What was perhaps most exciting to me, as an Acumen Fund team member, was that every panel – not just the development panel – talked about the need for more inclusive growth in India, to take into account the 70 percent of the population that lives in villages or the 80 percent of the population that still lives under $1 a day – to enable the provision of basic services like clean water, affordable healthcare, and education.

Tejpreet Chopra of General Electric in India, discussed the challenge – faced by all companies in India – of bringing down the price of their products/services to a level that is affordable to a majority of Indians. It’s certainly a challenge that Acumen Fund and our entrepreneurs also confront, and we think sharing knowledge of what works and doesn’t in these markets is key to overcoming the distribution and pricing challenges that stand in the way of people having affordable access to basic services.

Chopra also talked about what he termed the “war on talent” – how do you recruit and retain individuals given growing opportunities in India? For us, our Fellows program is a small step toward building talent, but our Fellows class each year is 7-10 individuals, and the need for talent in India is in the millions. }

Keynote speaker Vinod Dham, of NEA-IndoUS Ventures, talked about the landscape of venture capital in India and remarked on how technology cannot solve an issue per se, but that innovation in the business model is what is required. He also commented on how entrepreneurs really need more than capital; they need advice and mentoring. Those are exactly the kinds of things that Acumen Fund, a venture fund that provides enterprise development services, has found to be true.

I left with a feeling of optimism, which was topped by President Abdul Kalam’s vision for a developed India by 2020. His words left me with a positive reminder: to do this work that is difficult and hard to sustain: “Doubt has never led to prosperity, only faith has.” My thanks to the Wharton students for pulling together this mix of discussions on business, development, leadership and optimism needed to create sustainable social impact and economic value in this world.

Like Acumen Fund, Goldman believes in the power of markets to transform lives and economies. The initiative’s focus on women’s business education addresses an unmet need with tremendous potential: More economic opportunity for women translates into healthier, better educated families that can benefit generations to come.

At the official launch of the 10,000 Women initiative, it was inspiring to hear from women whose lives had been improved by access to financial and business education. A woman from Nigeria talked about how she went into the publishing business because she loved books but knew nothing about business, and how at age 61 she decided it was necessary for her to go to school, which helped her build skills like time management and money management, and how her children were so proud of her. We heard from “Imam” from Cairo, who makes furniture but does not have the networks or mentors to understand how to market and sell her product. For her, a business education would be invaluable, given the number of times she has almost been forced to close her business. We heard the story of Hamida in Afghanistan, who has borne seven girls and no sons, (much to the dismay of her husband who has two other wives) and whose life is controlled by her husband and step-sons. Yet because of the availability of financial scholarships for business education, she has convinced her husband to allow her seven daughters to have the education she never received.

As I listened to these women, I was struck by how I could have been one of them. In a land of 1.1 billion people, India, where I was born, it was just luck and timing that gave me the opportunities for education that I have had. After the talks, I spoke to a woman from Kabul, Afghanistan, who did not have a husband, did not have children, but very proudly said that her job allowed her to take care of herself. I said to her, “that is all we want at the end of the day, not to be a burden on our parents or husbands or children, but to take care of ourselves,” and she smiled knowingly and said how happy she was that we had met. This is what Goldman Sachs has made possible – a meeting of women across the world and a realization of how similar we all are and how we all deserve the same opportunities. Through this initiative, 10,000 women are going to be connected to the mentoring and networking that Goldman Sachs, Acumen Fund, and all the partner organizations bring.

At the launch, Lloyd Blankfein, Chairman and CEO of Goldman Sachs, said, “We chase GDP growth,” and described how investing in women is a sure driver of GDP growth. This is an example of strategic philanthropy at its best. Philanthropy that ties to a company’s core business, that makes sense to its shareholders, that is championed by its employees and that utilizes a company’s strengths – in this case, Goldman Sachs’ convening power to get the right partners focused on a common goal in areas they know a lot about – finance, business, management. The launch was just the beginning of this well thought out and much needed initiative. We look forward to the day when a blog post like this one gets responses from some of those 10,000 women who are leveraging their access to education to improve the future for themselves, their families and their communities.

Mukesh Ambani, who received the Global Vision Award, accepted it on behalf of his father, Dhirubhai Ambani, who started Reliance with $1,000 and a dream, and made its growth and profits available to the common Indian through the stock market. According to Mukesh, Dhirubhai believed in two things: (1) investing in innovative business models and (2) trusting in the talent of young people, who in his opinion held the key to making things happen. Today, Reliance is India’s largest private sector company, 1 in every 4 Indians in the stock market own Reliance, and the average age of Reliance’s 100,000 person workforce is 29. 

Mukesh talked about the fact that “the world is, in fact, not flat; it is spiked.” Fifteen percent of the world’s people control over 80% of the wealth. In India, 5% of Indians enjoy the 9% growth in GDP, while 65% live in scarcity and 30% live in an even more withered state. “We cannot have islands of prosperity next to oceans of poverty and squalor,” he said, a theme that was echoed throughout the summit, with other business leaders stating the government alone should not be expected to address social issues, and that it is the private sector’s responsibility to build and create sustainable business models that take into account a more inclusive growth.

Inclusive growth is the basis of Acumen Fund’s work in raising philanthropic capital and investing it in entrepreneurs who provide basic goods and services (health, water, housing and renewable energy) to those who earn less than $4 a day. For example, Acumen Fund has invested in an ambulance company in Mumbai that employs an innovative cross-subsidization model of charging people based on the type of hospital they wish to go (thereby allowing higher-income customers to cover the costs of lower-income people) and in an international pharmacy chain that is expanding its focus to the lower-income peri-urban markets in Mumbai where people do not have access to basic clinic services and affordable drugs. These are two examples of innovative models that manage to serve this invisible market – making a difference in the lives of people who need these services – while running sustainable businesses.

I was inspired to see that this issue was foremost on the minds of at least a few of the business leaders present.  While the world is changing and awareness of these issues are being discussed, we need to accelerate the pace of change and translate discussion into action. I look forward to the day when measures around the number of “formerly-excluded-people-now-being-included” are as much a metric of a company’s success as where its stock price closes or its quarterly results.