Greetings from the Development Marketplace!

As you may know, in January 2013, the World Bank launched a Call for Proposals for social enterprises (SEs) currently working in,  or interested in expanding into, the low-income states of Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh and Jharkhand in India (www.dm-india.com). Building upon the success of the India Development Marketplace (DM) 2011 Competition's Technical Assistance (TA) design, the India DM 2013 Competition seeks to further support the ability of SEs to accelerate the development and sustainability of their business models. A key difference, however, will be the engagement of third party organizations to provide the capacity building and TA.

Through the 2013 India Competition, the DM intends to  select 30 finalists (social enterprises/ SEs) and award grants and TA services  to approximately 15 winning SEs. Grants will range in size between US $50,000 - $100,000 per winner. In order to provide the requisite capacity building  services, the DM seeks to:

1. Identify and empanel 2 - 3 Acceleration Partners  that are organizations with the ability to handhold and mentor the winner SEs  through an active 15-month acceleration process. It is expected that each empanelled organization will be able to support up to 5 winners.
2. Identify and empanel a set of 3 - 5 Subject Matter Experts in specific skills such as Marketing, Financial Planning, Capital  Raising, Operational Management, Human Resource Management, Organizational  Development and Strategic Planning.

These organizations will constitute a panel  of shared resources to be leveraged directly by a winner social enterprise – or  accessed in coordination with the Acceleration Partner.With the support of the Acceleration Partners and Subject Matter Experts, the India DM 2013 aims to assist the winner  Social Enterprises in strengthening their organizational capacity and accelerate  the development of their business model, and therefore their ability to have  scaled impact with those living in poverty. Based on over a decade of providing  global competitions, DM believes such support will leverage the grant funds  being provided and help build further strength in the India Ecosystem.The organizations that would be interested in  being the "Acceleration Partners" and "Subject Matter Experts" are encouraged to  submit their Expression of Interests (EOI) in the World Bank Groups eConsult2 website at the following link:
https://wbgeconsult2.worldbank.org/wbgec/index.html. Steps to Respond to EOI:

• Login or Register your Firm at the above link
   
• Search through the section on ‘Business
  Opportunities’ to locate EOI number: 1097463
• Read through the EOI and use the ‘Express Interest’button at the bottom of the page to
  apply.

Please note that the EOI is  open for responses till 8th March 2013. And shortlisted Firms will be asked to  respond to an RFP as a next step.