Development Dialogue (DD) -2016

      We are very glad to invite you to our Ninth Development Dialogue (DD) to be held on February 6 & 7, 2016. The Development Dialogue is one of the biggest social entrepreneurship ecosystem conferences organized in Hubbali, Karnataka in India.

We will be most honoured if you could accept out invite to participate in the dialogue on both or one of the days - February 6 & 7 - of the event.  The keynote speakers for the Development Dialogue in the previous years included the likes of Ratan Tata, 2014 Nobel Peace Prize winner Mr. Kailash Satyarthi, Narayana Murthy  and  R Mashelkar and Ms. Sudha Murty & Dr. Gururaj “Desh” Deshpande and  several other prominent leaders.

Hubballi is accessible by road and train from Bangalore and Mumbai, or by air via Bangalore.

       Since 2008, the Development Dialogue has become a crucial platform to showcase innovation, to discuss out-of-the box ideas and, most importantly, to deliberate on issues that are driven by practice and nuances of getting the prototypes off-the-ground. Here is a glimpse of the discussion happened in the previous dialogues.

        Every year, a theme which is in sync with the current trends in the development sector as well as a reflection of Deshpande Foundation’s own journey in building and evolving the Sandbox ecosystem drives the dialogue.

This year, the theme of the Development Dialogue (DD-2016) is Innovate Globally, Execute Locally’.

            We live in a connected world and where glimpses of innovation can be seen everywhere. Innovators are compassionate and would like to help the impoverished communities by solving their problems with their innovative solutions. However, very few innovations impact the world in meaningful ways.

Four things need to come together to have an impact:

1.      Innovations that are relevant and co-created with the people who need it

2.      Execution capacity - Ability to absorb innovation and having the human resources to roll out the solution.

3.      Appropriate infrastructure

4.      Government involvement, and the right policies and support

With this premise we invite you and other important stakeholders to participate and help us deliver a meaningful dialogue.  Please get in touch with me on my phone +91 9972515976 or through email if you have any queries.

The Deshpande Foundation  Founded by global business leader and philanthropist Gururaj “Desh” Deshpande and Jaishree Deshpande, the Foundation has operations in India, Canada and the US.  “Social Innovation Sandbox”in Hubbali was set up to create an ecosystem similar to the Silicon Valley with a focus on Social Entrepreneurship.  Over the last nine years, the ‘Sandbox’ has achieved remarkable success having worked with over 100 organizations and six million people enabling them to find contextual solutions for local problems.

With its grantmaking and incubation programs implemented through the Sandbox, the Foundation has churned out over two dozen ideas that have scaled and sustained as enterprises. The Foundation’s own commitment to create entrepreneurs /intrapruneurs has led to one of the finest Skilling program in India that graduates over 1200+ highly capable human resources, enabling social enterprises to succeed in tier-II cities and rural areas.

The success of the ‘Sandbox’ concept has led to its replication by other proactive philanthropists in Telangana and Varanasi. 

Here is a video coverage by NDTV, one of India’s leading news channels, capturing some of our work. Please visit our website for more information about the Foundation’s work.