What is Social Business?

According to Professor Muhammad Yunus, Nobel Peace Prize winner in 2006: “a Social Business is designed and operated as a business enterprise, with products, services, customers, markets, expenses, and revenues – but with the profit-maximizing principle replaced by the social-benefit principle”.

SB projects seek to give the poorest access to essential goods or services: nutrition, drinking water, energy, health care, etc. They use innovation to meet the needs of the poorest populations, by adapting to their special circumstances: innovation in product design, manufacturing processes, distribution channels, etc.

Those who develop SBs act as entrepreneurs but above all pursue a social goal.
The profits made are meant to remain in the business to allow it to develop.

Facilitating projects with a strong social benefit for the poorest

Grameen Crédit Agricole Microfinance Foundation facilitates the emergence of SB projects and assists in their development, alongside industrial partners.

Grameen Danone Foods Limited, in Bangladesh, is an SB example stemming from a partnership between Grameen and Danone. The company produces enriched yogurts to meet the nutritional needs of the most disadvantaged populations and sells them at a price accessible to a maximum number of people.

Favouring priority zones

The Foundation takes action for the neediest populations. Its priority action zones are Africa, the Middle East, South Asia and Southeast Asia.

Examples of SBs supported by the Foundation

• La Laiterie du Berger (Senegal)
  This company manufactures and distributes dairy products from milk collected from Fulani dairy farmers in the Richard Toll region. Its goal is to develop local dairy production while providing regular income to dairy farmers.
• Babyloan
  http://www.babyloan.org/ was the first European website for solidarity microcredit. Through it, Internet users can make no-interest loans to micro-entrepreneurs in developing countries.