LFM Students Win Runner-Up Award in MIT $100,000 Competition
By Amy MacMillan, LFM-SDM Communications Assistant
May 25, 2006
LFM '07 students Subhrangshu Datta and Aamir Sundrani were part of a team that won the Runner-Up award in the Development track of the MIT $100,000 Entrepreneurship competition that concluded on May 18, 2006.
Datta and Sundrani were members of Team Kalpataru, founded by students at the MIT Sloan School of Management, the MIT Media Lab, and the MIT Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab. According to Indian mythology, “kalpataru” is a magical tree which grants anything a person desires. Team Kalpataru is a social enterprise with a simple mission: to apply innovative, low-cost technology to improve the lives of the impoverished.
The team, which won $10,000 in start-up funds, decided it could make the greatest impact by helping to improve the effectiveness and sustainability of Microfinance Institutions (MFIs). They based this decision on irrefutable evidence that MFIs significantly impact the lives of the poor – raising living standards, improving the education of children and empowering women.
Kalpataru’s solution consisted of three key ingredients:
- The "$100" laptop through the One Laptop per Child non-profit association developed at MIT's Media Lab,
- A suite of easy-to-use microfinance software, services & peripherals,
- An innovative microfinance business process optimized for efficiency.
In August, the team will pilot its first solution in Dhaka, Bangladesh, in partnership with Dr. Muhammad Yunus of Grameen Bank. Team Kalpataru is uniquely positioned to deliver on its vision because of low-cost technology, a comprehensive understanding of South Asian culture, and a strong set of partnerships in the microfinance and technology industries.
Datta says success in this endeavor means taking the "big-picture view" and being "innovative in taking lessons learnt from traditional manufacturing to non-traditional operations and supply chain management."
Datta is from Kolkata, India, and Sundrani is from Houston, TX.
Other Kolpataru members include:
Priya Naik
Hometown: Mumbai, India
M.A., Economics, Yale University
Research Associate for MIT's Poverty Action Lab
Ayan Sarkar
Hometown: Kolkata, India
MBA, 2007
Manu Prakash
Hometown: Bareilly, India
Ph.D. candidate, Physics and Media Group, MIT Media Lab
Joshua Feast
Hometown: Wellington, New Zealand
MBA, 2007
Nashant Rao
Hometown: Mumbai, India
MBA, 2007