Aahar: Meals for poor at 10 cents: Narsee Monjee Institute of Management Studies University, Mumbai, India

Our mission is to provide full nutritious meals to slum dwellers at 10 cents in a ready to eat packet consisting of rice, pulses, and vegetable peels. Each of these packets will serve 800 calories. In addition, we will be empowering women within the area by hiring them to compile these packets while paying them a higher wage rate and providing them with free food packets for their family.

Golden Waste: National Institute of Industrial Engineering (NITIE), New Delhi, India

Golden Waste (GW) converts household and organizational waste into vermicompost. With the use of earthworms, organic waste can be converted into vermicompost, which acts as a natural manure. Following the conversion, vermicompost will be sold to farmers to produce organic food products. Free of cost, GW installs and maintains domestic and industrial vermicompost setups. Our mission is to be the best and most efficient producer of organic soil enhancers and related products across the globe. GW will solve the societal problems revolving around waste disposal and prevent environmental degradation by promoting the use of natural vermicompost manure and provide our society with healthy organic food.

GreenOil: Decentralized Bio-fuel Centres for Rural Energy Sufficiency: S.P. Jain Institute of Management & Research; and Applied Environmental Research Foundation, Mumbai India

This project seeks to empower villages in India by providing them with a sustainable and independent source of energy based on Straight Vegetable Oil (SVO), in particular the Pongamia Straight Vegetable Oil (PSVO). By establishing decentralized bio-fuel resource centres based on SVO, this project will provide a continuous and reliable source of energy in the rural part of the country, which would inevitably result in the economic development of the region and its people. The SVO can be used in any of fossil diesel powered instruments like electricity generators, tractors and irrigation pump sets.

Gyan: Language Education for the Bottom of the Pyramid: Kellogg School of Management, Evanston, IL, USA

Gyan is a for-profit education franchise delivering vocational English courses and business skills to rural youth in India. We provide a unique business‐in‐a‐box offering that teaches business skills to education entrepreneurs and enables them to generate income through vocational English instruction to their rural communities. The business‐in‐a‐box is an interactive education platform using laptops, wireless technology and the most effective English content to provide cutting‐edge vocational training to Gyan’s students. From this training, our rural students will gain access to more lucrative job opportunities requiring English knowledge. The overall goal of Gyan is to formulate a robust, sustainable and practical learning ecosystem that can transform language education for India’s rural poor who need to learn English to compete in an increasingly competitive world economy.

Llamadas Pedaleadas: Pedal-Powered Telephone System:, University of Alberta, Edmonton, Alberta, Canada

Pedal-powered telephone system in Nicaragua is a ready-made, renewable energy business that sells national and international phone calls from a modified bicycle. In the developing world bicycles perform numerous functions – from selling ice cream to taxiing people – and now, to make phone calls. The units (including the bicycle, telephones and system) are sold at cost and profit is generated from the reselling of national and international minutes to the entrepreneur. The vision is to create a ready-made business for local entrepreneurs to increase access to affordable communications for bottom of the pyramid customers.

MiNGO: University of Washington, Seattle WA, USA

MiNGO focuses on building donor networks of ex- international volunteers to financially support their host NGOs in Latin America. This will diversify and strengthen the NGOs' current revenue streams. The Iceberg Foundation’s vision is that effective NGOs in developing countries have the financial resources to meet the challenges they face.

Naqua: Singapore Management University, Singapore

N.Aqua is a water treatment project with the vision of increasing access to drinkable water within the rural regions of Nepal. A Singapore company has developed a low-cost manually-driven water treatment module which makes use of ultra-filtration membrane technology to deliver clean and hygienic drinking water. Our plan is to tap on this technology and install the water treatment module at the village level to raise the standard of living for those living in rural Nepal. Our business model aims to deliver water that is truly safe for consumption through a decentralized network of villages. Each village will maintain their own water treatment modules which will provide an affordable source of clean water to their people. With the water being supplied through a sustainable business model, the villagers are encouraged to become self-sufficient instead of relying on external aid.

Parichay: XLRI, NABARD, Jharcraft, TRIFED, Jamshedpur, Jharkhand, India

An initiative to promote rural/tribal artisans by providing them sustainable livelihood. This would be done by improving the processes, providing better product designs and a stronger market linkage. The goal is to assure that the art-form does not face extinction.

Pioneer Healthcare Services: Indian School of Business, Hyderabad, India

Many rural areas in India do not have easily accessible hi-tech and professional healthcare facilities. In an effort to address this concern, Pioneer Healthcare Services proposes to build a network of hospitals in rural areas that will be served by a central city hospital in a Hub and Spoke model. This will provide affordable quality healthcare services to the doorstep of the common man.

RGI Imigongo Project: University of Washington, Seattle WA, USA

After the genocide in the Bugesera District of Rwanda, significant focus is being paid to this devastated district. Rwanda Girls Initiative (RGI) will build a secondary boarding school for girls as its first project in order to positively impact the future of the district and of Rwanda. The RGI Imigongo Project will partner with artists to sell uniquely Rwandan products, such as cow dung paintings. RGI students will assist in designing and running the website, online communication, ecommerce, marketing, and advertising. The vision of the Imigongo Project is to create a sustainable additional resource to supplement the funding of this academy in an entrepreneurial venture that can be incorporated into the curriculum to teach students valuable career skills.

SolarCycle: Solar Oven Systems: Brown University, Providence, Rhode Island, USA

Solar Oven Systems' mission is to respond to the need for alternative cooking technologies in Africa by manufacturing and distributing, at cost, simple and sustainable solar ovens made from locally available waste materials. A variety of solar ovens are already in use in a patchwork of locations across Africa. However, these ovens are too expensive and their distribution too localized to address the massive scope of the energy problem in rural Africa. Our ovens contain two principal innovations, one structural and one material, that will allow Solar Oven Systems to provide a sustainable and scalable solution to this challenge.

Text for Health: Johns Hopkins School of Public Health; Yale School of Medicine, USA

Text for Health is a project designed to increase mobile phone usage in rural Ghana to give individuals increased access to more accurate disease and therapy information. Through a network based on mobile phones, we will connect licensed chemical sellers in Ghana with individuals who need medication by getting them the correct drugs and by making sure they take their medications properly. The information stored in our system will serve as a databank of medical information that will be used by health institutions for research purposes.

West Africa Consumer-Protection Grid (WapGrid): IMANI (Ghana), Princeton University (USA)

According to the WHO, more than 30% of pharmaceuticals sold in the developing world are counterfeit or fake, creating severe public health challenges for this part of the world. The MPedigree platform is a world-first, award-winning, mobile phone-driven, electronic, system that is capable of stopping the deadly catastrophe of counterfeit and fake pharmaceuticals sold in many developing world countries by empowering consumers to verify the genuineness of medicines they buy. WapGrid offers a commercially viable franchising model to extend the platform across West Africa.

Youth Education Farms for Swaziland: University of British Columbia; Face of Today Foundation, Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada

Youth Education Farms is a project that will develop farm land in already operating farms near schools in rural areas. Local students will then work alongside full time farm employees part time throughout their elementary to high school tenure. Profits from the sales of farm produce will be used to fund the students' tuition fees and fund either University tuition or local business initiatives created by the students. Our vision is to provide an environment for the sustainable development of idle orphans and communities in rural Swaziland through farming, while funding their future education and endeavors.