Bangkok, Thailand  March 19, 2010 -- EnerGaia Managing Director, Saumil Shah, was invited to gave a speech and to participate in a panel session on being a social entrepreneur at the Southeast Asia regional session of the prestigious Global Social Venture Competition (GSVC).

The session was held at the Pan Pacific Hotel in downtown Bangkok. Focus topics for his talk included: sources of entrepreneurial ideas, how to build a network, how to scale the idea at the right time, funding sources, challenges and lessons learned.

Mr. Shah was happy to share with the audience the path that led him to be a social entrepreneur.  In particular, he strongly believes that several of the challenges facing our world today such as access to clean water, food security and climate change can and should be inspiration for new business ideas.  EnerGaia - a company founded by Mr Shah in 2009 - is a good example of entrepreneurs rising to these challenges. It employs algae technology to reduce green house gas emissions and combat oceanic species depletion.

The theme of this year’s GSVC Southeast Asia regional and Social Entrepreneurship Symposium was “Soul or Sell, Must We Choose?”.  It was hosted by the Thammasat Business School and included speakers and judges from Thailand, Singapore, the Philippines, India and the United States of America. Twelve social entrepreneurial teams participated in the competition. The rules state that each team must include at least one MBA student as a  way of encouraging the next generation to follow the path of social entrepreneurship. The countries represented by the teams were Vietnam (3), the Philippines (1), Singapore (2), Indonesia (2), Laos (1) and Thailand (3).

About EnerGaia Co., Ltd.

EnerGaia Co., Ltd. (www.energaia.com) was founded in April 2009 as a social enterprise based in Bangkok, Thailand.  EnerGaia specializes in using microalgae to recycle CO2 emissions and treat wastewater from industrial sources such as power plants, biomass facilities, breweries, and refineries. The microalgae that is harvested from EnerGaia’s closed-system photo-bioreactors are then sold as useful products such as animal feed and direct human consumable items.

About the Global Social Venture Competition (GSVC)

GSVC (www.gsvc-sea.org) is a global graduate-student business plan competition began in 1999 at the Haas School of Business of the University of California at Berkeley, USA. GSVC was the first competition to promote entrepreneurial start-ups which not only offered financial returns, but also provided measurable social or environmental benefits. In order to expand, Haas joined with several of the world's top business schools, including the Columbia Business School, London Business School, Indian School of Business and Thammasat Business School as partners of GSVC.

Contact

Saumil Shah
Managing Director

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