Sam Pitroda, Advisor to Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Honorary Chairman of Action For India (AFI), spoke to a hall full of MIT and Harvard students and leading members of Boston's Indian American community on Thursday, Nov. 29, 2012. Braving a rare power outage, TIE-Boston Executive Director, Vanita Shastri, TIE charter members Saluni Fadia, Subu Kota and others, leading sustainability expert Dr. Kamal Bawa, founder of the Indic Center at Umass Dartmouth Dr. Balram Singh, Executive Director of the Deshpande Foundation Raj Melville, distinguished IIT Alumni, Puran Dang, Dwarika Agarwal, Vijay Kumar and Anil Saigal, co-chair of TIE-Social Enterprise SIG Vithal Deshpande, IITSINE Vice Presidents. Raj Laad and Ravi Rastogi and others came to MIT to attend this talk. 

Following a welcome by IIT SINE President Anil Saigal, Ranjani Saigal, Co-Chair of TiE Boston’s SIG on Social Entrepreneurship introduced AFI President Sanjay Kadaveru. Sanjay spoke about AFI’s efforts to connect young social innovators in India with critical resources required to help them scale (including access to capital, mentors, and technology resources). He also invited participants to engage more directly with young social innovators in AFI’s network by joining their Social Innovation Catalyst program, and announced AFI’s Annual Forum in Delhi on January 20. Mr. Kadaveru then introduced Mr. Pitroda, thanking him for his visionary guidance for the new organization

Mr. Pitroda challenged the audience to go “back to basics” and come up with a uniquely Indian model of development that is affordable, scalable and sustainable, unlike Western models. Critical infrastructure, governance and education challenges are being addressed, albeit more slowly than most would like. The government – state as well as central – is doing a number of things to accelerate this change and improve public services. But Mr. Pitroda proposes that the best solutions for improving the lives of Indians living at the bottom of the pyramid (BoP) will be created by social innovators who are entrepreneurial, tenacious and willing to approach problems differently.

Pitroda’s comments were followed by an engaging Q&A session.  Puran Dang, a founding member of TIE-Boston gave the thank you note.

Launched in 2012, Action For India’s mission is to help social entrepreneurs overcome barriers to scale and achieve greater impact at the bottom of the pyramid (BoP) AFI is positioned in the heart of the social enterprise ecosystem in India and is inspired by and formed with the support of Sam Pitroda, advisor to the Prime Minister of India and Chairman of the National Innovation Council of India.  Learn more at actionforindia.org. Know of a young social innovator who could benefit from AFI's programs? Drop us a note at info@actionforindia.org.