When I look at all the 7 Key elements of entrepreneurship, I believe that entrepreneurship itself is now ready to be taken to the masses, to the "long tail" of the human population, to villages and rural areas, to common folks, who are ready to make a difference for themselves and their environment. A lot of these have become possible because of internet, wireless communications and other technologies creating a global equalizer in the society itself. What I am talking about here is not some thing new. People have talked about "Microfinance", "Village Banking", "Banking for the poor", etc. etc. for a decade now. In fact Mohd Yunus even received his "Nobel Prize" in 2006 for his work on Grameen bank in Bangladesh, and other parts of the world. Though the difference in approach here is that I truly believe in the power of entrepreneurship, combined with the leverage of capital; not the other way around as the disciplines of "finance" or "banking" might imply. I dream of inspiring and empowering not one or two or tens of entrepreneurs, I would like the SiliconIndia community to help inspire, and help create millions of entrepreneurs in all parts of the world, in remote villages, to uplift rural population, to find that small "fisher woman" who can through smart entrepreneurship can multiply her income by 10x. Or the local artisan, who figures out the game of volumes and distribution to reach out to the demand out there or to the talented village school teacher, who could never reach out of her job, to now creating an educational micro enterprise to change the ways kids learn and grow. In this flat world, the world of internet, cell phones, global connectivity, a world of social, professional networks like the ones of SiliconIndia.com, we are now ready to take on this "Big Social Challenge". So, how do we go about inspiring, a million successful entrepreneurs and ventures through out the villages, small towns and remote areas of our world? How do we, in the siliconIndia member community collaborate, contribute intellectually to enable such a dream to become a reality?

I don't have all the answers, but through my blog and monthly column in SiliconIndia, I would begin talking about ways and approaches to getting there collectively. This is an "open source" endeavor and I am looking for all of you to contribute through your ideas, and insights as we collectively "bootstrap" this big vision of million entrepreneurs?

A number of startups and established companies are now beginning to look at opportunities like these for big social impact. Take a look at http://www.kiva.org or http://www.villageeef.org or Omidyar networks or Ashoka (Social Entrepreneurship Non-profit) or Acumen (Socially oriented investment fund for developing countries) or Grameen bank themselves. On top of these are are non-profit MFIs (Micro Finance Institutes) or for-profit MFIs (like SKS MicroFinance in India) also doing great work on microfinance and assisting in social entrepreneurship. Even peer-to-peer micro lending sites like www.prosper.com or www.zopa.com are also enabling micro lending for village entrepreneurs.

I believe that the opportunity goes far beyond just micro lending for true entrepreneurial success in our village, and rural economies around the world. There are 3 Billion people in this world who mostly lives well below $2/day! How do we turn our internet enabled, cell phone powered "global village" into a land of equal opportunities for this 3 Billion people, who have thus far not begun to enjoy the benefits of modernization yet? That is the challenge, I lay in front of all of you here in the siliconindia community.

Unlike a discourse on micro finance or micro entrepreneurship or on developmental economics, I want us all to collectively think about how to bootstrap a "social venture" to drive a million entrepreneurs to success! Let us begin to call it SiliconIndia.org.

By the time I write the next month article, I would like all of you to think through and share your inputs on this "nice collaborative business plan" of micro entrepreneurship.

Here are some of the key elements of what we have to enable? 1. How do we leverage the power of the silconindia community to make a difference in developing micro entrepreneurship in the villages? 2. How do we gain access to capital to allow this SiliconIndia.org dream to become a reality? Should we go and ask all the companies in Bangalore (or Delhi or San francisco or elsewhere) to contribute some of their stock/cash, employee time or both to help us get there as a community? 3. How do we find the right entrepreneurs amongst these 3 Billion people, who live under $2/day so that we can collectively (through our digital knowledge network) can turn them into winning entrepreneurs.? 4. Which NGOs should we partner with locally on the ground to help these micro entrepreneurs in smaller towns and villages 5. How do we build the right web site to allow all of us to collaborate on this social mission? 6. What is the business model for such an endeavor...etc...etc.

Let us make this our very own project, and my promise to all of you is that we will collectively create a successful social venture (called SiliconIndia.org) who we can all take pride in and feel a sense of personal ownership.

Now let us get to work. Please reach out to me at gunjan@metricstream.com if you have any interesting thoughts, ideas or if you wanted to volunteer or contribute. Now is the time, not next year, not next decade.

Gunjan Sinha

Soon to be created "SiliconIndia.org"