It is the need of the hour to encourage social entrepreneurship in order to alleviate poverty in country, said Asad Umar, CEO of Engro Corporation while addressing Acumen Fund community gathering 2012 as chief guest here at local hotel on Saturday.
Speaking about the role of social entrepreneurship in the broader development context of Pakistan, he urged for working at improving the focus, quality and delivery of the state to address the unmet need of the poor which do not have market based solution.
"If we able to organise even a small cluster of milk farmers and provide them chillers so it will help in eliminating poverty among them", CEO Engro Corporation underlined. He commended the role of organisations like Acumen Fund in providing essential "patient" capital to help enterprises serving the poor scale their operations.
This event was introduced through a welcome note of Zaffar Khan, Chairman of the Acumen Fund to Pakistan Board of Directors. He spoke about his personal journey with Acumen Fund, and the inspiration to support sustainable enterprises that preserve the dignity of the poor instead of traditional forms of aid.
The Acumen Fund Pakistan Country Director, Aun Rahman, provided the achievements of Acumen Fund's activities to date in Pakistan. This includes $15 MM committed in investments in 12 pioneering enterprises providing services to low-income groups including low-cost housing and housing finance, clean drinking water, agricultural credit for poor farmers, micro-finance, micro health insurance, renewable energy, livestock productivity, and low-cost drip irrigation.
He mentioned that since Acumen Fund began investing in Pakistan, its investments have impacted hundreds of thousands of low-income families in the country, and built sustainable solutions that serve as models for other stakeholders as well.
He noted that Acumen Pakistan is focusing on facilitating cross-fertilisation of knowledge between Acumen's local and global portfolio companies to encourage replication, and is supporting the market entry of global investments in Pakistan that offer cutting edge products to improve social conditions, such as solar lighting. He thanked Acumen Fund's partners and broader community for their support over the past five years, and indicated that Acumen will be looking to significantly scale its work in Pakistan in the next 5-10 years to impact millions of people.
Highlighting Noor Ullah, Portfolio Manager of Acumen Fund underlined Acumen's newest approved investments in Pakistan, including off-grid micro hydel plants in Chitral, on-grid Bio-mass plants in Sindh, and low-income housing finance to poor urban families.
He said that Acumen looked to double its portfolio of investments in the next 5 years, focusing on critical areas like agriculture, access to energy, and education for low-income groups. The community gathering also featured a panel discussion on how the social enterprise space and eco-system could be further developed in Pakistan.
The panelists gave their insights on how the social enterprise sector in Pakistan could be developed, highlighting areas like the need to share knowledge from successful models in Pakistan and other countries, broadening the sources of capital for social enterprises, and a key role played by the government in facilitating support to such enterprises.
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