As approximately 300 guests and participants took their seats in the Ball Room of the Pan-Pacific Sonargaon Hotel in Dhaka on the morning of June 28, the anticipation towards the first Social Business Day's daylong program was palpable. The whole place was buzzing, and the buzzword was social business.

Sohel Parvez

Tending to an expectant mother, a health worker keys answers to a set of questions into her smartphone. The information is then sent to a local clinic by the internet-enabled phone for a follow-up.

If the situation is deemed risky, doctors respond by sending an SMS alert back to the health worker to bring the patient to hospital for further attention.

This is how Grameen Intel Social Business Ltd helps reduce maternal mortality through the use of software applications on modern devices, such as laptops, netbooks or smartphones.

Nobel laureate Muhammad Yunus signs a copy for an enthusiast of his latest book, Building Social Business: The New Kind of Capitalism that Serves Humanity's Most Pressing Needs, at its launch in Dhaka on Social Business Day yesterday.

Photo: STAR

Star Business Report

Nobel laureate Muhammad Yunus has said he is happy to see his social business model attracting many, from youths to academics, giant businesses and governments in different countries.

He is also confident that such non-dividend business model could make up for a missing link in today's economic theories that are fundamentally flawed and unable to deal with issues like financial, food and energy crises.

Yunus explains his concept in an exclusive interview with The Daily Star on the eve of Social Business Day

Arun Devnath

Build business on the selfless nature of mankind. It is business with a difference, social business -- that is. It has a social goal -- to find a solution to a local problem. It may be the seed of a solution to a global problem. Someday, perhaps.

As Muhammad Yunus puts it, an investor in a social business aims to help others without making financial gains for himself. For the company, it is business and must be self-sustaining. The Nobel laureate says it must generate enough income to cover its own costs. In his latest book, Yunus describes a social business as a non-loss, non-dividend company, dedicated entirely to achieving a social goal.

Yunus sat with The Daily Star on the eve of Social Business Day to set a tone for the future of social business, a concept that promises to bring a fundamental change to the traditional economic structure.