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    Villgro to host 10th edition of Unconvention

    Synopsis

    Themed ‘Innovation for All’, this year’s event will highlight the power of low cost innovations and making them accessible to the next billion.

    ThinkstockPhotos-488532954ThinkStock Photos
    More than 20 innovations will also be displayed at the conference.
    BENGALURU: Villgro, a social enterprise incubator, is set to launch its annual Unconvention conference. Slated to be held at Taj Yeshwantpur, Bangalore on December 6-7, 2019, the event will witness the confluence of over 700 delegates comprising social entrepreneurs, CSR professionals, impact investors, policymakers, and academia, to discuss the present and future of social entrepreneurship in India and globally.

    Themed ‘Innovation for All’, this year’s event will highlight the power of low cost innovations and making them accessible to the next billion. The two day conference’s second day is focused on parallel sector tracks of education & employability, agribusiness, healthcare, and energy & cleantech and deep dive into innovations in technology, partnerships, financing and policy for startups across agribusiness, health, education and energy domains.

    This year, the Unconvention conference will provide the backdrop for the launch of the joint initiative of Villgro and the Council on Energy, Environment and Water (CEEW) – ‘Powering Livelihoods’. The programme will provide financial, capacity-building, and sectoral growth support to enterprises deploying clean energy-based livelihood solutions. The program will be launched by Arunabha Ghosh, Chief Executive Officer, Council on Energy, Environment and Water.

    The event will also have interactive sessions including Investor Speed Dating, Mentoring Forum, Innovation Hallway, and others for entrepreneurs. More than 20 innovations will also be displayed at the venue. The conference will also mark the culmination of Villgro’s iPitch – a platform that identifies and invests in for-profit social enterprises across sectors of medtech, edtech, employability, cleantech, and agritech. Upto 10 investments, to be announced at the event, will receive a total of over Rs 4 crore in investment along with capacity-building support.

    Srinivas Ramanujam, COO, Villgro Innovations Foundation said in a statement, “The theme of this year’s conference will focuses on insightful conversations about the need for holistic innovation – technological, financial, value chain and policy – to help promising startups across sectors thrive in the competitive Indian and subsequent global markets.”

    Unconvention will also feature insightful keynote sessions by Devi Shetty, (Founder - Narayana Health), NK Chaudhary (Chairman & MD, Jaipur Rugs), Bindu Ananth (Chairperson, Dvara Trust), Shobhini Mukerji (Executive Director, J-PAL), Varun Jhaveri (Officer on Special Duty to CEO, among 80+ other key names.

    It will also witness a book launch - Farming Futures: Emerging Social Enterprises in India – by Ajit Kanitkar and C. Shambu Prasad.
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    The Economic Times

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