Open: NCIIA 14th Annual Conference

Villgro (formerly Rural Innovations Network) is a social enterprise established in 2001 and based in the Chennai District of Tamilnadu State in India. Its mission is to identify and incubate grassroots technological innovations that can have a significant impact on rural lives and enable these innovations to reach rural markets. Villgro identifies these innovations and helps to develop and market them. Villgro believes that many rural innovations can be successfully commercialized as micro-enterprises benefiting rural consumers and contributing to sustainable wealth creation. Once a model is established to transform ideas with potential into reality, a virtuous cycle comes in to operation, encouraging further innovation and wealth creation in rural areas. As an incubator, Villgro impacts all aspects of this cycle: innovation, rural enterprise, rural users and wealth creation. The panelists are interested in sharing their experiences with innovation, enterprise and development with attendees, with an aim to initiate a dialogue on technology, creativity and the synergies needed to enable the rural poor to overcome poverty.