The India chapter is headquartered in Chennai, with staff in Bangalore, and serves members across the Indian subcontinent.
It also aims to deepen ANDE’s role as the leading convener for organizations committed to supporting entrepreneurship in developing economies. Chapter activities aim to strengthen the local network, encourage collaboration, and co-develop programs and services for and with our members and the sector at large.
Chapter Activities
Networking and fostering connections: Regular chapter events, both formal and informal, provide time for ANDE members to network, learn, and share best practices. They include member meetings, happy hours, webinars, roundtables, and workshops on different themes. We also facilitate tailored introductions and connections among members to foster collaborations and partnerships among practitioners in the SGB ecosystem and strengthen the ecosystem through the region. The chapter also works with other ANDE regional chapters to conduct regular cross-chapter and cross-continent dialogues to encourage knowledge sharing and networking across regions.
Knowledge sharing: The chapter shares regular updates, including upcoming opportunities, events, and publications, with SGB stakeholders active in the region through monthly chapter updates for members, and regular promotion on our social media and other channels. We are always eager to partner to tell the story of SGBs and our members’ work.
Research: Our research initiatives build the knowledge base for SGB support organizations to improve their effectiveness and create thriving entrepreneurial ecosystems. ANDE conducts both high level and specialized regional research on SGB networks and trends, which provide major value to our members. Some of our recent research work relevant to the region includes research on women entrepreneurship and environment and climate action contextualized to the Indian subcontinent.
Funding: ANDE provides regular funding opportunities to both members and non-members to both drive greater resources to organizations supporting SGBs in developing economies and ensure ANDE member expertise is leveraged efficiently. Funding opportunities are meant to spur more creative and collaborative investments in SGBs and uncover how SGBs contribute to poverty alleviation and economic growth. Recent opportunities in the region include the Advancing Women’s Empowerment Fund (AWEF) and SGB Evidence Fund.
Learning and training: The chapter convenes learning groups on various topics, including SGB finance, women entrepreneurship and talent in the SGB sector, and has led trainings on metrics measurement and management, various facets of entrepreneurship support, promoting gender-lens in acceleration/incubation and more. ANDE has a particular focus on promoting impact measurement and management among the network. We encourage knowledge sharing, support the adoption of a common language to measure performance, and encourage exploration of new methods and tools to enable more efficient and useful measurement practices.
"As an output of the ANDE SGB Finance Learning Lab, ANDE India and Asha Impact have collaborated, with the support of SAP and platform partner UNDP SDG Finance Facility, to put together this playbook on Social Success Notes. SSNs are innovative financing mechanisms that aim to leverage commercial capital for social good. Aiming to be a functional tool for the entrepreneurial ecosystem, this playbook addresses the why, what and how of SSNs, along with a few case studies, challenges and opportunities revolving around these nascent financing tools. Especially in times of crisis, instruments such as SSNs have the potential to improve the efficacy of philanthropy and government spending. The playbook has been developed for impact investors, social entrepreneurs, outcome funders and other players in the impact ecosystem."
"This issue brief is a part of a series formulated by the Aspen Network of Development Entrepreneurs (ANDE) India chapter. It aims to contextualise the findings and strategy regarding our key urgent issues and the small and growing business (SGB) sector outlined in ANDE’s globally focussed issue brief, Climate and Environmental Action in the SGB Sector, at a regional level. This brief is a starting point for conversations on environmental action and is meant to help shape ANDE India’s strategy for the region. This is not meant to serve as an exhaustive collection of the research/literature on the topic, and proxy data points have been used to best represent the state of the SGB sector."
"This issue brief is a part of the series formulated by Aspen Network of Development Entrepreneurs’ (ANDE) India chapter. It aims to contextualize the findings and strategy outlined in ANDE’s global gender issue brief, for India, and to create a knowledge base connecting our urgent issues and the Small and Growing Business (SGB) sector at a regional level. This brief is a starting point for conversations on gender equality and is meant to help shape ANDE India’s strategy for the region."
Project Kirana is currently training 3,000 women shop owners and managers in the cities of Lucknow and Kanpur, working to optimize business operations and leverage digital and financial tools to improve decision-making, personal agency, and revenue.
ANDE is analyzing the promising project data from AWEF Asia projects, which concluded at the end of 2021. One of the early key learnings is that women entrepreneurs who participated in AWEF Asia funded programs reported increased confidence, self-efficacy, financial and investment literacy, and ability to critically evaluate potential investment and financing options.
ANDE spoke to Jona Resphiti of MIT-D-Lab about the organization’s ANDE-funded project under the Advancing Women’s Empowerment Fund to better prepare female founders seeking capital and support investors in bringing more inclusivity to their practices, including impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the project in India and an upcoming simulation of what it’s like to be a female founder trying to raise $5 million.
The ESEA and India chapters convene a cross-chapter Funder Learning Lab with the goal to promote greater donor efficiency by cultivating a relatively small group of representatives from donor agencies, private foundations, and family offices.
This group seeks to provide a space for comprehensive discussion and knowledge sharing among intermediaries looking to better support SGBs in the area of access to finance. It helps address issues that challenge both ANDE members and the SGBs that they support as they seek to access debt and blended finance capital.
The conversation around scaling challenges for SGBs and intermediaries has so far been largely focused on external factors like raising capital, while internal factors such as talent and team development, organizational culture, and leadership have been neglected. The ANDE India Talent Learning Lab aims to address this gap.
This group acts as a platform for intermediaries working to support women entrepreneurs in various capacities in India with the overarching goal of increasing gender equity and equality in India.
Each chapter's gender equality action lab will ideate and prototype solutions to systemic gender inequities in the SGB sector. They convene regularly and will conclude with a funding challenge to scale promising solutions.
ANDE’s Digitalization Learning Labs are a series of global workshops to support the digitalization of the SGB sector by facilitating knowledge exchange among practitioners and assessing the needs of intermediaries.
This lab aims to act as a platform for intermediaries who are working to support entrepreneurs and innovators looking to tackle environment-related issues and climate action with the overarching goal of increasing on-ground entrepreneur support towards a more sustainable tomorrow. It will launch in the second half of 2021.
ANDE Action Labs convene members to ideate and prototype solutions to systemic challenges in the SGB sector. This group is ANDE’s inaugural laboratory for tackling constraints specific to SGBs and the intermediaries that support them in environmental industries.
