Chilasa is focused on leveraging financial capital, capacity building, and strategic support to help grass roots social entrepreneurs multiply their programme impact by at least three-fold.

We engage both NGOs, micro, and small businesses with potential to transform locally focused activities into significant regional operations. Each partnership we establish is based upon a 3-5 year business plan with key milestone targets. Our priority areas are: education, healthcare, the food supply chain, livelihoods, small industries, clean energy, water and sanitation.

Chilasa Venture Philanthropy has been established to discover, prove, and scale disruptive solutions to these challenges in low and middle- income countries. Our initial focus is Tamil Nadu, South India, which has an estimated 22 million people living below the poverty line. Our Founders have 12 years experience supporting social entrepreneurs in this region.

Problem

The needs are two fold. Firstly, we see major challenges facing progressive philanthropists seeking to create sustainable change at the grass roots. Traditional philanthropic development models have failed to deliver a social impact that we would all desire. The new generation of impact investment models relying on pure investment capital will have very limited impact due to high transaction costs, limited access to investable opportunities, a process that makes investments at arms length, and too many unrealistic expectations. The drive to prove financial return will limit social impact. Secondly, capable grassroots entrepreneurs need a lot more management, marketing, and strategic support than we think. This is not necessarily because of their limitations, rather the size of the challenges facing them to build an economically viable social enterprise that achieves social and financial returns over the long term.

Solution

Multi-dimensional problems cannot be solved with single vertical solutions. Our methodology binds together capacity building, strategic support, and performance based financing. Our thesis is that by integrating these three vertical interventions our local team will have greater leverage to help our partners accelerate the pace of change and strengthen their ability to reach ambitious growth and sustainability milestones. A 3-5 year business plan with key targets provides the framework for the partnership including downside risk mitigation.