Ananya Birla Quotes

Making loans and fighting poverty are normally two of the least glamorous pursuits around, but put the two together and you have an economic innovation that has become not just popular but downright chic. The innovation - microfinance - involves making small loans to poor entrepreneurs, usually in developing countries.

The moment you say microfinance everybody wants to help you.

My children have been learning lessons about entrepreneurship since they were in kindergarten, and these lessons are paying off: even though they are only 22, 18, and 15, they have already collectively launched three nonprofit organizations and several new businesses.

A well-functioning microfinance bank can actually be a profitable business as well. So it became a perfect proof point that, through business, you can provide an experience that leads to individual self-empowerment.

If the basic structure of Grameen is changed, the worry is that the poor women who are the rightful owners of the bank will be disenfranchised.

Grameen Bank was formed as an institution owned by its borrower members, who are poor women. Through its unique decision-making process, Grameen Bank has given millions of women the means to emerge from the shadows in a male-dominated society and to make something of themselves.

Today, 30-year-olds are becoming social entrepreneurs.

Long live Grameen Bank. Let the power of poor women prevail.

The Grameen Bank Ordinance with amendments up to 2008 is a beautiful legal structure for the fulfillment of the ideals and objectives of the bank. Any change in this structure will be devastating for the bank.

A generation of entrepreneurs will mop up poverty at a rate that no government ever could.

We need more imagination, more innovation and more public financing for projects and programmes that harness the positive energy of young men.

I think that my original drive as an entrepreneur was precisely that desire to get away from the image of the shipping magnate's son.

It's the combination: big idea with a good entrepreneur: there's nothing more powerful. That's just as true [for] education and human rights as it is for hotel or steels.

What's great about my father is that, because we've been involved in the business from such a young age, he's given us - and we've earned - autonomy, and he's given us the rope to go out and grow the brand.

Engineers and entrepreneurs are fundamentally dissatisfied with the way the world is and want to make it better. There are so many things you could do with technology if you can match it up with real problems.

You know what this nation is? It's a disruptive start-up. It was a group of rich guys that got together and said, 'You know what? We're going to break away from the other countries and start our own country.'

Look, I'm an entrepreneur, I want to create things, I'm a builder. I don't want handouts. If I didn't play football I'd be doing something else. That's me. I don't want to be held back. I want to go forward. I want to better myself.

At Venture for, we've worked with hundreds of aspiring young entrepreneurs who want to build businesses and change things for the better.

I want to go further and make the UK the easiest place in the world to invest in social enterprise.

My father was the first entrepreneur in the family. He started his own record label, his own restaurant. He knew that, in order to give something back to the people, he had to create.

Our young people are some of the best and most talented in the world - they are driven, entrepreneurial, and innovative - and with the help of people who have already made it in the world of work, they can go on to be the bosses and employers of the future.

Entrepreneurship is one of the most important drivers for job creation. Moreover, social entrepreneurship offers not only a path for young people to transform their own lives, but also a way to empower others.

Young people have so many great ideas so I can't wait to hear what children from around the country have come up with. 'Pocket Money Pitch' will encourage them to believe in themselves and 'have a go.'

I created DonorsChoose by putting pencil to paper - literally - and sketching out each screen of the web site and how it would work. Then I paid a programmer from Poland $1,500 to turn my sketches and common-sense rules into a functioning website.

I don't consider my competition to be companies but entrepreneurship. Entrepreneurship is the freedom to take your own decisions, and that's what we offer.