A few weeks ago, I competed in a social enterprise business plan competition called the Hult Prize. The competition is ambitious in scale and scope, giving a broad mandate to competitors and rewarding the best ideas with the chance to win $1 million in seed funding. This year’s challenge was developing a solution to the problem of urban hunger by 2018. The catch is that the business needs to be scalable and financially sustainable. The product or service needs to be culturally relevant enough to be useful, while culturally agnostic enough to work anywhere. It needs to address the root cause of urban hunger, facilitating access to nutritious food at affordable prices. With those marching orders, we went to work. My team consisted of some seasoned industry veterans. Aleem Ahmed spent three years at LEK Consulting before moving to Western Kenya to implemented a clean water program for Innovations for Poverty Action, and later Ethiopia to work with the Agriculture Transformation Agency. Ahmed El Mahi had a stint as a trader in London before sourcing investments in Mali for D.Capital, Dalberg Global Advisors’ impact investing arm. Caroline Mauldin spent four years at Accion International, one of the largest microfinance organizations...
