A two-day conference on Social Business has kicked off this morning (Thursday) in Bengaluru, India.
Nobel laureate Professor Muhammad Yunus will deliver the opening speech at the event marking the 8th Social Business Day.
Emmanuel Faber, global CEO, Danone, Amitabh Kant, CEO, NITI Aayog, and Dr Devi Prasad Shetty, Managing Director, Narayana Hrudayalaya, India will present keynotes at the function.
The event will be attended by over 1200 delegates from 42 countries.
Dignitaries, prominent academics, and leading practitioners will be speaking at various sessions of the occasion.
Social Business Day 2018 is designed, like in previous years, to exchange experiences and ideas and also work on plans to create social businesses that tackle the most pressing problems of society.
BNP Paribas, Tata Steel, Amity University, RoundGlass, Microcredit Initiative of Grameen (MIG), based in Kerala, Nishith Desai Associates extended their support to organise the event to the Bangladesh’s Yunus Centre.
There will be a number of plenary sessions and panels of the event where over 110 speakers are set to share their valuable thoughts and experiences.
Among the notable speakers are Dr Achyuta Samanta, Founder, KIIT and KIIS, and member of upper house of Indian Parliament, Rahul Bose, prominent actor and activist, Laurent Dupont, global CEO of Peace and Sports, a sports association based in Monaco and supported by Prince Albert of Monaco, Manoj Kumar, CEO, Social Alpha and Trustee, Tata Institute for Genetics and Society, and Head of Innovation and Entrepreneurship, Tata Trusts, Andrea Jung, President and CEO, Grameen America, Steve Hollingworth, President, Grameen Foundation, Maria Ligia Do Rosario Noronha, Director of Economy Division, UN, Nishith Desai, Founder of Nishith Desai Associates, Takuya Kawamura, President of Sunpower Corp and Co-CEO of Grameen Japan Sunpower Auto, ZarinaScrewvala, Founder and Director of Swades Foundation, Anil K Gupta, Founder of Sristi, Shankar Man Shrestha, Chairman at Centre for Self-help Development (CSD), Corazon Henares, Consultant at Negros Women for Tomorrow Foundation, Suraj Kumar, Chief Mentor of Neeti Foundation, K Paul Thomas, Founder and Director of ESAF Small Finance Bank, Rohtash Mal, Founder Chairman of EM3 AgriServices, ArunPatil, Vice Chancellor of Amity University Rajasthan, SusmitaMohanty, CEO of Earth2Orbit, and Yuka Kobayashi, CEO of Yunus Yoshimoto Social Action Company and Lakshmi Pratury, Founder and CEO of INK.
The theme of Social Business Day 2018 is “A World of Three Zeros: Zero Poverty, Zero Unemployment, Zero Net Carbon Emissions”. It underscores Professor Yunus’s vision of creating a world where there will be no poverty, no unemployment and no environmental threats; a vision he shared with the world through his book “A World of Three Zeros”, which is based on practical examples that have been implemented in Bangladesh and around the world over 40 years.
In the second day’s programme on Friday, it will include pre-conference on Social Business Academia 2018, to be held in November in Wolfsburg, Germany.
The pre-conference is primarily for academics and researchers to network and exchange academic developments and mark the preparation for the upcoming Social Business Academia Conference.
