The Global Network connects entrepreneurs, investors and experts to share resources and work together to promote for-profit innovations for sustainability at the Base of the Pyramid (BoP).

Innovative solutions are needed to provide much needed goods and services to low-income people and access to national and international markets.

ennovent offers different service levels to discover, finance and scale the best solutions. Visit the Join Now page to learn more about the service plans.

Online Directory- Find and connect with members and companies and get updates

Resource Requests- Ask the network to find funds, mentors and other resources

Impact Fund- Invest in our Sustainable Enterprise Fund for the BoP in India and apply for funding

Impact Circle- Invest in enterprises directly with partner investors & work with experts

Discover Challenges- Spot the best solution for a local problem of sustainability

Events- Meet members and companies at local events

The BoP – 4 billion people with incomes below $3,000 (app. $8/day) in local purchasing power – offers a $5 trillion global market opportunity.

People at the BoP need basic goods and services such as food, energy, health, education and water at affordable prices. Furthermore, they supply labour, products and services to local and global markets.

BoP markets are often poorly served, dominated by informal economy and, therefore, are relatively inefficient and uncompetitive. Due to access constraints, poor people pay higher prices for inferior goods and services than wealthier consumers do. Innovative and affordable services and products supported by capital, resources and services are needed to make a fair profit and a sustainable impact.

Entrepreneurs with Solutions- ranging from idea to growth stage upto large national and multi-national corporations that promote innovative and affordable solutions for the BoP in India and globally.

Investors with Funds- including impact investors, angel investors, social venture funds, venture capital & private equity funds, banks, corporations, and other interested investors.

Experts with Services- across sectors, domains (e.g. legal, finance, human resources, IT) and from various organisations such as service providers, consultancies, NGOs, government and universities.

• Fragmented networks: People are working at the local-level without a global platform to connect and share solutions, expertise, resources within their sector, geography or functional area.

• Market knowledge: Deep understanding of rural BoP problems and needs is limited and hampers the selection and implementation of appropriate and affordable solutions.

• Insufficient resources: Relying heavily on informal networks, people are forced to reach out whom they know and cannot access the best available resources, expertise and services.

• Financial capital: Entrepreneurs have limited access to different types of capital (e.g. grants, equity, debt) required at the various stages of a company.

Based on the FairPay model, the network offers four services plans with increasing levels of engagement and convenience:

• Basic (free)
Member directory
Detailed profiles
Online contact

• Plus (FairPay)
Community support
Ratings by members
Support requests- crowdsourcing

• Pro (annual fees)
Group collaboration
Trusted members
Investment services

• Premium (price per service)
Ennovent services
Experienced team
Customized support

Crowdsourcing works on the principle of I seek- I have- I know

I SEEK
A seeker can search for or request needed solutions, funds or services

I HAVE
A solver can directly offer his/her solution, fund or service to the seeker

I KNOW
A connector can refer the best solutions, funds or services to the seeker

The network will have global reach with a special emphasis on India in the start-up phase.

Initially, it will cater to innovations in five key sectors: energy, food, water, health and education, but ennovent will expand as needed.

Ennovent offers a unique service: Requests.

Members can post any resource request they may have in their day-to-day business.

Requests can be of three types:

1. Solution requests: looking for the best innovation/solution for a particular BoP problem

2. Fund requests: looking for funding (debt, equity or grants) for your social enterprise

3. Service requests: looking for volunteers or service providers for your business, anything from interns to IT, HR, legal, design and accounting services.

Members can initiate a request, define the parameters of time, payment and other criteria.

ennovent will 'match' the request to other members with solutions, funds or services so that they can either respond directly or refer others.

You can get help and resources from the ‘crowd’, tapping into a large supportive community.

Entrepreneurs who advance disruptive innovations for sustainability at the base of the economic pyramid are a featured on this network. These entrepreneurs solve some of the most pressing problems of sustainability in developing countries.

Any individual or organization who is interested to invest in enterprises, be it equity, debt or grant are termed as Investors. By registering on the Network, an Investor is not committing to actually invest but indicates an interest to network and connect with enterprises, other investors and experts.

Any individual/organizations that have extensive experience through practice and education in their respective fields and can provide advice, consulting or mentoring can be termed as experts. This can include individual professionals, consulting organizations as well as volunteers and interns.

If you are interested to volunteer or intern with a company, indicate that in your profile and add a service profile so that companies can find you in the Directory. Under ‘What support do you want to offer’ in edit profile you can select how you wish to help and describe your support in 1 or 2 lines.

Yes, by clicking here you will be directed to the Glossary page where you can refer to all the terms mentioned on this website.

Tags are simply short descriptions for a subject. They are like keywords, or a label for a category. When you are looking for information under specific categories, tags make it easier for you to find what you want.

Ennovent has added the Get Satisfaction tool to collect feedback from users in terms of ideas, questions, problems or praise. This tool is managed by Get Satisfaction, a third part site and therefore you need to login again using your Facebook, Google, MSN or Twitter account.

1. Create your profile on the ennovent Network
Just getting started? Begin by completing your member profile so you can be visible in the Directory. This will also help other members view your profile details and send you connection requests.

2. Add connections to your network
Begin by connecting with members/companies you already know from the Network. You can send invitations to others who are yet on the Network through your social networks, Webmail or Email contacts.

3. Share resources and work together!
You can post or solve requests, add and promote your events, nominate solutions for challenges, or apply for funding from our Circle or Fund.

If you own a company, you can create a company profile from your edit profile options. You do not need to register again to have a separate company profile. All you need to do is follow the steps and fill out the information from your existing member profile.

- Once you have created a profile for your company you can add the products or services you offer.
- Additionally you can also showcase your news articles, documents, videos, photos, awards and web IDs.

- You can also add your team members to your company profile. If your team members are not already registered members of the network, you can send them invitations to join the network and then add to the team.

This will give a good overview about the nature of business and additional details to other members or people viewing your profile.

An owner is the person who sets up the company profile and selects (and purchases) a particular service plan (basic, plus, pro or premium) for the company.

An admin is someone from the team who is in charge of managing the company's (solution, fund or service) profiles, irrespective of who has set up the offering.

No, you cannot be Owner or Admin of more than one company at a given time - eg. if I select "I represent a company" and in the name select "ennovent", in the company profile, that is the company that I am "Admin" for.

As an Admin, you can:
- Add and edit all the product & service profiles of a company and add and edit requests/events/challenges on behalf of the company.

- You can send and view the company's messages in your Dashboard, by going to the Messages > Inbox.

- You can add connections on behalf of your company by going to Add Connections in your Dashboard and select "Submit as <company name>".

- You can also view and manage all the company's connections by going to My Connections and filtering them by "Mine" or "Company".

One Admin does not have rights to access responses of a particular event/request/challenge initiated by another Admin. Only the person (Owner or Admin) who actually initiated or added the request/event/challenge can view the responses in his/her Dashboard > My Requests/ My Events / My Challenges.

Please write an email to office@ennovent.com to permanently deactivate you account.

The ennovent Dashboard offers you quick access to your network activities:

- Feeds about other activities taking place in your network

- Suggestions for interesting members, connections, requests or other activities

- Links to control your personal profile and settings

You can Bookmark member’s profile, company’s profile, requests, challenges or events that you find interesting and save it in your Favorites. This just makes it easy for you to sort out the pages you find most interesting and visit them when you like. This is similar to the action you perform when you bookmark a website on your browser.

To start building your network, you can:

- Send connection requests with a message to members or companies who you wish to connect with

- Follow members or companies to receive regular updates about their activities

- Send messages to members or companies you wish to connect with

You can connect with an individual or company to establish a professional relationship (e.g. to invest, provide a service, volunteer). Following means that you are subscribing to receive regular updates about the activities of that individual member or company.

Yes, you can connect as an individual with any company listed in the directory. All you need to do is look for the company you are interested to connect with in the Directory and click on Connect. The company would respond by either accepting or rejecting your connection request.

When you are connecting with a member or company, you are given an option of connecting with them as an individual or company. This way you can manage your connections and tag them as your individual connections or company connections.

You can either send them a message stating why you wish to connect with them or look for new people/companies who seem interesting to connect with! Don't be disheartened, the reason usually for rejecting a connection request is when an individual/company is not sure of how the connection would prove beneficial to both.

If you have a request you can post it by adding a request from your Dashboard. You can share a request with either all the members on the network or only selected connections. If someone can solve your Request, s/he will contact you to provide a solution or will forward this request to people s/he thinks will be able to help. Once your request is solved, you can rate the solver through our star rating system.

If your request has been solved through the ennovent Global Network platform, you can opt to pay a fair price to ennovent as a connection fee. To know more about FairPay, visit the Join Now page.

If you can solve one or more requests posted by members of the Network, you can connect with the Seeker and provide the solution. Or if you think you know someone else who would able to help or solve the request you can forward it to the respective individual/company.

Together with partners, ennovent hosts Challenges to discover entrepreneurs with the best solutions to solve local problems of sustainability. If you have a solution you can apply to the Challenge and win a an investment, grant or other reward. Alternatively, if you know a solution or a company that you think fits in well with our criteria you can nominate them to the Challenge. If the solution/enterprise you nominate wins the Challenge, you will receive a (cash) reward for the nomination!

The selection process depends on the specific challenge. Usually, the Challenge Sponsor in collaboration with a panel of sector experts, ennovent advisors and partners, will shortlist solutions from which they will select the winning solution. The evaluation criteria defined by the Seeker to select the winning solution will be published in the Challenge Profile.

If the solutions received do not match the criteria and therefore will not be able to solve the problem, no winner will be awarded.

There is no limit to how many Solutions or Nominations one member or company can submit to a Challenge.

If several people have nominated the winning organization, the reward will go the Connector that submitted the nomination first.

Something valuable can come out of the Challenge also for the Solvers that are not rewarded. The Network has been set up to connect people working for sustainability, and valuable connections can be made around the Challenge. In some cases, Seekers and Solvers can agree to work together independently of the Challenge, on terms that benefit both.

Nobody other than the ennovent team and the Challenge Sponsor can view your personal details. By submitting your solution or connect to solvers, you agree that your contact information can be shared with the Sponsor. Your personal details will never be sold or rented to third parties for marketing or any other purposes.