Dipak Basu, Radha Basu, Ganesh Natesan, and Alokananda Rao all had distinguished corporate positions before leaving their jobs with the dream of starting a social justice initiative from the ground up in West Bengal, India[1]. Much like Eric and Rebecca of KadAfrica, the four founders of Anudip Foundation became disillusioned with the corporate world, and were inspired to spend their lives disrupting an unjust system while supporting a cause that they cared deeply about. The crises of youth unemployment and gender inequality in India are staggering, but Natesan, Rao, and the Basus found incredible potential career opportunities for youth and women in the information technology sector. The founders realized that they could use their wealth of skills in business and technology in conjunction with their passion for serving underprivileged communities: by providing education and skills training to the disadvantaged youth and women, jump-starting their success in an increasingly digital economy[2]. Thus, Anudip Foundation was born in 2006[3].
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66% |
of Indians are under the age of 35 and face a notoriously high unemployment rate[4]
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10% |
of urban males are unemployed[5]
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18%90%7% |
of urban females are unemployed[6]
of jobs in India require some form of digital skills[7]
of India's youth are digitally skilled[8]
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Anudip provides 100% placement assistance for the wide range of professional courses offered through the Digital Learning Centre. Accessible to underprivileged youth and women, the courses provide comprehensive training in computer skills, workplace English, financial literacy, and life skills: the perfect platform to securing employment for leading tech companies[12].
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The Digital Academy is a supplemental educational resource available to graduates of the DLC who want an additional competitive edge. The academy offers advanced courses in skills such as web design, programming fundamentals, social media marketing, and hardware maintenance, that are in high demand in the industry[13].
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Specially-Abled Vocational Education is an Anudip initiative aimed at increasing the inclusiveness of its training programs, and combating employment discrimination. With programs specially designed for people with physical or visual impairments, the same level of training, workplace readiness, and soft skills are provided. Alumni are even mentored after they graduate, to ensure success in their jobs[14].
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In 2008, the Anudip team established the first "MERIT Center," which later developed into the company iMerit[15]. Business process outsourcing is a central strategy of iMerit, which provides cost-efficient, high-quality IT services to global clients. Because so many of its employees come from underprivileged backgrounds, including many Anudip graduates, its BPO methodology can also be referred to as a form of "impact sourcing"[16]. The vertically integrated model of Anudip (nonprofit) and iMerit (for-profit) demonstrates a financially stable model for a social enterprise, as well as the efficacy of setting up both an educational support system and a ready market for employment, so that graduates can put their new skills to use.
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(all 4 photos above are courtesy of Santa Clara University, 2014)
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InnovationsThe specific mode of innovative solutions to female unemployment are fundamentally different for these two enterprises: KadAfrica provides employment via passion fruit farms, while Anudip prepares women for employment in the information technology sector in companies like iMerit. However, the process innovation[17] that they both employ is very similar. Like KadAfrica, Anudip provides extensive training not just in the technical aspect of their employment, but in the life skills they need to succeed and grow confident in their abilities. iMerit is a crucial counterpart to Anudip that expands the market for IT jobs, just as KadAfrica sets up farmers with vendors and a ready market for their produce.
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Operations Both social enterprises boast an effective model of cohesively integrating training and education with market strategy, as their similar process innovation demonstrates. Day-to-day operations can look very different or quite similar depending on perspective. On the one hand, collectives of Ugandan women are working in the fields and learning agricultural techniques, while Indian women are learning IT skills indoors, and working at desks for global companies. Still, consider the immense pride a woman can get from mastering desktop publishing, and compare her glowing face with that of the girl who dropped out of school but is now financially literate and earning a living. One may find that they are more similar than a surface-level analysis can reveal.
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Business ModelThe two business models may seem different at first glance, but it turns out that the vertically integrated model of Anudip and iMerit is actually very close to the business model of KadAfrica, aside from the fact that Anudip and iMerit are technically separate entities while KadAfrica is more nominally unified. Both function as a free source of education for women, and both also have aspects of the social enterprise that generate profit through commercial activity[18]. iMerit is a for-profit sister company to Anudip's nonprofit that outsources IT help, and KadAfrica buys back passion fruit from the women-run farms to make a profit from the passion fruit it sells globally.
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Measuring impact.How do these social enterprises know that they have made a substantial impact towards empowering women in their respective areas? General empowerment is unspecific and unmeasurable; for this reason, it is important to specify economic empowerment, which involves the essential combination of both financial security, and power and agency (see graphic below)[19]. It is also crucial to recall the theory of change of each enterprise in order to see if it is being fulfilled, as well as the measurable outputs each produces, and the long-term measurable effects[20].
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ANUDIP & IMERITTheory of Change: By training women and youth in West Bengal, India in information technology, workplace readiness, and life skills, and partnering with iMerit for employment, Anudip is able to improve the lives of India's youth and help develop marginalized communities.
Examples of direct measurable outputs:
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KADAFRICATheory of Change: By training young out-of-school women to run their own passion fruit farm collectives in Uganda and educating them in other essential life skills, KadAfrica is able to foster female entrepreneurship, increase their decision-making agency and ability to make healthy choices, and help develop the Ugandan economy.
Examples of direct measurable outputs: [24]
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Anudip started scaling from the moment the founders realized the need for more employment opportunities, and created iMerit. This move is responsible for its continued success, and the reason that additional expansion has been made possible. Donations of equipment and technical course material from companies such as Cisco and Google have allowed Anudip to continue to flourish and provide cutting-edge technology for all its students to practice with[26]. Students are now working with such sophisticated software that they have the power to do image work for
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Eric was playing golf on another average day when Rebecca rushed over to deliver the momentous news that they "finally broke even!"[29]. All of their hard work building the social enterprise, and all of the work that the girls had done, had finally paid off in the form of a sign that the business was truly on its way to flourishing. From that point forward, KadAfrica began turning a profit and becoming even more self-sustainable with less reliance on donor dollars. Recent expansions in 2015 were over 50% self-funded, and the co-founders hope to expand their impact to a larger area, and serve even more women [30].
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