Vision

Imagine a world where a large conglomerate like General Electric (GE) directs its profits towards improving the lives of the poor around the world. We think it’s time to reimagine our existing economic models and tweak them slightly to take on today’s biggest global issues. At Opportunity Labs, we’re building a conglomerate of social businesses that are pro-poor in social and economic impact either through the products themselves or by creating jobs at scale – with the ultimate goal of improving the lives of millions of poor people worldwide. We operate just like a business: we aim to maximize profit through excellent execution and a focus on satisfying customer needs. The only difference between us and a typical business is that our profits are used to continually increase impact.

Our Social Businesses

Opportunity Labs’ first product, engageSPARK, enables organizations to dramatically extend the reach and effectiveness of their pro-poor programs. Currently, most people in developing countries communicate via SMS & Voice because 65% of them aren’t on the Internet, and another 20% access the Internet infrequently. engageSPARK is the EASIEST to use engagement platform that empowers non-IT staff at non-profits/NGOs of any size to build interactive Automated Call (IVR) & 2-Way SMS programs to engage their beneficiaries at scale, quickly, and affordably. Unlike all other tools that require training or IT people, have implementation or monthly subscription fees, and lack global telco integration, engageSPARK is used to build programs in minutes, cheaper, and in any of the 200+ countries.

engageSPARK's customers range from non-profits like the UN’s World Food Programme, Asian Development Bank, and Mercy Corps; to social enterprises like Noora Health, Impact Carbon, and Saturday Kids; to behavioral researchers like Duke University’s Dan Ariely, ideas42, and Innovations for Poverty Action; to huge multinational companies like Intel, and a top 5 global Internet company (we can’t name them). These organizations and many others use engageSPARK in 90+ countries around the world to make social change in the areas of Agriculture, Health, Finance, Elections, Refugee Services, Disaster Planning & Response, and even increasing access to jobs for people living in remote areas with very limited opportunities.

The program that Mercy Corps, a major international non-profit, implemented in the Philippines is a good example of how organizations use engageSPARK. Mercy Corps used our self-service platform to help 20,000 survivors of Typhoon Haiyan improve their budgeting and savings skills. People received soap operas with comprehension quizzes – both via two-way SMS and Automated Phone Calls (IVR), totaling more than 1 million calls & SMS messages. Mercy Corps didn’t realize this was possible (in a simple and affordable way) before they met us. Their non-tech staff built and launched the campaigns in just minutes. Check out the NetHope blog post & webinar here or the Engineering for Change article here.

In the last year, the GSBI Social Enterprise Accelerator accepted us as one of the top 17 social enterprises globally for its program. The Mulago Foundation awarded us its Rainer Fellowship for 2016. DBS-NUS named us a top 12 Social Venture in Asia. And Forbes Magazine recognized engageSPARK as a “Leading Startup.”

Our Team

Avner Mizrahi

Founder & COO

Lawyer (NYU) @ Dickstein Shapiro LLP (Washington, D.C.), Fellow at Platform for Labour Action (Uganda), Founder & COO @ NotInMyCountry

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Murat Knecht

CTO

Masters in Computer Software Engineering @ Hasso Plattner institut, Developer & Project Lead at Acme Packet (Berlin) - acquired by Oracle

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Ravi Agarwal

Founder & CEO

Serial Entrepreneur (Boston), Angel Investor, LP @ 500 Startups, Volunteer @ Grameen Foundation (Ghana & Uganda), Mgmt Training @ General Electric (US)

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Sunny Yang

Lead Designer

B.S. in IS & Human Computer Interaction @ Carnegie Mellon University, M.S. in Human Computer Interaction @ University of Michigan, IBM, Yahoo, Samsung, TripIt

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