South Asia Investor Review

Haroon and Hamza Choudhry, born in rural Pakistan, are teaching artificial intelligence (AI) American high-schoolers. Twenty-something Choudhry brothers were 8 and 6 when they came from Pakistan to the United States in 1998. They have co-founded " AI For Anyone ", a Brooklyn-based non-profit organization that sends volunteers to teach artificial intelligence to high school students. A recent study shows that  Pakistani-Americans  are among the top 5 most  upwardly mobile  groups in the United States. Other top most upwardly groups are Chinese-Americans from Hong Kong, Taiwan and People's Republic of China and Indian-Americans. Pakistani-Americans are known to volunteer for non-profit organizations like AIForAnyone to help the communities they live in. Several Pakistani-Americans are s uccessful social entrepreneurs . Hamza (right) and Haroon Choudhry in their village in Pakistan Choudhrys lived with 9 relatives in a 2-bedroom apartment in Brooklyn, and later ...

Hannah Dehradunwala, a Pakistani-American student at New York University, has co-founded Transfernation, a nonprofit startup with the aim of alleviating hunger beginning with New York City and Karachi. She has partnered with a fellow NYU student Samir Goel, an American of Indian descent. It's essentially an app and a website that enable leftover food at restaurants and corporate events to be distributed to the hungry. Within hours of  Transfernation’s official launch on Oct.16 in conjunction with The Resolution Project’s New York City Gala, Dehradunwala and Goel had already overseen the transfer of 85 pounds of food leftovers from the Gala event to Bowery Mission, a social institution providing homeless New Yorkers with immediate help and long-term recovery programs, according to USA Today . “Our gala celebrated sustainable living, and Transfernation enhanced the sustainability of the evening by making sure that any unused food from the event went to those who need it at th...

"All members of the Commission (on  Social Entrepreneurship and Innovation ) were agreed, Pakistan is a land of opportunity"  i-genius Opportunity Pakistan Report April, 2014 i-genius, headquartered in London, calls itself a "World Community of Social Entrepreneurs". It promotes social entrepreneurship to a network in over 200 countries. Last year in September, it sent fifteen people (Commissioners) from Australia, Italy, Pakistan and the United Kingdom to Pakistan to survey its social entrepreneurship landscape.  At the end of their trip, all 15 members of the team unanimously conclude that "Pakistan is a land of opportunity" for social entrepreneurship and innovation.  They said: "The population (of Pakistan) is proportionately one of the youngest in the world. The youth predominately feel passionate about their country and are determined for it to succeed. Entrepreneurship and social entrepreneurship seems almost natural to them, perhaps i...

Guest Post by Dost_Mittar A simple solution to a disgusting problem "The toilet is a part of the history of human hygiene which is critical chapter in the growth of civilization." [ Dr. Bindeshwar Pathak ] Anyone who has seen the blockbuster film “Slumdog Millionaire” would remember one scene above all others. I am referring, of course, to the “potty scene” where the young Jamal is shown relieving himself in an open pit. The scene caused a lot of adverse reaction in India as unrepresentative of true India. But according to a joint study conducted by the World Health Organization and UNICEF, 665 million Indians, or nearly two-thirds of them defecate in the open. I am not sure if these 665 included people using indoor toilets without plumbing; if it did not, then the number of Indians defecating in an unhygienic manner is even greater. I love traveling by train when I am in India and have many enchanting childhood memories of such travel. But one of the less enchanting memory...

Understanding the need to design for extreme affordability is giving birth to a new generation of entrepreneurs. These are entrepreneurs with a social conscience who are motivated by the desire to do good and do well at the same time. They are finding new ways to empower the poor by satisfying their basic needs for safe water and electricity in emerging markets. According to Wikipedia definition, a social entrepreneur is someone who recognizes a social problem and uses entrepreneurial principles to organize, create, and manage a venture to make social change. Unlike a business entrepreneur who typically measures performance in profit and return, a social entrepreneur assesses success in terms of the impact s/he has on society. While social entrepreneurs often work through nonprofits and citizen groups, many work in the private and governmental sectors. The main aim of a social entrepreneurship as well as social enterprise is to further social and environmental goals. This need not be...