Corporate Philanthropy: Levelling the Playing Field in Emerging Markets

Asya Vildt, inDrive’s Director of Operations Excellence and Sustainability, can discuss the role that corporate philanthropic and not-for-profit initiatives play in delivering tangible results when challenging inequality and injustice.

Asya will be drawing on her experience at inDrive, an urban services and mobility platform operating across 48 markets, whose super-mission is to “challenge injustice” and improve the lives of 1 billion people by 2030. inDrive’s strategy of providing fairer services in underserved communities and the company’s work to support education, sports and other community initiatives in markets where inDrive operates stems from the company’s desire to amplify its total positive impact on the world. Total impact includes revenue and profitability, as well as non-financial indicators affecting the lives of customers and service providers using inDrive, the world’s second-most downloaded ridesharing app.

The idea of ensuring fairness and expanding freedom of choice is at the core of inDrive, which has a unique bid-price model that allows drivers and riders to agree on a fair price. This model ensures inDrive charges drivers lower commission rates vs other ridesharing companies, helping drivers increase their earnings. This approach helped inDrive to expand quickly across emerging markets, and then begin to diversify its offering beyond ridesharing while staying true to its “fair play” ethos.

This session would follow on from the big-picture themes discussed in inDrive’s other proposed panel (Private Sector: The Key to Achieving Transformative Change in Emerging Markets) featuring the company’s Chief Impact Officer, Egor Fedorov.

In this panel, Asya would focus on how companies can expand access to education, sports and the arts and other key not-for-profit programs in the communities where they operate, and explain how such initiatives bring measurable improvements in quality of life for underserved and marginalised communities across the globe.

Asya would be able to provide tangible examples of the benefits provided by inDrive’s global not-for-profit initiatives, which include:
The Aurora Tech Award, which supports women founders of tech start ups. While open to women founders globally, the Award has a specific focus on supporting those operating outside of the world’s major tech hubs, with previous winners of the award hailing from Nigeria, Mexico, Botswana, Kenya and India.
The Alternativa Film Project, which supports documentary filmmakers from underrepresented communities, focusing on those whose work has the potential to positively impact the world.
Supernovas – an initiative that provides free soccer classes for children in small towns and remote areas of Kazakhstan, Egypt, Kenya, Ghana, Chile, Colombia, Morocco and Mexico.

On this panel, Asya will be joined by another corporate philanthropy expert to discuss their role in addressing structural inequalities, including in emerging markets.