Priyanka Agarwal

(Asst. Prof.)

Institute of management studies, Bikaner-334001. India.

Abstract

Social Entrepreneurship is an all-encompassing nomenclature, used for depicting the process of, bringing about social change on a major and impactful scale compared to a traditional Non-Governmental Organization (NGO).  It is an increasingly important concept in the study of voluntary, non-profit and not-for -profit organizations. Earlier, organizations addressing key social issues were assumed to be idealistic, philanthropic with entrepreneurial skills. Social Entrepreneurship in India is emerging primarily because the government is very keen on its promotion, not necessarily by funding it or by advising on it but by enabling it. The Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) of the private sector with clearly earmarked funds and full-fledged action teams have played an important role in sprucing up the image of Social Entrepreneurship. The focus of the paper is to study the growing trends of Social Entrepreneurship in India and the new initiatives taken by various Social Entrepreneurs. It also gives a brief idea of different Theories of Social Entrepreneurship. Efforts are made to provide information and an exploratory study, related to the support activities of Social Entrepreneurship and Social Entrepreneurial ventures in India. This may be beneficial in future empirical studies of the subject.

Keywords: Entrepreneurship, Social Entrepreneurship, Social Entrepreneur, NGO, Corporate Social Responsibility, India.

1. Introduction

Globalization and rapidly increasing communications make us painfully aware of the intractableproblems facing humanity and our planet today.  Thankfully, we find that there is a growing number of talented, ambitious, and courageous individuals known as social entrepreneurs who are creating initiatives that are attempting to mitigate some of these problems on a scale – and with far more ambition – than ever seen before. These individuals realize that we don’t have time for incremental change – we need urgent and systemic change to solve global problems. These individuals and organizations are creating models of urgent, systemic change rather than more traditional incremental improvement, which are being advanced globally in what has come to be known as Social Entrepreneurship. In this course, we will get to know who these people are and what their organizations do, how they think and work, and why they represent more than just a ray of hope for our world today.

Social entrepreneurship is the field in which entrepreneurs tailor their activities to be directlytied with the ultimate goal of creating social value. In doing so, they often act with little or no intention to gain personal profit. A social entrepreneur “combines the passion of a social mission with an image of business-like discipline, innovation, and determination commonly associated with.

In this article, we first review some of the literature discussing the definition of entrepreneurship and then provide a clear and concise definition of social entrepreneurship. Next, we identify the unique features of social entrepreneurs and suggest boundaries for social entrepreneurship.

2. Objective of the study

The present study is based on specific objectives, which it justifies also. The objectives have been selected to keep the importance and rationality of the research title in mind. Following are the objectives which this research study intents to achieve

1. To study social entrepreneurship with its basic framework.
2. To underline the roles and responsibilities of social entrepreneurs in India society.
3. To study the overall contribution of social entrepreneurship and social enterprises in India.
4. To list out the challenges faced by social entrepreneurship in India.
5. To give suggestions to face prevailing challenges for social entrepreneurship in India.

The study shall be covering all the objectives with proper explanation, it is very important to note that, though this research paper has said objectives, but it aptly covers the overall sense of social entrepreneurship in India.

3. Research Methodology

The research methodology which is applied during the research study is descriptive in nature. The data collection of data is done on secondary basis and the research is strictly done to meet the objectives set previously for the present research. The data and information which is furnished in the study is taken from the various secondary sources. Various reports and studies, books on social entrepreneurship have been refereed in the present research. The objective of the research is to find the very basic idea regarding social entrepreneurship; the data collection and research methodology have been selected to keep the primary objectives in mind. The sources from where the data has been collected for the present study is listed below-

1. Reports of various industrial agencies like CII, ASSOCHEM, FICCIetc has been duly referred for the study.
2. Published reports from government bodies like ministry of commerce and industries
3. Research papers on related topics have been taken for the inputs
4. Web resources related to the topic have been used for the information
5. Websites and published material of social enterprises working all over India and globally.
6. All the other published material on social entrepreneurship or entrepreneurship has been referred during the research.
7. Literature review

Understanding entrepreneurship in a comprehensive manner is a challenge. The literature review is divided into three major parts. First, social and commercialentrepreneur and their entrepreneurial ventures are differentiated by exploring papers defining them. Most of

These papers in this section deal with missions, nature of the ventures and existing typologies clarifying the concepts behind them. At the second level, research papers on entrepreneurial process and business models of both the types of ventures are examined to bring clarity to the value creation process adopted by them. At the third level, papers on impact and outcome measurement practicesadopted by EVs and SEVs are examined to understand current practices on impact assessments.

Since, the purpose of the present study is to mainly examine social entrepreneurship and this phenomenon is different or similar to entrepreneurs, the current review focuses more on concept relate to social entrepreneurship rather than commercial entrepreneurship.

Understanding social entrepreneurship – an “elephantine” task

Entrepreneurs are powerful forces in the world creating transformational changes. Numerous high profile thinkers are advocating entrepreneurship as the panacea for many social and environmental concerns. They are people, who often create and innovate to build something of recognized value around perceived opportunities. They can be found in all walks of life and create social, artistic or financial value.

Scholars acknowledge the importance of entrepreneurial processes in generating value for firms and their owners. There is a huge scope of research in understanding how some new and established companies continuously create, define and exploit entrepreneurial opportunities.

Social entrepreneurs are increasingly realising the opportunity in addressing the social problem, thus bringing change. They shift the responsibility away from the public sector; both governments and non-governmental organisations to the private sector; businesses and individuals. The entrepreneur is incentivized to generate more profits and as more profit is made, more social problems are alleviated.

A greater emphasis on social enterprises with fully integrated impact and profitability.

In the past, one of the easier social enterprise business models to wrap our heads around was a supportive or an independent business model. That is, a model where the social enterprise “profit centre” wasn’t necessarily directly tied to the delivery and/or success of the social or environmental mission.

Partof the reason for this was that existing charities or non-profit organizations already had systems and processes for creating impact. So, naturally one way to build a socially entrepreneurial approach into these existing infrastructures was to simply come up with a separate business that could generate profits on its own and funnel that money back into the charity or the non-profit. These initiatives are often related, and hopefully built directly off core competencies of the organization, but the “profit generating” activitiesremained non-essential to the cause.

Now that more people are practicing and experimenting with social entrepreneurship, we realize how much stronger fully-integrated social enterprise models are. Stronger in both creating meaningful impact, and also in building a financially sustainable organization

5. Meaning and Definition of Social Entrepreneurship

From a business perspective, social entrepreneurship follows the groundwork of entrepreneurship and business management. Most if not all social entrepreneurs and their social enterprises use innovative business models or frameworks borrowed from management and organisational theory to create social value. There are social enterprises that follow the usual non-profit model. However, from a business perspective, there are social enterprises that combine not-for-profit and for-profit models. These are social purpose business ventures and example of them include for-profit community development banks and privately-owned livelihood and vocational training organisations.It is also important to highlight the fact that like any other business organisations, social entrepreneurship uses and manages resources—from financial resources to human resources—in order to produce social value as output. Thus, the measure of success of social enterprises is not wealth creation but positive impacts to the society or communities they serve.This business-oriented definition of social entrepreneurship also speaks of the importance of sustainability. Non-profit charitable organisations often rely on donations and other fundraising initiatives. But this can be challenging and unsustainable. Social enterprises use business models such as a marketing plan in order to survive. In other words, in order to become an effective social influence, social enterprises need to be a financially self-sustaining business.

6. Contribution of Social Entrepreneurship/ Entrepreneur in India

The social entrepreneurship is most applicable in nations which have developmental issues. India being a developing nation has its own social challenges and social developmental issues. Social entrepreneurship can resolve all the social inequalities which are prevailing in India. In recent times, some start-ups/new ventures has developed keeping social interests in mind and providing sustainable solution to social issues and earning their profits as well. Since the nature of profit is all, this makes the difference in economic and social entrepreneurship. Social entrepreneurship in India has wider scope than economic entrepreneurship. The need of social entrepreneurship in Indian context is a very vital as well, as most of the products and services are focused at the higher end customers and the people who have limited means are deprived from their needs due to lack of resources. Social entrepreneurship takes cares of this deprived section of market and provide goods/services to them at their terms and conditions. Such society needs fulfilling becomes very challenging as well, due to no or less profits to begin with. There are many examples where people have opted for social entrepreneurship than economic entrepreneurship, government and other factors have played a lot in doing so. Where ever the societal gaps are wide and societal inequalities are persisting, social entrepreneurship becomes very relevant like in India. Following are arguments which cement the needs for social entrepreneurship in India and places like India all over the world. Following are the contribution made by social entrepreneurship in India

1. Social entrepreneurship focuses on deprived/weak section of society, India has over 27 crorepeople living under such conditions. So social entrepreneurship becomes relevant and it is needed the most for uplifting this section of people
2. Social entrepreneurship sees social benefits as primary and profits as secondary. This helps in getting great products/services on quite affordable prices.
3. Social entrepreneurship address the social problems, such problems may include illiteracy, girl child abuse, financing, health, potable water etc. Social entrepreneurship helps in meeting these social problems by capitalizing the local resources and applying entrepreneurial principles. In that case we need social entrepreneurship, so that we can minimize the impacts the social problems.
4. Social entrepreneurship also innovates like any other branch of entrepreneurship, but this innovation is slightly different. This innovation is termed as social innovation, as they are focused upon the social problems. The social innovation is nothing but finding out the most innovative and unique solution of social problems.
5. One of the most important needs of social entrepreneurship is towards bottom of the pyramid. This bottom of the pyramid referred to the people who have minimalistic income, but high acceptance for social

7. Challenge faced by Social Entrepreneurship in India

Social entrepreneurship, like any other branch of social entrepreneurship also faces challenges. All the challenges are either controllable or non-controllable, but all the challenges are manageable. Social entrepreneurship is slightly and somehow fundamentally distinctive to economic entrepreneurship, so are the challenges of social entrepreneurship. In India particularly social entrepreneurship is subjected to many challenges. These challenges are preventing the growth and spread of social entrepreneurship in India as against to other regions and nations, who have made the social entrepreneurship a mission. The interesting thing to note down is this; all the challenges which are faced by social entrepreneurship are very different in nature. These all are concerned with mind-set rather than based on some physical attribute. People are mentally blocked towards the social entrepreneurship in India. Some of the prominent challenges faced by social entrepreneurship in India are given below-

1. Confusion with social work– Social entrepreneurship is mostly in India is confused with social work, hence it isunable to make a mark as an individual entity in India. This is starting of challenge for social entrepreneurship.
2. The problem of creativity– The next problem which is faced by social entrepreneurship is lack of creativity regarding thinking great ideas for betterment of society and earning profits as well. This fusion is very hard to think and implemented particularly in India.
3. 3. Arranging finance– One of the challenges for entrepreneurship in India remains lack of financial sources. The social entrepreneurs offering a unique product and set of services make it even harder to get financial aid from the established financial institutes. This is a very dire situation and a considerable reason for the under development of social entrepreneurship in India.
4. Shortage of talented/dedicated workforce– This is a very unique challenge faced by social entrepreneurship exclusively. Generally people get into jobs to get a handsome salary and perks, but with social entrepreneurship this becomes a bit hard. Since the prime objective of social entrepreneurship is to get social gains/benefits rather than personal gains/benefits. Under these condition it is very hard to get people to work for the firm.
5. Setting and communicating value objectively– The important challenge of social entrepreneurship is to setting and communicating values clearly. Usually what happens is, value may differ from society to society based upon their exclusive needs. But social entrepreneurs have to set common values, which can be communicated easily.
6. Elevating the individuals– The most prominent and visible challenge before the social entrepreneurship is to elevate people from their current place of standing by making positive and substantial opportunities. In this process each individual must be catered to their individual requirement rather than as a society as a whole. This poses a different type of challenge for social entrepreneurs.
7. Lack of an ethical framework– Since social entrepreneurs are very concerned about the societal changes and upliftment of people, sometimes they adopt a less ethical way of conducting their business. This challenge is very rarely visible yet exists in some extreme cases in India. Since society to society the ethical parameter shifts.
8. The commercial assumption– Social entrepreneurship does not take commercial viability or assumption as their priority. This is one of the biggest challenges when it comes to commercial assumption of facts and ideas. Since socially things may be accepted but financially/commercially they may not. This creates a dilemma for social entrepreneurship in India. Commercial non viability also makes firms less motivated for the getting in to social benefiting projects.
9. Lack of evidence– Unlike economic entrepreneurship, social entrepreneurship has fewer evidences of changes they have pioneered in society. Such changes are very hard to keep a track of, as people move from one place to another frequently for several reasons.
10. Lack of Planning and appropriate structure– This is the challenge which is haunting the entrepreneurship for many decades and still does to some extent. Lack of planning is very crucial and it is normally the cause of failure of social enterprises. The proper and adequacy of infrastructure including the training, finance, consultation, and research are not in place for social entrepreneurship in India

8. Measures to face challenges effectively

There is no doubt that social entrepreneurship is subject to many challenges and these challenges are growing with time and dynamics of society. Social entrepreneurs have to take care and keep note of tiny details to face the prevailing (above mentioned) challenges. Although the list of challenges faced by social entrepreneurship is not completed, some other challenges are there apart from the listed ones. The important preposition is, how to overcome the challenges which are faced by social entrepreneurship in India. There are few steps/measures which can be practiced to face the prevailing challenges of social entrepreneurship in India

1. Proper training and development institutions. Government must open some specialized councils and institutions for systematic development of social entrepreneurship. Some of the institutions are working in the area of economic entrepreneurship; some must be opened for social entrepreneurship as well.
2. Inclusion of social entrepreneurship in course syllabus- One of the most effective way of disseminating awareness towards social entrepreneurship is to include a paper/subject on the same at higher education level.
3. Creation of mass awareness- Steps should be taken to make the mass aware towards the social entrepreneurship, so that people do not get confused between social entrepreneurship and social work. Media, social media, other vehicles can be deployed for the same.
4. Providing infrastructure and basic facilities. Government and other stake holders must work on the basic facilities to the social entrepreneurship. These facilities can attract people towards becoming social entrepreneurs, thus the spread of social entrepreneurship will increase to multi folds.
5. Social entrepreneurship development programmesLike entrepreneurship development programmes, social entrepreneurship programmes must be organized time to time to help social entrepreneurship. Such organization will help in increasing the overall motivation of social entrepreneurs.
6. Funding to social entrepreneurship-If the funding issue of social entrepreneurship is resolved, the maximum level of challenges faced by social entrepreneurship can be managed properly.

7.Government projects should be given to social entrepreneurs- Governments of several states time to timeplan different programmes for rural and semi urban areas. If the priority of such programme allocation is given to social entrepreneurs, they will flourish in no time. Government machineries and other sophisticated mechanism do not understand the social issues more accurately but social entrepreneurship does understand the social issues/inequalities better.

8. Awards and public felicitation- Time to time on proper and prestigious platforms social entrepreneurs must be publically awarded for their exception/distinct contribution as a social entrepreneur.

9. Conclusion and findings of the study

Social entrepreneurship can change the face of society in India, there have been many such examples and projects which run under the banner of social entrepreneurship and proved to be life altering for people of that vicinity. In India especially social entrepreneurship has better prospects as the social problems are at full swing here. Social entrepreneurship is a unique combination of entrepreneurial traits and philanthropy. In social entrepreneurship products and services are designed to make maximum social impact along with making considerable profits for the firm. Here the working area of firm is typically the area/region which are generally ignored by big firm of economic entrepreneurship. In a way the product and service offerings of social entrepreneurship is quite unique and caters the societal requirement better then economic requirements. This is an exact situation of entrepreneurial traits being implemented for a social cause/problem. Other than that all the basic elements of entrepreneurship are similar to its parent entrepreneurship. If the government and other stake holders can work out the challenges of social entrepreneurship effectively, then social entrepreneurship is beyond any doubt is the most important tool which has the full capacity to change the very face of society in India. The study has the following findings

1. Social entrepreneurship is a best combination of social service and entrepreneurial skills to look for social problems.
2. Social entrepreneurship has the capacity to socially innovate. These innovations are the exact and creative answer to social issues/problems which are prevailing in India.
3. There are many examples of social enterprises which are working in India and changing the very face of society in India by their unique offerings, which involves the local expertise to create social values.
4. The growth of social entrepreneurship has reflected upon the employment and infusion of skills among people at the bottom level. The best example in this regard is barefoot college of Rajasthan.
5. The level of education and healthcare has also increased due to social enterprises and their growth in recent times in India.

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