From Enterprise to Ecosystem: How BRAC's Single(Client)-Bottom Line Scales for Good

What if the world’s biggest businesses were designed not to maximize profit, but to uplift the most vulnerable?

For over 50 years, BRAC has been doing just that—creating social enterprises not as traditional businesses, but as targeted interventions to fill the critical market gaps left by failing systems. Today, BRAC is home to one of the largest and most successful social enterprise ecosystems in the world, proving that business can be a force for lasting good.

At the heart of BRAC’s work is a powerful belief that everyone has potential, but too often, existing power structures prevent people from realizing it. By equipping people with the tools they need, BRAC helps them break through these barriers and shape their own destinies.

In this session, Tamara Hasan Abed, Managing Director of BRAC Enterprises, and Julia Roberts, BRAC USA CEO, will take you inside BRAC’s approach—showing how the organization’s fully sustainable social enterprises continue to prioritize impact over profit. As a network free from shareholder demands, BRAC reinvests surpluses equally into expanding client services and reach and into social development programs that provide access to education, healthcare, and financial inclusion. Tamara and Julia will share how BRAC’s social enterprises arose from market failures, how reinvesting profits drives social mobility, and how BRAC’s model illustrates the power of blended finance in action.

You’ll hear inspiring stories from BRAC’s groundbreaking enterprises, like Aarong, their retail brand that’s reshaping the fashion and lifestyle industry in Bangladesh. Aarong is now the number one lifestyle retail and e-commerce brand in the country, empowering over 65,000 artisans with fair wages, skills training, market access, and even healthcare and insurance benefits.

Aarong’s commitment to artisans goes beyond profitability—it supports diverse artisan groups, even when products may be less profitable or more challenging to produce. Today, Aarong serves over 500,000 global customers through e-commerce, and reinvests 50% of its profits back into BRAC’s social programs.

You’ll also learn how BRAC Dairy began as a simple idea to boost rural farmers’ incomes by developing the ecosystem needed for them to access wider markets and better pricing, and has since grown into the second-largest dairy processor in Bangladesh, ensuring fair prices for over 50,000 farmers—many of them women.

But these enterprises are not just revenue-generating machines. They are integral to BRAC’s mission, reinvesting profits to expand outreach, build skills, and connect clients to financial resources. One shining example is BRAC’s Ultra-Poor Graduation program, partially funded by the earnings of these social enterprises. This program has helped lift more than 2.1 million families out of extreme poverty by transforming aid recipients into entrepreneurs, offering financial services, market connections, and asset transfers.

Beyond individual enterprises, BRAC operates a vast ecosystem of 13 social businesses across agriculture, retail, packaging, and more—each designed to address market failures while sustaining the broader organization. BRAC is now looking ahead, exploring new social enterprises in key areas like education and healthcare, ensuring that their social development programs are less reliant on foreign grants.

As the daughter of BRAC’s founder, Tamara brings a unique perspective to the table. Educated in Dhaka, India, and at the London School of Economics, Tamara started her career in investment banking. After working in New York, she returned to Bangladesh and began her journey at Aarong. It was here that she discovered her calling, falling in love with the intersection of business, design, and social good. Tamara and BRAC USA CEO, Julia Roberts, will share their perspectives of how this innovative network of social enterprises—and BRAC’s broader development initiatives—can reshape global markets to deliver inclusive, lasting impact for communities around the world.