Pesinet, world finalist in the Global Social Venture Competition at Berkeley

After having won the French final organized at the ESSEC Business School, followed by the European, African and Middle Eastern regional final organized at the London Business School, on April 23 ^rd Pesinet participated in the international grand final of the Global Social Venture Competition. Ten projects were selected among the 311 social enterprise projects submitted from across the world to participate in the final selection that took place at the prestigious Haas School of Business at the University of Berkeley in California.

The GSVC is an international Business Plan competition that recognizes projects linking economic viability and social impact. It allows the participants to meet investors interested in social entrepreneurship projects, to be coached by professionals in the sector and, for the winners, to receive prize money ranging from $5,000 to $25,000. This competition, created in 1999 and initiated by students from the Haas School of Business at the University of Berkeley in California, has little by little taken on an international scope by relying on a network of academic partners in charge of selecting the best projects on their continent.

Anne Roos-Weil convinced the investors and social entrepreneurs brought together in the successive juries in Paris and London (Ashoka France and the United Kingdom, Macif, Caisse d’Epargne, Bridges Ventures, Apax Partners, Cool2care, NSF international, Catalyst Fund …). She then set out for Berkeley to defend her project with Antoine de Clerck, co-founder of Pesinet, and Jean-Claude Charlet, member of Pesinet’s advisory board.

The team presented its innovative program aiming to reduce child mortality in Africa to an audience of 100 people and a jury bringing together philanthropic investors and globally recognized social entrepreneurs: the Acumen Fund, OneWorld Health, the NewSchools Venture Fund, Gray Matters Capital, the Lemerson Foundation.

The experience made it possible for the team to benefit from the advice of numerous social entrepreneurship experts and to develop contacts with investors and project sponsors at a symposium on social entrepreneurship that took place on April 24 ^th in San Francisco in honour of the 10th anniversary of the competition. They also benefited from the media buzz on Next Billion, the highly respected blog focusing on projects targeting  populations at the “bottom of the pyramid”.