First Light Ventures

MobileWorks is a socially minded crowdsourcing platform and employment solution for low-income mobile-phone owners in India.  The mobile web application allows users to earn a supplemental income by completing simple data entry work sent to their mobile phones via mobile web.  MobileWorks markets the aggregate services of their worker pool as an on-demand crowdsourcing workforce to corporations, organizations, and individuals in the West.  To these customers, MobileWorks provides an easier, more accurate, and cost efficient alternative to traditional business process outsourcing.

Jack and Jake's Local and Organic Market is a wholesale and retail market operation whose local food products are measured in "food miles" - distance from production to the store itself. Jack and Jake's supports local farmers and fishers, supplies schools and hospitals, and reaches out to underserved neighborhoods in New Orleans that were left without access to healthy food after Hurricane Katrina.   

Promethean Power Systems makes solar-powered refrigerators to cool milk at remote collection centers throughout India. The unit reduces transportation costs, preserves the quality of milk, and increases small farmers' income by up to 100%. There is an estimated market of 120,000 cooling unites in India, totaling $600m.   

SABRAS was established to procure, process, and market salt produced by marginalized salt plan producers in Gujarat, India. Through SABRAS, the salt producers earn a higher margin by using cleaner operating solar pumps, which in turn improves standard of living.  The IRR through diesel savings alone is about 30%.

v-shesh is a "livelihood exchange" that trains and connects low-income rural job seekers (including people with disabilities and juveniles) in India to careers in sectors such as microfinance, manufacturing, and retail. v-shesh also identifies and trains individuals to operate as microentrepreneurs by distributing products suitable to their local social environment.  

Kopo Kopo provides an integration for all mobile money systems to the "last mile." Mobile phones are more accessible at the base of the pyramid than clean water or electricity, and it's now possible for the poor to access robust financial services via simple text messages. Institutions that serve the poor need an affordable way to integrate with mobile money systems, and Kopo Kopo's mission is to make that integration as simple and accessible as possible by offering a software platform that connects mobile money systems with the microfinance institutions who are serving the base of the pyramid.