
“Upaya is doing innovative work applying business principles and entrepreneurship to break the cycle of poverty,” said Winterhof. “The team built an incredible foundation over the past couple of years and I'm excited to help further Upaya's mission in the coming years,” he said.
A veteran of the financial services industry, Neal brings nine years of investment management and social investing experience to Upaya. He joins Upaya from Woven Fund, an investment fund he established to make early stage investments in positive impact companies. He was also Strategist at the derivatives hedge fund AlphaBet Management, leading the build out of the firm's global trading capabilities in the US, Europe and Asia. Prior to joining AlphaBet, Neal launched the physical oil trading business at Lehman Brothers after starting his career in investment banking.
“From our first conversation I was struck by the similarities between Neal’s thinking about poverty alleviation and the Upaya vision,” said Upaya’s Executive Director Sachi Shenoy . “His skills, experience and passion are a tremendous addition to the team as we look at new ways of scouting, selecting, and supporting promising entrepreneurs,” Shenoy said.
Driven by a commitment to fight social injustice in all of its forms, Neal is on the Board of Directors of Hope for New York and previously served on the Board of Restore NYC and advised Isaac Slade of The Fray on his philanthropic efforts.
Upaya at Clinton Global Initiative 2013 in New York City
The Upaya Social Ventures team attended the 2013 Clinton Global Initiative in New York City on September 23rd - 26th, joining an esteemed group of organizations who have made far-reaching Commitments to Action in order to resolve the world's most pressing problems. The Annual Meeting's theme was "Mobilizing for Impact," and strongly encouraged the forming of partnerships and action plans in order to meet members' ambitious goals.
Executive Director Sachi Shenoy, represented Upaya at the meeting and had the opportunity to make a public Commitment to Action: to create dignified jobs for the ultra poor, primarily women, in India by October 2014 by doubling the number of enterprise partners in Upaya's LiftUP Project network.
"The meeting was a fantastic opportunity to meet and collaborate with hundreds of other organizations -- both large and small -- who are all passionate about global social impact," said Shenoy. "Over the course of four days, we met influential thought leaders and other social entrepreneurs, and forged connections over a variety of working sessions and social events. The meeting left us energized, validated, and excited by all the potential partnerships that lie ahead!"
A particular highlight was the "Impact Investing: The Second Act" session. The room was filled with many prominent impact investors and entrepreneurs who engaged in an extremely frank discussion about both the opportunities and very real challenges that still face social start-ups in the so-called Pioneer Gap. "With so many leaders on both sides in the same room, it was a good reminder for me that Upaya is not alone in seeing the growth of Small and Growing Businesses (SGBs) as a transformative force in the fight against extreme poverty," said Shenoy, "but it also reinforced that we have a long way to go in realizing our goal."
Upaya Joins Grassroots Business Fund, Lumana at SOCAP13
Bringing the exploration of the Pioneer Gap to one of the nation's largest social enterprise gatherings, Upaya Board Chair Kate Cochran presented alongside Grassroots Business Fund COO Robert Webster and Lumana Village Ventures co-founder Sammie Rayner at the Social Capital Markets 2013 (SOCAP13) conference in San Francisco.
Moderated by NextBillion.net Managing Editor Scott Anderson, the panel explored the challenges impact investors face in supporting entrepreneurs in the startup phase and how different organizations - Upaya included - have developed creative models for filling the void.
(L to R) Scott Anderson, Kate Cochran, Robert Webster, and Sammie Rayner discuss enterprise support in the Pioneer Gap at SOCAP13.
"It is exciting to see how much interest there is in nurturing early stage social enterprises, as well as the acknowledgement that this stage of investment is best served by philanthropic capital--from foundations, the public sector, and individuals," said Cochran. "Although our panel included people working at different points in the continuum--some providing returns and some not--we all agreed that priming the pump with "public good" money is the best way to build a thriving ecosystem for impact investing," she said.
The SOCAP13 audience posed questions to the panelists about the opportunities and challenges of supporting early-stage businesses.
Upaya's Steve Schwartz on Rainmakers.tv
Upaya co-founder Steve Schwartz talks job creation for the ultra poor on Rainmakers.tv
Sreejith Nedumpully Joins the Upaya Team as Director, Business Development
Upaya Social Ventures is proud to announce that Sreejith Nedumpully has joined the organization as Director, Business Development. In his role, Sreejith will lead Upaya’s LiftUP Project in India.
Sreejith brings to Upaya over 12 years of experience in retail, emerging markets, financial inclusion, SME promotion, incubation and entrepreneurship. Most recently, he was the Co-Founder and Managing Director of ROPE International, a premium brand of natural, handmade lifestyle products from renewable materials. Today the company creates employment opportunities for over 1,000 rural artisans through its village cluster model, and wholesales its products to a variety of well-recognized domestic and international retailers.
Throughout his career, Sreejith has been involved with several social enterprise efforts including work with TeNeT Group, IIT Madras, Villgro Innovations Foundation, and the DHAN Foundation, and has consulted for organizations including Business and Finance Consulting GmbH Zurich, Women on Wings, the Sir Ratan Tata Trust, and Simpa Networks.
Nedumpully’s arrival follows the spring departure of Upaya Co-Founder Sriram Gutta. Gutta was recently named a Fulbright scholar and is pursuing a Masters degree.
Celebrating Upaya's Second Anniversary!
Two years! 24 months of highs and lows unlike any I've ever experienced. 730 busy days and long nights spent working with Upaya's ambitious partners, building our team, and expanding a network of wonderful supporters.
Has it been worth it? Absolutely. Over the past two years we've discovered some great entrepreneurs doing remarkable work, and are excited by the opportunities that the next few years of their growth will open up. We have also had the opportunity to visit families whose lives can be transformed by something as simple as a job milking a cow or weaving a silk saree. My colleagues and I have sat in their homes and listened not just to stories of their struggles, but also to their hopes for a better future. These stories, more than any other factor, have given us the inspiration and the resilience to keep moving Upaya forward.
Going into our third year, we are doing everything we can to keep building on that momentum. I want to personally thank you for supporting Upaya through these early days - we never would have made it this far without you, and I sincerely hope you will continue on this journey with us.
With boundless gratitude,
Sachi Shenoy
Executive Director
Upaya Social Ventures
July Newsletter: More Than a Job
The past few months have marked an exciting period in Upaya's evolution - our team has had the opportunity to share our story with some incredible groups, we have forged new partnerships to expand the breadth and depth of our work, and our partners have been acknowledged broadly for their successes.
Upaya Awarded GuideStar Exchange Gold Seal
Upaya has been awarded a GuideStar Exchange Gold certification for its demonstrated commitment to transparency.
GuideStar's recently expanded Exchange program is designed to encourage greater nonprofit transparency and allow nonprofits to supplement the public information that is available from the IRS. The program's gold, silver, and bronze participation levels are structured to reward nonprofits based on the amount of information they share with the public.
Click here to view Upaya's GuideStar profile or to learn more about the Exchange program.
Upaya Partners with the Open Road Alliance to Bring its Social Metrics Online
Upaya Social Ventures is proud to announce that it has received a grant from the Open Road Alliance for the creation of an online platform that will be used by Upaya partners to collect and analyze data about the progress made out of poverty by their employees. This data will not only give Upaya’s partners critical business intelligence about the state of their workforce, but it will also allow them to quantify their social impact to prospective follow-on funders.
Through this system Upaya will also have the ability to aggregate data across partners, strengthening both the organization’s understanding of the key indicators of ultra poverty and its ability to identify trends among households benefiting from increased income stability.
Open Road provides fast funding for non-profits either to overcome unexpected obstacles that imperil an on-going project or to grow substantially with a one-time, targeted grant. This grant fits within the latter category as Open Road feels that an online platform for collecting and analyzing social metrics will significantly expand Upaya’s capacity to create employment.
“Measuring social performance has been a part of Upaya’s DNA from the very beginning, and this system will empower our partners to maximize their potential,” said Upaya’s Executive Director Sachi Shenoy.
Upaya’s Partnership with Chicago Booth School of Business on Display at 2013 Social New Venture Competition
As part of the organization’s partnership with the University of Chicago Booth School of Business, Upaya’s Executive Director Sachi Shenoy recently joined a distinguished group of Booth alumni as final round judges for the school’s Social New Venture Competition (SNVC). While in Chicago, she also participated in the annual advisory board meeting of the school’s Social Enterprise Initiative.
The judging panel – which included leadership from organizations such as the Arabella Advisors, TransUnion Corp., CDW and Shorebank International – evaluated 16 finalists based on the strength of their business models and ability of their work to realize a positive social benefit. Upaya was well represented at the event.
The SNVC is lead by Chicago Booth Deputy Dean Robert Gertner, who also serves Upaya as an Advisor. Additionally, Upaya Board member Sonny Garg was involved in the planning of this year’s competition.
Upaya at Clinton Global Initiative Mid-Year Meeting
Upaya’s Executive Director Sachi Shenoy joined impact investing thought leaders from around the world at the Clinton Global Initiative’s May Mid-Year Meeting in New York City. Over the course of two days, the group discussed the ongoing maturation of the sector and explored the mechanisms needed to ensure that early-stage social businesses are given the support they need to launch, grow, and prepare for follow-on investment.
“I heard so often over the two day meeting that there are simply too few scale-ready, socially transformative businesses reaching the desks of impact investors, and that organizations like Upaya are exactly what is needed to solve this problem,” said Shenoy. “The conversation reaffirmed for me the power of Upaya’s model to empower small and growing businesses, build a pipeline of sound investment opportunities, and bring significant change to the people living below the extreme poverty line,” she said.
For more information on the Clinton Global Initiative, click
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2012 Annual Report: Looking Back at a Year of Change & Promise
Upaya’s 2012 Annual Report is now available(Right click > "Save As..." to download).
Upaya Selected for 2013 Clinton Global Initiative Membership
Upaya is proud to announce that the organization has been selected as a complimentary member of theClinton Global Initiative (CGI) for 2013.As part of CGI’s Market-Based Approachestrack, Upaya will share broadly its perspective on job creation as a solution for ultra poverty.
“We are honored that Upaya has been selected for complimentary membership and are excited about the opportunity to share our experience with other CGI members,” said Upaya’s Executive Director Sachi Shenoy.
CGImembership includes access totrack convenings, as well as admission to the CGI Annual Meeting to be held September 23 – 26 in New York City. The Upaya team will also work with CGI staff to develop a new partnercommitmentthat will extend the benefits of Upaya’s work to thousands of Indian families in need.
“For many years the ultra poor were either overlooked or deemed ‘too hard to reach’ by conventional development programs,” Shenoy said. “This is a great chance to show that not only is it possible to meaningfully help the poorest make progress out of poverty, but that it can be done in a financially self-sustaining way,” she said.
Established in 2005 by President Bill Clinton as an initiative of the Clinton Foundation, CGI convenes global leaders to create and implement innovative solutions to the world's most pressing challenges. CGI Annual Meetings have brought together more than 150 heads of state, 20 Nobel Prize laureates, and hundreds of leading CEOs, heads of foundations and NGOs, major philanthropists, and members of the media. To date CGI members have made more than 2,300 commitments, which have improved the lives of over 400 million people in more than 180 countries. When fully funded and implemented, these commitments will be valued at more than $73.1 billion.
For more information on CGI, please click here.
Sachi Shenoy Judges Global Social Venture Competition, Discusses Job Creation for the Poorest with Berkeley-Haas Students
Upaya’s Executive Director Sachi Shenoy was among the distinguished business leaders invited to Berkeley, CA to judge the 18 finalists of the Haas School of Business’s annual Global Social Venture Competition (GSVC). Founded in 1999, the GSVC is the world’s longest running social business plan competition. In regional competitions held between November 2012 and April 2013, more than 650 entrant teams from 37 countries pitched their social impact business plans.
While in Berkeley, Sachi also joined peers from the Omidyar Network, Riders for Health, and The Citizens Foundation USA on a panel titled “Social Enterprises in the Developing World.” During the discussion she shared insights from Upaya’s experience creating jobs and measuring social change with Berkeley Haas students and GSVC participants. That video can be viewed in its entirety here or by clicking the video image below. For more information on the GSVC, please click here.
Upaya receives 501(c)(3) status, changes URL to upayasv.org
As of 31 January 2013, Upaya Social Ventures (EIN 80-0713334) is recognized by the Internal Revenue Service as a nonprofit 501(c)(3) organization. Following this change in status, Upaya and Jolkona Foundation have agreed to close out our fiscal sponsorship agreement effective 1 April 2013.
With its nonprofit tax status in place, Upaya has also transitioned its web domain to upayasv.org. Going forward, upayasv.com will re-direct to the new domain, while staff will continue to receive emails at both their .org and .com domains.
Upaya's fiscal sponsorship agreement with Jolkona was originally signed in 2011 to ensure that individual donors and grant-making foundations could contribute to Upaya's work prior to Upaya obtaining its own tax exempt status. Under this arrangement, all of Upaya's reporting to the IRS was incorporated into Jolkona's annual 990 filings. However, in keeping with Upaya's value of transparency, Upaya-specific financial statements for 2011 and 2012 have been posted on the Finance and Governance page.
Editorial for nextbillion.net: What's Next for Impact Investing - How to bridge the 'Pioneer Gap' and support entrepreneurs in the earliest stages
Co-authored with Upaya Advisor Brian Arbogast, this article was originally published on 30 March 2013 on nextbillion.net. In December 2013, nextbillion.net readers voted this post one of the year's most influential.
By mid 2011, Naveen Krishna, founder of SMV Wheels in Varanasi, India, employed 443 impoverished rickshaw pullers. Speaking with him then, one would not see any trace of the trials he endured two years earlier when he was burning through his savings and struggling to line up funds to launch SMV. He was not alone - entrepreneurs throughout the world struggle to find support for their ideas in the early years. Most run out of cash and have to scrap their ideas. Fortunately for Krishna, he received angel funding from his mentor, Sumit Swaroop, saving him from having to give up on SMV. By 2011, Krishna had refined his model and attracted $250,000 from five different impact investors.
A worker with SMV Wheels maintains one of the many rickshaws in the fleet, which employs hundreds of rickshaw pullers. (Image credit: SMV)
Announcements of impact-branded seed funds and investornetworks have become so commonplace they no longer seem novel. It is heartening to see so much capital being deployed to these funds. However, the fact is most are structured to onlyinvest in companies that are already succeeding and ready to scale. Their fund managers cannot afford not to reap a return, so it is extremely hard for these funds to take chances on novel ideas or unproven approaches. The resulting Pioneer Gap – best captured in the Monitor Group and Acumen Fund’s “From Blueprint to Scale” report – has been exposed, leaving many to ask what do we need to do to ensure that entrepreneurs like Krishna have the angel funding they need?
Seeing the Need for Pioneer Capital
We founded Upaya Social Ventures with a mission to alleviate extreme poverty through job creation. We attack the Pioneer Gap head on by investing in early-stage (often unproven) concepts and empowering entrepreneurs like Krishna, who can be large-scale employers of the ultra poor.
In its earliest incarnation, Upaya was a for-profit concept, ready to harness social investment capital to realize its vision. However, even the most socially minded investors could not justify our uncertain return expectations with the high risk of funding startups rooted in extremely poor regions of North India. Nor were they willing to accept the overhead needed to provide hands-on business development support to entrepreneurs in the launch phase. These discussions reinforced for us the economic infeasibility of constructing a venture fund composed of small seed investments (less than $100,000) that can cover the costs of intensive technical assistance while producing a risk-appropriate financial return in a short amount of time.
We knew we needed to build a “safety valve” for the traditional venture model that would allow us to quickly back nascent but promising ideas and work alongside the entrepreneur to build the company. After extensive due diligence, we came to see philanthropic funds as the ideal capital to fill this role, ready to take chances in areas where return capital feared to tread. Furthermore, housing both the investing and technical assistance functions within a nonprofit – instead of splitting them through a hybrid model - opened access to foundations and donor agencies to more easily underwrite the needed business development support. Internally we called this strategy “Pioneer Capital,” and saw it as the best fit for our partners’ needs.
Like traditional grants, Pioneer Capital can provide the necessary cushion for entrepreneurs in the launch phase. However, unlike traditional grants, Pioneer Capital has a chance of producing financial upside for the investor. We at Upaya do believe that a handful of our investments will attain exits that yield decent returns, but those returns are exclusively restricted for reinvestment in future Upaya partners. Upaya’s goal is not to get rich off our investees, but to create a virtuous cycle of investment that can continually launch socially beneficial businesses.
Casting off the direct profit requirement freed the Upaya team to make small, catalytic investments into a dairy supply chain, silk weaving business, and domestic service training and placement firm for slum-dwellers. Alongside our seed funding, we have worked closely with these entrepreneurs and helped them assemble investor-ready business plans, financial statements, operational plans, HR procedures, and social metrics collection systems.
We have watched these businesses evolve from ideas scribbled on a dinner napkin into tangible operations that collectively employ more than 500 ultra-poor individuals, many earning a stable income for the first time. Furthermore, eager impact investors have approached each of our partners about possible investments as soon as they see a working unit model and feasible plan for scale.
What We’ve Learned Along the Way
There are countless others who are committed to catalyzing change in everything from clean energy to sanitation to health care that could benefit from our experience. We’ve learned plenty of lessons through our work and are happy to share them in the hope that they will help others fill the Pioneer Gap and create new impact investment opportunities in their areas of expertise. These lessons include:
Above: The son of a Samridhi employee milking a cow in front of the family home near Barabanki in Uttar Pradesh. (Image courtesy of Upaya Social Ventures)
Unique problems rarely have textbook solutions: As entrepreneurs experiment with their models, they need help from more experienced professionals. Some social business incubators provide technical support through required classroom-based training or off-site workshops. While they have value, this type of standardized instruction takes entrepreneurs out of the day-to-day management of their businesses and does not always equip them to adapt their models to their local realities. We find tremendous value in working with the entrepreneur on their turf, integrating the instruction into their reality. For example, when Upaya invested in Samridhi, a dairy company in Uttar Pradesh, it became clear that local cultural barriers made it hard for women to leave the home for several hours a day to work in a central dairy facility. Thus, it would be impossible to replicate dairy models that were successful in other geographies. By working alongside the entrepreneur in the field we were able to adapt the plan so that women could work from home. Without this onsite mentorship, we could not have helped the Samridhi team assemble a viable dairy model that, today, employs hundreds of local men and women.
Above: Traditional wooden looms have passed down for generations by weaving families in the poor communities in and around Bhagalpur, Bihar. An Eco Kargha employee follows a traditional method for spinning bobbins by hand. (Image courtesy of Upaya Social Ventures)
Don’t make it a beauty pageant: Often the most effective solutions for a community don’t involve cutting-edge gadgetry or websites. Rather, expansion of commodity businesses, manufacturing, or service work may have a bigger impact - but investors must clearly understand their own goal to see the potential. This was the case with Upaya’s selection of Eco Kargha, a weaving company based in Bhagalpur, Bihar. Despite a centuries-old reputation for producing high quality silks, wools, and linens, the weaving industry in Bhagalpur was struggling to be a source of meaningful employment. The sole-proprietor and co-op based models that dominated the market lacked the sales and quality control capacity to take in and fill large domestic and international orders. Seeing an opportunity, Eco Kargha developed a concept that could market woven products, manage large wholesale orders, and in turn create steady, full-time employment in Bhagalpur. Of course, using wooden handloom technology to produce traditional sarees is hardly the type of “innovation” that captures the imagination of most social VCs. But because Upaya had oriented its selection process around a specific social goal – sustainable jobs – we backed a business with the potential to pay higher wages and make it possible for weaving to be a primary livelihood.
Don’t try to hit a grand slam if nobody is on base: Too often impact investors - even those trying to focus on the seed stage - are enamored with massive outreach numbers and pass up businesses that don’t immediately appear “scaleable.” As the “From Blueprint to Scale” report made clear, there is a lot of hard work that precedes scale, and impact investors should not expect entrepreneurs to reach this point with one single swing of the bat. Instead, Upaya encourages all of its partners to first prove a financially viable unit model with a measurable level of social benefit before developing its scale plan. This approach can be seen in our partnership with Justrojgar, a company whose blend of training, placement, and employment support for service industry workers could help hundreds of thousands in the next few years. However, rather than trying to go for that scale immediately, we are working with the Justrojgar team to focus on one segment of its business - and only 50 pilot households – to refine its operational model and prove the unit economics. In turn, the company will be in a better position to showcase its social and financial potential to impact investors in successive funding rounds.
Looking Ahead
Impact investing is at an interesting crossroads. As Omidyar Network’s Matt Bannick and Paula Goldman articulated perfectly: “It is as if impact investors are lined up around the proverbial water pump waiting for the flood of deals, while no one is actually priming the pump!” If the goal is to encourage entrepreneurship and build a rich pipeline of novel solutions to age-old social problems, we must find creative strategies like the Pioneer Capital approach to give startups a better runway.
If we fall short, there's no telling how entrepreneurs like Krishna will ever have the chance to make a difference.
Knowledge@Wharton profiles MokshaYug Access
MokshaYug Access (MYA) was recently profiled in Knowledge@Wharton in an article that highlights how the company's "first-mile" dairy supply chain is creating new opportunities for the rural poor.
The article also includes information about a recent study conducted by Upaya that shows how MYA is making dairy a more reliable, full-time livelihood for farmers in Karnataka's villages.
To read the article, click here.
Upaya promotes "Pioneer Capital" in NextBillion's "What's Next for Impact Investing" Series
Upaya's Executive Director Sachi Shenoy and Advisor Brian Arbogast share the story of the organization's evolution and introduce the idea of "Pioneer Capital" in NextBillion's "What's Next for Impact Investing" Series.
