August 2010
5 posts
3 tags
Goodbye to Mexico (for now)
After five wonderful weeks in Mexico City, we can’t believe it is already time to leave! Working with InVenture on this pilot and working first-hand with micro-entrepreneurs has been an out-of-the-world experience for us.
Our flight leaves tomorrow to arrive in DC. The Mexico pilot doesn’t just end in Mexico! We will be working hard to follow-up on Griselda’s, from mid-September (when we actually...
Expanding our Network
The last two days have been devoted to solidifying our partnerships. We plan to execute our second pilot with a consulting firm that focuses on micro-enterprises, Vinculo Communitario. Vinculo’s co-founders – Noe and Juan – are our closest friends in Mexico.
Thursday began bright and early. Noe and Juan had arranged a very packed itinerary for us, involving meetings with a corporate lawyer, a...
4 tags
Our Last Visit to Griselda
Yesterday, we had our final meeting with Griselda at her clinic. We feel like regulars now when we take the metro to Tasquena station and then the Tren Ligero to Xochimilco. The purpose of our final meeting was to have an extensive discussion with Griselda about what her ideal financial contract with InVenture would look like. We will be buying her an ultrasound machine in mid-September...
A Fiesta and Some Touring
On Friday, after a really productive meeting with Carlos at APROS, we were invited to a goodbye party for two of APROS’s interns, Tiffany and Blandine, who are from France. They are our age and we have gotten to see them whenever we go to APROS for meetings and they also accompanied us to visit Griselda the first time that we met. The party was hosted by Claudia (photo below) at her apartment in...
July 2010
13 posts
4 tags
Keeping Well
The evening rain showers and occasional cold temperatures finally caught up with me when I (Manvi) fell sick Wednesday morning! I found to my surprise that I woke up with a terrible sore throat, a relentless cough, and a massive headache. Lozenges and tylenol just weren’t doing it. We realized quickly that our next step was to go find a doctor to get a sense of what was really going...
6 tags
A Day in the Mercado
Yesterday we left our apartment at 6:30am to get out to Milpa Alta and do further field research on Griselda’s business and her community. The first thing we did when we got there was grab some breakfast and walk around the area where Griselda’s clinic is, close to the center of the town in barrio Los Angeles. The Milpa Alta city center is built around the “mercado”,...
3 tags
Fin de Semana
This past weekend was awesome for the two of us, especially this Saturday! We started off the afternoon with a very productive meeting with Noe and Juan (Co-Founders of Vinculo Comunitario); in fact, this was our third meeting with them since we’ve been in Mexico! We discussed the details of our partnership with them in future Inventure pilots. After our meeting, Noe and Juan invited us to dinner...
5 tags
Getting Down to the Numbers
Yesterday was an extremely productive day for us here in Mexico. We went back out to Milpa Alta to visit the entrepreneur we are working with, Griselda Flores. The purpose of our meeting was to follow-up with Griselda about our investment in her business. We really want to target an investment that will help her business grow and serve the community at the same time. Our analysis has led us to...
After returning here for a second time, Manvi and I have quickly decided that Mexico D.F. is one of our favorite cities in the world (next to Washington, D.C. of course). Living in La Condesa is awesome because everything we need is pretty much in walking distance from restaurants to Starbucks, grocery store, Mexican marketplace, Parque Mexico, and much more. And on the weekends, we have time to...
Another exciting aspect of being in Mexico is focusing on how we can expand InVenture Fund’s work in Mexico once we have ensured that the pilot is successful. To this end, we have been meeting with different organizations in Mexico City to begin collaborations. It is great that all of these organizations are really interested in working together and believe that collaboration is important...
6 tags
Griselda Flores (Pilot Entrepreneur)
Our first stop before meeting Griselda was APROS’s local office in the center of Milpa Alta, where we met with Alexandra. Alexandra is one of APROS’s best credit officers. She was the one who initially encouraged Griselda to start her own business and eventually connected her with microfinancing.
Griselda is a hard-working, confident single mother of four. For the last four years, Griselda...
6 tags
Milpa Alta
On Monday, we ventured out to Milpa Alta in the southern edge of Mexico City to visit one of our Inventure entrepreneurs, Griselda Flores, and see her business in action! What we thought was going to be a simple one-on-one interview where we ask Griselda basic questions about her business in her office turned out to be a whole-day exploration into her life. To our surprise, we were warmly...
9 tags
Staying dry and living in La Condesa
We landed in Mexico on Tuesday and both of us are SO excited to be here to start the first InVenture pilot in North America!! One of the best parts of this experience is that we get a chance to return to Mexico City - a city that we both fell in love with the last time that we were here in January 2009. Our first couple days have mostly involved settling in to our apartment and preparing an...
16 tags
Manvi's Tale from MIT to Mexico City and Beyond
Q: Hi Manvi! So tell us about yourself ; Where are you from?
I grew up in the suburbs of Washington DC, but was actually born in India. I came to the States when I was five years old. The DC area is wonderful so my family never left. I just graduated from MIT in Cambridge, MA with a major in Economics.
Q: How did you and Sarina come up with this project?
Sarina and I have literally been...
10 tags
Sarina's Journey: How she and InVenture Fund came...
Sarina met Manvi Goel, her Mexico Pilot co-captain, in their high school just outside Washington, D.C. They continued on to MIT together, where they studied economics and became interested in the question of how to eliminate poverty without charity. They discovered quickly that the easy answer—ground-up economic development—was both hard to implement and hard to find.
“I was looking for a more...
Introducing our InVenture Fellows!
Welcome to our latest Fellow blog! We’ll be featuring all of our amazing fellows here, along with everything they’re up to! Stay tuned for the latest, and continue to check out our main blog for regular updates on InVenture.