Plenary session on social enterprises in universities

I was invited to Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, as a speaker on social entrepreneurship at the AKEPT-WIEF Social Enterprise Forum. The event was a collaboration between the higher education and leadership academy AKEPT and the World Islamic Economic Forum Foundation. As a panelist on the Plenary Session 5 on “Social Enterprise in Universities”, I shared the stage with Talib S. Karim, President of the Institute of Business Management in Pakistan; Sharon Feng, Overseas Director of Codemao from China; and Royston Braganza, CEO of Grameen Capital in India.

My introductory post on the WIEF Facebook page reads:

20-year-old startup founder of Oswald Labs, Anand Chowdhary, made the first web reading tool for people with dyslexia at a weekend hackathon in 2016. Now, he has expanded to Europe. He tells us how his innovative products are helping people with dyslexia to read and learn better.

InFocus also published a summary of the session, Developing social enterprises, which included:

Anand compared the Netherlands, where he currently lives and studies, to India, his home. ‘The EU has its universal privacy laws and health care but the challenges in India are different. We leaped to years of fintech to paper money to mobile, these ground innovations do matter and we are at a very good start,’ he said.

They also published an in-depth interview with me, Easy tools for dyslexia, on their website:

It’s definitely essential for societies and universities to evolve to develop social entrepreneurship among students who are passionate, energetic and capable of solving problems. Anand had to drop out of college to focus on his product and a year later actually joined a programme he was excited about. ‘There will always be opportunities to do other things, but as students our time is now and we should use it to solve the problems we care about,’ he concluded.