Below are a few interesting quotes from the British Council’s Policy Dialogue on Social Enterprise held on the 24th-25th February 2016.
This year’s Policy Dialogue on Social Enterprise, a two day long conference, titled ‘Social Enterprise: Impact and Opportunities’ is the second of its kind. The conference, a combination of keynotes, talks, panels, and mind-blowing conversations took place at the British Council, 5 Fuller Road, Dhaka. Future Startup was a strategic partner of this year’s event.
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"Profit is what drives scale, and scale is what makes an impact."
Rubayat Khan of mDoc
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"Donor money is required for starting a business, but not necessary for expanding."
Md. Shahid Uddin Abar of Bangladesh Institute of ICT in Development (BIID)
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"Social Enterprise should think about business model innovation. At mPower, we are considering offering bundled services. Instead of offering something in only one vertical, we are putting together few services together, some for free and some for a small fee, this sounds an interesting approach to try in order to find a workable business model. The aim is to make something sustainable, something that pays for itself."
Mridul Chowdhury of mPower Social Enterprises Ltd.
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We don’t make any distinction between the “tags” of businesses. We try to find companies that are having greater impact while also have a great business. Some may disagree with our philosophy of social impact but when you don’t have a business, you don’t have impact either.
Shanchayan Chakraborty of Aavishkaar, India
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Mobile phones have changed the lives of millions worldwide and that is just the tip of the iceberg. What technology will achieve is beyond our bounded rationality.
Sajid Rahman of Telenor Health, Bangladesh
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For commercial businesses, only important metric is return on investment while Social Enterprises have to think about the return on investment as well as the impact on society.
Dr. Ananya Raihan of dnet
