COMPETITION
Business Competition
To expand its social impact, ARUN Seed identifies and selects social entrepreneurs through business competitions.
ARUN's
Business Competition
"CSI Challenge
The CSI (Cloud Social Investment) Challenge combines a "business competition," which invites social entrepreneurs to participate in a specific social issue theme each time, and " Cloud " which invites investment funds through donations, to discover social entrepreneurs who aim to solve social issues through innovative businesses. CSI Challenge is a platform for discovering and supporting social entrepreneurs who aim to solve social issues through innovative businesses.
Donations from individuals and companies
Social investment in the
winner of the business competition
Supporting people facing social challenges
Latest CSI Challenges
CSI Challenge 6
The theme for CSI challenge 6 is " A Society Where Human and Nature Resonate Together " with the desire to realize a nature-positive society, while remaining conscious of the importance of biodiversity, which was addressed in the previous CSI5. In addition, this year's CSI Challenge has the following three sub-themes to make the issue of biodiversity loss more accessible to supporters.
1) Protecting abundant nature and food
2) Protecting people's lives from extreme weather and disasters
3) Protecting landscapes and culture brought about by nature
Stakeholders and Roles
The CSI Challenge aims to build a platform to solve social issues on a global scale by involving a diverse range of stakeholders, including individuals, companies, and experts, to provide social entrepreneurs with financial support, as well as human support in the form of business and technical partnerships and advice.
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Social Entrepreneurs
Attempting to solve social issues through innovative business
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ARUN/Experts
ARUN accompanies and supports
entrepreneurs with the knowledge of experts and knowledgeable people -
Individuals and companies
Support social entrepreneurs through donations
Business Competition
process
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Calls for Entries
The 2022-23 competition attracted 72 applicants from 22 countries around the world.
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Documents
ScreeningApplicants will be evaluated based on their application documents and materials, including the issues they are addressing, their social impact, the relevance and sustainability of their business model, and the experience and skills of their management team.
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Interview
Screening Secondary screeningThe companies selected through the document screening process will be interviewed (online interviews in 2020 and 2022-23) to further explore the entrepreneur's aspirations, commitment to addressing the issues, and vision for the business.
(Example of judges) The list of judges for the Global Social Business Competition 2022 to be held in January 2023.
Seiichiro Yonekura Professor, Hosei University Graduate School; Professor Emeritus, Hitotsubashi University; President, Creative Response Social Innovation School Reiji Tsujimoto Partner, Deloitte Tohmatsu Group Tomomi Uchikawa Deputy Director General, Human Resources Department, Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA); Former Director, Gender Equality and Poverty Reduction Promotion Office, Governance and Peacebuilding Department Asako Osaki Director, Gender Action Platform, a non-profit organization Yukari Hara SKYAH Inc. Jun Kigoshi Vice Chairman, Bank of America, N.A., Tokyo Branch Hajime Adachi Executive Director, The Sasakawa Peace Foundation Satoko Kouno Representative, ARUN LLC; President, ARUN Seed NPO -
Final
JudgingThe finalists who have made it this far in the judging process will give their pitches. Experts from a wide range of fields (academic, business, philanthropy) will be invited to serve as judges. The final judging session will be held as a public event.
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Best
companies
selectedThe selected best companies will become candidates for investment. From here, the investment will be implemented after further in-depth due diligence and negotiations.
Past CSI Challenges
CSI Challenge 6
The theme for CSI challenge 6 is " A Society Where Human and Nature Resonate Together " with the desire to realize a nature-positive society, while remaining conscious of the importance of biodiversity, which was addressed in the previous CSI5. In addition, this year's CSI Challenge has the following three sub-themes to make the issue of biodiversity loss more accessible to supporters.
1) Protecting abundant nature and food
2) Protecting people's lives from extreme weather and disasters
3) Protecting landscapes and culture brought about by nature
CSI Challenge 5
~Final judging of ARUN's entrepreneurial business competition, CSI Challenge 5, was held on Friday, May 10, 2024, with the winning company being an Indian startup that creates elephant art from the invasive alien plant lantana. As a result of the judging, the Grand Prize was awarded to The Real Elephant Collective, a startup in Tamil Nadu, India, that exterminates the invasive alien plant lantana and uses it to create life-size elephant art.
CSI Challenge 4
CSI Challenge 4 was a business competition based on the theme of realizing gender equality, and we accepted applications from entrepreneurs around the world. CSI Challenge 3
CSI Challenge 3
CSI Challenge 3 was held to discover and support entrepreneurs who develop businesses that contribute to people in developing countries facing serious problems caused by new coronavirus infection (COVID-19). Specifically, the objective is to discover entrepreneurs who can help socially vulnerable women, children, and refugees affected by the Corona disaster in the local communities, and to support their businesses in the form of investment.
CSI Challenge 2
CSI Challenge 2 was held in 2018 under the theme "Challenging Innovation for the SDGs," with the aim of discovering social enterprises that are making excellent efforts to achieve the SDGs and building a social platform to connect social enterprises around the world with networks in Japan. The event was held in 2018.
We invited social enterprises, mainly from Asia, that aim to solve social issues through business with innovative approaches, and received 128 applications from 15 countries.
List of Entrepreneurial Partners
See
latest report on this business
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CSI Challenge 2 Best Company "BookMyBai" Upd...
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CSI Challenge 1 Winning Company "Stellapps, a Growing...
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Stellar Apps, Grand Prix Winner of the 1st CSI Challenge...
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Real Elephant Collective elephants in New York City!
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Real Elephant Collective's Field Visit to...
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Invasive Alien Species as Art: CSI5 Finalists' "Biodiversity...
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