Archive for category: podcasts and interviews

In this episode of the Impact Podcast,  Innov8social founder talks about her experience, meeting various leaders and entrepreneurs at Global Entrepreneurship Summit (GES).  Neetal met Cheryl Yeoh, the founding CEO of Malaysian Global Innovation & Creativity Center (MaGIC) at GES.

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Meet Cheryl Yeoh – Founder of MaGIC

Cheryl grew up in Malaysia, and she did her undergraduate and graduate studies in the US.  She has worked on a number of startups, one of the startups that she has co-founded was reclip (acquired by Walmart). Cheryl was invited home to build and develop MaGIC, to put Malaysia on the social enterprise map.  MaGIC was launched by President Obama and Malaysian prime minister. Over the course of two years, it became the largest accelerator in Asia launching more than 150 startups.

She focussed on three main pillars at MaGIC, one was to accelerate and put startups on the global map. To accelerate startups,  she launched the MaGIC accelerator programs. The program now accelerates around 75 companies in a four month program twice a year.

Cheryl’s other goal was to educate startups about coding, digital media, marketing, data analytics. Her third goal is to expose social entrepreneurs about what is happening in global space. To enable that, she has created a partnership with Stanford university to engage those entrepreneurs, on the silicon valley culture in a two week program.

Social Entrepreneurship in Malaysia

When Cheryl returned back to Malaysia, social enterprise is not that popular. There is huge need for developing countries to focus on the social entrepreneurship movement. Lot of social entrepreneurs especially from rural areas, are compelled to solve their problems locally. Then there are people from urban areas who tend to have access to technology, money etc. MaGIC supports both these type of entrepreneurs, and they even travel to various parts of Malaysia to empower and teach them. They are being taught, on how to turn their non-profits into a profitable organizations which supports a social cause or impact. In the past two years, MaGIC has helped to define policies for social enterprises. Cheryl has travelled to Bangladesh to meet with Yunus to learn about various business models, and chose what is best for her country.

You can connect with Cheryl using the below mediums.

Connect at

Linked in :  https://www.linkedin.com/in/cherylyeoh

Website:  https://cherylyeoh.com/

Twitter :  cherylyeoh

 

In this episode of the Impact Podcast, we get to hear about social impact in Cleantech space from Mr. Rajan Kasetty,  Executive Director, Silicon Valley Cleantech Incubator.

L.A. Cleantech Incubator (LACI) is an innovation hub for early stage clean technologies. Building on their success in southern California, LACI has established a strategic second location in Silicon Valley, under the name Silicon Valley Cleantech Incubator (SVCI).

Rajan has also served as a judge and mentor at Cleantech Open, a not-for-profit organization that runs the world’s largest accelerator for Cleantech startups. Their mission is to find, fund and foster entrepreneurs with big ideas that address today’s most urgent energy, environmental and economic challenges.

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Meet Rajan Kasetty, Executive Director, Silicon Valley Cleantech  Incubator

 

Rajan Kasetty has four decades of experience as an Entrepreneur, Engineer, and CEO in IT, IT outsourcing, Engineering and Design outsourcing, GIS, R&D, Manufacturing, Project Contracts, Power Systems, Industrial Equipment, Control Systems and Automation, Renewable Energy, and related services.

He set up, grew and ran engineering, R&D, consulting services and manufacturing in India, USA, Puerto Rico and Canada, in the fields of Information Technology, CAD/CAM/CAE, Engineering Services, GIS, Manufacturing, Alternative Energy, Controls and Power Systems. He also trained in, and ran R&D, in HVAC.

Prior to his current role as an Executive in Residence with Los Angeles Cleantech Incubator, based in the San Francisco bay area, he served as Co-Founder and CEO of Terrafore, pioneering R&D work in the area of high temperature solar thermal energy storage, in addition to consulting for large CSP and PV installations.

Rajan was the CEO of Infotech Enterprises America, (now “Cyient”) part of a group of companies currently with 35 global locations and more than 12,000 people. Cyient offers Engineering Design and IT services for aerospace, automotive, electronics and industrial sectors, Geographical Information Systems for utilities, transportation and governments, and IT services for businesses.

Rajan’s earlier entrepreneurial ventures were in manufacture of fasteners and pumps, design, fabrication and installation of power distribution systems, controls and production automation. He moved to California in 1999 and has served in various advisory and board positions with the City of Riverside CA, University of California – Riverside, and several business, trade and technology groups. He mentors and advises several startup ventures in the US and internationally. He served as a counselor for TriTech SBDC. He volunteers with the Clean Tech Open as a competition judge, mentor and trainer for participating startups. He has been a Faculty Director at Hult International Business School in San Francisco, directing and mentoring Action Projects of graduate Students.

Clean Tech 

Though there are numerous definitions available about clean technology, in his interview Rajan describes  cleantech as “anything that can do, that is useful to anybody, without damaging the environment or the planet”.  Rajan also believes in the amount of impact or results that these enterprises are able create, rather than their definition of social impact. As executive director at LACI (Los Angeles CleanTech Incubator), he and his team focus on metrics, including: how impact can be measured and how investments are being affected. The metrics are critical to discerning the benefit of a technology. In cleantech area, Rajan feels that sustainability or impact is easily measurable compared to other sectors.

In cleantech space, it takes a long time for companies to succeed and some such success stories are recognized through CleanTech Open competitions and programs, where Rajan is serving as Judge and mentor. There are companies in solar and lighting sector who received their initial funding through CleanTech open. The LACI has been rated as one of the top incubators by UBI among all university associated incubators. It is a $45 million dollar facility with 20,000 sq ft of make space, $5 million worth of equipments.

Show Notes

Here are a few articles related to this episode.

• Article on LACI, Earth Day Brings Together the Nation’s Top Cleantech Incubators
• Article on Tech Incubator , Inside a New Tech Incubator
• Article on Clean Tech Open , About the Cleantech Open

More About LACI

• Website: http://laincubator.org/
• Value Proposition: “LACI is the business equivalent of baseball’s farm system: it identifies local talent, nurtures it, and helps it get to market, resulting in more jobs and a bigger green economy in Los Angeles.“

In this episode of the Impact Podcast, Innov8social founder shares the new normal that has evolved, and the importance of  “Why” vs “How” in social impact.

 

Listen to the “Our New Normal and the Importance of Why vs How in Social Impact”

The Importance of Why v. How in Social Impact

In this podcast episode, Neetal contemplates the importance of “why” social entrepreneurship vs “how”. As many of us have watched the Simon Sinek TED Talk, where he talks about people, buying from brands and how people make decisions based on “why” rather than “how” or what.  She found this thought process, interesting and also found the same ideology in social enterprise changing lives of individuals.

The New Normal

This episode also touches on the ‘new normal’ for this website and podcast. Just like many social entrepreneurs have unique paths to realizing their vision,  Innov8social is redefining its path as well.