Harshit Singh
A wide variety of social enterprises can have an influence in a country with an estimated 1.37 billion people. Social businesses may be crucial players in an economy as diversified as India’s in terms of everything from public services to financial services to technology. A social enterprise is an organisation that uses commercial tactics to maximise advances in human and environmental well-being rather than maximising shareholder profits, according to Ridley-Duff and Bull (2011).
This study was created to help business owners assess scaling options for social firms that desire to grow. Indian social companies can have a significant impact on both the national and global economies thanks to the huge markets they serve.
This methodology is designed to help Indian social entrepreneurs who are entering new markets replicate and scale up their existing programmes. For a wide range of investors and entrepreneurs to develop such projects, it offers methodologies and strategies for scalability of impact.
A social enterprise has a specific social impact objective and is legally set up as a for-profit company. There are five ways to start a for-profit social company in India: a private company, partnership, limited liability company, sole proprietorship, or as a cooperative. PLCs are the organisational form used by 80% of social companies in India.
Support throughout different incubation stages
The main operational issues social companies have faced throughout the years have been access to resources and funding, management issues, task and mission issues, and social perception issues.
concept/seed stage incubation: At the moment, social incubator UnltdIndia supports social entrepreneurs in the concept stage who want to develop and test their ideas for social impact by offering capacity support, mentorship, and limited funding.
Early-stage incubation: Villgro, situated in Chennai, is a comprehensive social incubator that offers social companies seed money, mentorship, working space, and a network. By conducting workshops, providing fellowships, and planning mentorship and networking events, it is also striving to create active ecosystems in metro areas and tier 2 and tier 3 cities.
Villgro offers an acceleration programme as well. There are well-known programmes and accelerators that help startups and a small proportion (2–5%) of social enterprises.
Corporate structure, market entry, and competitive analysis
To determine whether a business model is viable, we need to know whether the corporate structure supports expansion, licence requirements, board of advisor participation, and compensation. Each social enterprise needs to evaluate its rivals, develop a market differentiator, and comprehend the customer’s viewpoint on the service provided. We begin developing the enterprise’s business model once the barriers to market entry are established.
The scaling of social innovations has received backing from the Millennium Alliance, a group of public-private partnerships, in 22 Indian states, including low-income states like Bihar, Uttar Pradesh, Odisha, Chhattisgarh, Madhya Pradesh, and Rajasthan. It provided funding for Waterlife, which uses community water systems to deliver safe drinking water that is affordable and sustainable. Worldwide, millions of people lack access to clean water, which increases the risk of waterborne illnesses. In collaboration with the government, NGOs, Panchayats, SHGs, commercial institutions, and international organisations, it established a successful operation in India. In Rwanda, where more than 60% of the population lacks access to clean water, this humanitarian venture has currently discovered a sizable market.
Business Plans for Social Businesses
The social impact or social issue that the firm is aiming to address forms the basis of its business model. The beneficiaries of the impact and target customers who will be paying for the product or service may or may not be the same; businesses can be structured for impact investments with options of debt or equity; and businesses internally operate like any other commercial enterprise in terms of management, operations, people, and resources. Several business models used by social enterprises include:
Self-Sufficiency (3.1) Social enterprise: Businesses that lack management talent or are brand-new social enterprises are those that are most self-sufficient. Such businesses lack the resources to achieve their social objective or turn a profit; they can only break even.
3.2. Social enterprises with a clear mission: Mission-driven social companies work more intensively on a particular social issue than profit-generating social entrepreneurs do. They resemble non-profit organisations in many aspects. These businesses have excellent social missions, but they lack the proper economic structures to carry them out. An organisation called Social Blood used Facebook to link those in need with blood donors. Over 300,000 people have benefited from Social Blood’s collaboration with several blood banks in the United States.
3.3. Profit-generating social enterprises: These businesses have many characteristics with for-profit businesses. The common issue that profit-making social companies deal with is that they typically can only assist a limited number of people or just somewhat lessen a social issue. However, compared to benchmark-targeting social companies, these businesses contribute less to society. An appropriate illustration of this company model is Oorja Solutions. It is a provider of energy services that works to replace diesel engines in rural areas with cost-effective, dependable solar energy systems. Smallholder farmers can purchase irrigation water through their first service, Oonnati, on a pay-per-use basis.
Benchmark Targeting Social Enterprise
This type of social enterprise is the best, according to 3.4. In addition to making money from their goods or services, benchmark-targeting social companies reinvest those revenues in achieving their social objective. Another business supported by Millenium Alliance, Science for Society, is an illustration of such a social venture. SCD is a solar-powered food dehydrator that works without electricity to lower the moisture content of agricultural produce so that it can be kept without chemicals for up to a year and generate extra cash from the sale of such goods. This results in the development of a scalable ecosystem of dehydration product producers, local administration and monitoring partners, and customers.
Case Studiesfor Growth
The One Acre Fund’s South African expansion plan: In Sub-Saharan Africa, almost 50 million smallholder farmers are trapped in yearly cycles of famine because they are unable to produce enough food to sustain their families. Particularly for youngsters, malnutrition can have serious, long-lasting impacts that prevent them from reaching their full potential as adults. To lessen such social concerns, One Acre Fund has catered to millions of such farmers. They hired one manager, who oversaw five employees hired in South Africa, who in turn oversaw five farmers. One Acre Fund, a very large and scalable concept servicing more than 800,000 farmers, was scaled up thanks to this model.
Robin Hood Army’s growth plan: Based in India, Robin Hood Army is a non-profit that assists in obtaining restaurant leftovers for the benefit of those in need. In 140 cities, it has effectively supplied more than 20 million individuals.
Untapped Potential for Social Enterprises in the Energy Market
The International Energy Agency estimates that 77 million Indian households still use paraffin for lighting. There are 280 million people without access to electricity in rural India and 24 million in urban India. As a result, more creative social solutions must develop models that are scalable and replicable. Businesses can provide electricity through micro/mini-grids that use biomass-gasifier, small hydro, solar photovoltaic, and wind technologies to supply power to under- and un-electrified communities.
300 days of sunshine per year are averaged across much of India, creating a favourable environment for continuous solar power generation. The 100 GW total theoretical capacity of solar is now just 3% covered. One method of utilising solar energy to produce power and heat is through offering clean energy goods (solar lanterns, solar home systems (SHS), solar pumps, solar photovoltaic water heating, and energy efficient cookstoves) for effective lighting, heating, and cooking.
Recommendations
India now has a sizable untapped potential in the social sector for a wide range of services like medical technology, agricultural technology, educational technology, skill development, employability, clean technology, and renewable energy. The amount of people and organisations that social entrepreneurs can help can be significant in terms of effect scaling.
Finding Resources for These Social Causes – Funds for impact and venture investing are funding these businesses more frequently. There are more than 400 social impact startups in India, and their growth is increasing at a rate of 20% annually. In the vein of the Social Stock Exchange in the UK, SASIX in South Africa, Impact Investment Exchange in Singapore, and SVX in Canada, the Indian government intends to establish its own stock exchange for social or impact startups.
Understanding Economic statistics: To comprehend how global economic statistics affect their industry, social enterprises may want to hire a consultancy agency. Risk mitigation techniques may be mentioned by consultants as a way to enhance trading in particular marketplaces. For a firm to succeed, it is essential to comprehend the different political, economic, social, technological, and legal elements that affect the market.
Conduct a competitive analysis. One of the essential components of a market entry plan is understanding the market share of each competitor and the services they offer. When entrepreneurs introduce innovation that is both scalable and impactful, they have a potential to achieve long-term success. Entrepreneurs need to determine whether they may claim intellectual property rights on the goods and services they invented.
Investing in Potential Industries
As was already indicated in this research, the use of solar energy can result in a number of significant inventions. In addition, India’s annual graduation of tens of thousands of engineers provides the country with the human capital it needs to reach this goal. In addition, India’s healthcare sector has expanded to $81.3 billion (Rs 54,086 lakh crore) in 2013 and is currently expected to rise by 17 percent by 2020, up from 11 percent in 1990. This sector offers tremendous potential for impact.
Build for a Cause: Whole ecologies are disintegrating. Climate change has put animals at peril. Floods, hurricanes, and storms are becoming more frequent as a result of rising precipitation, melting glaciers, and expanding oceans brought on by global warming. In a world where you can grow up to be a lot of different things, it is important to raise a culture of entrepreneurs who will change the way things are thought about.
