Call for Proposals: Establishment of Sparsh Centres for Social Innovation (India)

This program is a unique Social Innovation platform that not only provides opportunity for clinical and rural immersion but also monthly fellowship and mini kick start grant to young Social Innovators for developing a prototype/technology. The program is implemented through SPARSH partners under the guidance and mentoring of a knowledge partner.

SPARSH Centres

• BIRAC – SPARSH Centres will be responsible for implementation of social innovation program of BIRAC and will provide a host of technical, IP, business and marketing mentoring to the fellows.
• Under the present call, proposals are invited from interested agencies for establishment of SPARSH Centres in following thematic areas:
  • Public health
  • Farm to plate
  • Climate resilience
• Roles and Responsibilities of SPARSH Centres
  • Overall implementation and management of program. This includes:
    • Provide desired infrastructure such as dedicated work space, common equipment and other services like mentoring, networking to the Fellows.
    • Monitoring the progress of SPARSH fellows and submitting the project progress report to BIRAC as per the prescribed timelines.
    • Selection of social innovation fellows in consultation with BIRAC.
  • Work with Knowledge Partner associated with the program and extend full support to it in mentoring and monitoring of SPARSH fellows.
  • SPARSH Centres, if so desire, may share resources with other SPARSH Centers for optimal utilization of infrastructure.

SPARSH Knowledge Partner

• For the mentoring of SPARSH centres and SPARSH Fellows, a Knowledge Partner is associated with the Program.
• To a great extent, success of social venture in creating sustainable social impact depends on understanding social, economic and environmental context. Immersion to the context is essential for the innovators for this purpose and the products and/or service thus designed, developed and offered by the entrepreneurs must have relevance to the society in general and targeted people in specific. Strategic aspects such as alignment with the industry structure, market-fit and positioning are the vital aspects of the social venture to influence success of the social ventures. The SPARSH knowledge partner shall provide the necessary guidance to the fellows in this regard.
• Roles and Responsibilities
  • The Knowledge Partner will help the SPARSH Fellows to learn the processes and tools to understand societal and associated cultural dimensions as well as train them with entrepreneurial mind set, venture creation, managerial methods to become a successful social entrepreneur/innovator.
  • The Knowledge Partner will engage with social innovators through-out the course of the programme and provide overall guidance through periodic lectures, field visits, boot camps, webinars etc.
  • It will be responsible for organizing at least three training workshops in partnership with the SPARSH Centres and in consultation with BIRAC during each cycle of the Program.
  • It will serve as a brand ambassador for SPARSH and will help in connections and outreach.

Fellowship Structure

The 18 months fellowship will start from Pre-Immersion orientation and Induction phase. The structure of fellowship would be as follows:

• Recruitment & Selection of SPARSH Innovator/Fellow
  • The SPARSH Centres will complete the process of selection of SPARSH fellows within 2 months of approval from BIRAC to operationalize the program. Each partner shall recruit a maximum of 10 fellows for 18 months under a particular theme.
• Pre-Immersion orientation & Induction
  • Once the fellows are selected, SPARSH partners are expected to brief the fellows about objectives & expected outcomes of the program as well as provide necessary tools and guidance to identify existing gaps & needs in the identified thematic area.
• Immersion
  • The “immersion” component of the program would be for a period of 5- 6 months. During this period the social innovators would ideally be exposed to both clinical/agricultural settings as well as rural (or urban resource poor) community settings. Within the clinical landscape, it would be desirable that the fellows gain exposure at 3 levels- primary, secondary & tertiary healthcare.
• Post Immersion Filtration
  • On completion of the immersion component, fellows are expected to do desk research to understand various solutions explored and list out all the gaps & need analysis carried out during immersion. Further to this they are expected to filter their list and narrowed down to top 2-3 ideas that align well with possible product or service strategies. This would involve a mix of business & technical learnings related to market dynamics, technology landscaping, regulatory challenges, business plan formulation and grant writing skills.
• Product Design, Prototyping and Delivery Mechanism
  • This stage will provide the live prototype development environment or planning a delivery implementation to the Social innovators. The detailed plan of action submitted by applicant will be reviewed by Partner and a report for release of grant should be submitted to BIRAC. On submission of the plan, BIRAC would then release the mini kickstart grant of INR 5,00,000 in two stages of (INR 2,50,000 each time) routed via the partner. If two or more fellows wish to work together as a team on developing a single identified need, they can combine their mini kick-start grants. However, this must be communicated to BIRAC in advance and a project lead for the joint project be identified and agreed upon. The team then has to submit a detailed milestone based plan to the SPARSH Centre & BIRAC for approval before the combined mini kick-start grant is released & routed via the SPARSH Centre. Once BIRAC approval has been provided for a joint project, it cannot be reversed. Wherever two Social innovators decide to work for a joint project, the combined mini Kick start grant will be provided in two milestone stages as for individuals.

SPARSH Social Innovators/SPARSH Fellows

• Selected fellows would be designated as ‘SPARSH Social Innovators/ SPARSH Fellows’ who would receive a fellowship from BIRAC (amounting to INR 50,000/month for 18 months) and a onetime mini-kick start grant of INR 5 lakhs per fellow which will be provided during the course of the fellowship.

Tenure of SPARSH Centre and Knowledge Partner

• Proposals are invited for a duration of 5 years for implementation of three cohorts of 20 months each.
• For release of funds, the performance of the SPARSH centre and the Knowledge partner would be assessed periodically for their respective milestones as per the GLA. However, the overall performance of SPARSH Centre for extending the contract will be reviewed only after completion of three cycles i.e., 5 years.
• A SPARSH center can recruit a maximum of 10 fellows per theme for 18 months. Centre should complete three thematic cycles in a duration of five years.

Eligibility for Fellows

• The SPARSH fellowship is a prestigious award which will be provided to only Indian citizen. Fellow could be drawn from fields such as life sciences, agriculture, engineering, medicine & human biology with educational qualification ranging from undergraduate (B.Tech, BE, MBBS) or postgraduate (MSc, MS, M.Tech, MPhil, MD) & PhD.
• Eligibility requirements for SPARSH Centre and Knowledge Partner:
  • Incubation centers, Research Parks, Foundations, Technology Centers, Public Research Institutions, Private Research Institutions, established as a legal entity under the relevant Law of India having at least 51% Indian stakeholders (owners/partners/trustees/members/associates etc.) are eligible to apply. It is desirous for the applicant organization to have:
    • Operational expertise in implementing programs on innovative products/processes/technologies in above-mentioned thematic areas.
    • Subject/business experts to provide mentorship to fellows.

For more information, visit Biotechnology Industry Research Assistance Council (BIRAC).