Infy to give biz edge to social entrepreneurs' dreams

After incubating purely-for-profit firms like Yantra and Onmobile, Infosys Technologies now plans to give social entrepreneurs a leg up.

The company, which donates 1% of its profits to social causes through the Infosys Foundation, has started a new initiative within the company through which it will support, and in some cases fund, ideas on social entrepreneurship and convert them to viable business plans.

However, the focus will not be so much on funding, as it will be on providing guidance in taking the idea forward and making it self-sustaining, says Sanjay Purohit, associate vice-president & head of corporate planning at Infosys. Mr Purohit is one of the key people spearheading the initiative in the company.

“Right now, what we have is an operational corpus to run the program. Entrepreneurs can approach Infosys like any other corporate. We’re not shutting out the possibility of seed funding some of the initiatives,” Mr Purohit told ET.

The linkage will allow entrepreneurs to tap the management expertise of one of India’s most admired firms and use it to build world-class organisations working for social causes. Apart from Mr Purhoit, CEO designate Kris Gopalakrishnan will also be actively involved in the initiative. He will be the sponsor and official mentor of the initiative.

The initiative, called InfYi will function as the corporate chapter of the Young India initiative started by the Confederation of Indian Industry. Reflecting that charter, all its members below the age of 35 will be Infoscions.

So far, 90 people have been enrolled in the program, in addition to the dozen people who form part of the InfYi’s core team. The core team is made up of Infosys management council alumni — these are young Infoscions who are selected every year from among the employees to be on the management council for a year.

InfYi will have the backing of the Infosys management council to review the progress of the entrepreneurial ideas. The management council consists of the board members, head of departments, business heads and the 12 young Infoscions. It meets about eight times a year.

Based on the inputs that a project or idea needs, a senior council member will contribute to it. The projects could be in youth affairs, education, healthcare, economy or any other socially-relevant area. So far, InfYi has received 13 project ideas. Three of these will be shortlisted taken from concept to execution. They will be put through the paces by a team which has worked out how to capitalise on opportunities and survive downturns.