The following is an interview I conducted with Markus Dietrich, the founder of the Asian Social Enterprise Incubator. This is a complement to a two-part blog post I wrote for Next Billion, seen here.
Develop Economies: How did you decide to start the ASEI?
Markus Dietrich: I have a background in business. I attended Cass Business School in London. After he graduated he joined a business selling cash registers in 1994. I worked with a family to develop a national distributorship. In 2000, we sold it to a UK company that was working on a global scale. I stayed on to start an office in Switzerland, and then we spun off one division that was moving from distribution to direct sales. We were no longer targeting dealers and enterprise integrators and instead going direct to the buyers. We went from nothing to $10 million in sales. I found that what I liked doing was starting something. Later they made them director of Europe and the Middle East. After 14 years, I decided that I’d had enough and quit the job in 2007. I didn’t really know what to do, so I started traveling in India for a while. I came across microfinance and was intrigued by the idea of fusing business with development. It was the first I realized that there was a business aspect to it. I realized that I could use the knowledge I’d gained to become involved. I was thinking about my own personal impact, and felt that what I’d been doing wasn’t really making an impact on a wealth-creation sale.
The following is the full transcript of an interview with Mark Ruiz, the founder of 