Youths generate ideas for sustainable businesses

Intending to solve various problems which people face in our everyday life in this society, Young Sustainable Impact (YSI) started its journey in Bangladesh from August last year. YSI is an international organisation that brings together the best young entrepreneurial talents of the world, in a platform, for a five-month innovation programme to find out solutions to the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The main view of YSI Bangladesh is to find out her best talented young entrepreneurial minds to solve different issues of this country related to SDG.

YSI Bangladesh initiated their first incubation programme 'Megapreneurs 2018' this January. Traffic jam, lack of clean drinking water, improper waste management, water blockage, etc. are some of the problems that dwellers regularly face in Dhaka, a megacity. Megapreneurs-- entrepreneurs who deal with issues of megacities--will work to alleviate these problems and improve living conditions of millions of people.

The interesting fact is many young minds were motivated about the impact that YSI Bangladesh promised to create and for that reason it received an enormous number of applications at the beginning of the journey. From those, top 21 were selected for their innovative ideas, sustainable business plans, and some other criteria. That was just the beginning of the journey. These 21 people have brilliant ideas to solve different challenges of this society and initiate sustainable businesses--from scratch to the final product. At present, they are going through a three-and-half-month long innovation programme, which focuses on ensuring the quality, authenticity, and acceptance of their products. As they have to work as teams here-seven teams, three members in each team-so team building through different tasks is a critical issue which the innovation programme focuses. Proper market research, scientific analysis, etc. are also necessary to make the initiative long lasting and create a measurable impact so that the society gets benefitted from their entrepreneurial attempts.

One group is now working on making environment-friendly bottles so that people do not have to worry about tons of plastic bottles polluting our environment each year. Another group is working on utilising waste plastic products to produce something new and necessary for the people to use. Similar tasks are being done by other groups, which will ultimately help Bangladesh to find out her 21 young, innovative minds who focus on creating a sustainable society for their country. On July 13, 2018 through a grand conference, each group will pitch their ideas in front of investors and will get the opportunity to manage necessary seed funding to sustain their start-ups.

Marcus Bruns, CEO of YSI, visited Bangladesh recently and had a lovely time both with the core team of YSI Bangladesh and the megapreneurs. He said, "To be able to bring about change, you have to believe that you can make a difference. I truly believe the megapreneurs have this mindset, and they can accomplish great things if they put their minds to it. I look forward to seeing the end result in July."

The writer is the country manager of Young Sustainable Impact (YSI) Bangladesh. He can be reached at [email protected]