Tata Social Enterprise Challenge (TSEC) – a joint initiative of the Tata group and the Indian Institute of Management Calcutta (IIMC) held the second seminar FY 2016-17, ‘Thinking Social’, at IIIT Hyderabad in partnership with IIM Calcutta Innovation Park and iBHubs Hyderabad on 23 October 2016. The day-long seminar sought to introduce students from top professional colleges in India to the spirit of social entrepreneurship in a rapidly evolving global economy and addressed the concerns of young, budding entrepreneurs belonging to reputed institutes in Hyderabad. The speakers for the day comprised eminent social entrepreneurs, academicians and senior corporate executives working extensively in the Indian social entrepreneurship space.
The Seminar was formally inaugurated by Prof. Krishna Madhavi Kolla – Head of New Initiatives, IIIT Hyderabad. In her opening address she mentioned that IIIT Hyderabad has been working on the incubation space and have been supporting a number of startups for the past several years, not only in Hyderabad but all across the world. They also have an incubation programme called “Avishkar” which helps to identify startups and support them in their entrepreneurial journey.
Subhrangshu Sanyal, CEO – IIM Calcutta Innovation Park spoke about the need for social entrepreneurship in our country and why the youth should be involved in it. He also mentioned about the essential qualities which a social entrepreneur should have.
Manjuvani Nayani, Managing Trustee – Tata Projects Community Development shared with the audience the vision of the Tata group and spoke about the work which they are doing in that region. She mentioned, “Tata group is playing an important role in social development for the past many years and presently their focus here is on Water, Skills and Education. In the water sector Tata Projects has taken up a programme in social entrepreneurship which is a bankable and replicable model. Through this programme they are developing entrepreneurs to provide safe drinking water to the rural community.”
Ramana Gogula, CEO & Founder – Earthen Glow spoke about his venture and how it is creating a social impact. Earthen Glow is a Clean Technology Start-Up that focuses on building robust & scalable OFFGRID Lighting Solutions to enable rural households to gradually decrease their dependency on kerosene. He motivated the students and encouraged them to become social entrepreneurs by saying, “A journey of a social entrepreneur is difficult but the experience is very rewarding.”
Prof. P. K. Reddy – IIIT Hyderabad and founder at eSagu gave a brief about his venture and how it is very useful to the farmers. eSagu is an IT-based personalized agro-advisory system which aims to improve farm productivity by delivering high quality personalized (farm-specific) agro-expert advice in a timely manner to each farm at the farmer’s door-steps. He concluded by saying that his greater objective is to scale his venture all over India and to other countries which are in a similar state as India.
Mukhti K Bosco, Founder – Healing Fields Foundation mentioned that India is still backward in a large number of areas – healthcare being one of the major areas of concern. She spoke about how her venture is creating an impact in the society. Healing Fields Foundation – a pioneer in the areas of health financing and community education – is dedicated to making healthcare affordable and accessible to all underprivileged and marginalized people across India. In her concluding remarks she urged the audience to take up social entrepreneurship as a career option and said that, “It takes passion which motivates one to work in underdeveloped geographical regions.”
Raj Janagam, Managing Partner – HelloBhayya Services, spoke about his entrepreneurship journey and gave an in-depth insight to the audience about how to take their idea to the next level. He urged the young students to take up their idea while they are studying so that by the time they finish college their prototype would be ready. He also mentioned about the funding options of startups in the social enterprise sector.
Satish Kumar Burra, Founder – Organic Thali, narrated his journey as a social entrepreneur and what motivated him to start his venture. He said, “I lost my elder brother to cancer and I discovered the main reason for this was the pesticides which are being used in the crops by farmers.” This motivated him to come up with a solution to this problem and he founded Organic Thali which provides pesticides/chemical free food. They currently serve to more than 1000 customer’s everyday in Hyderabad. Satish is helping farmers to improve their conditions and is also generating employment to the youth.
Rambabu Kondru from iBHubs Hyderabad spoke about how iBHubs – a Pan-India startups hub – provides end-to-end assistance to startups. He also mentioned that at iB Hubs, equal importance is given to Purpose Driven Social Enterprises and NGOs as well as Profit Driven Enterprises.
Concluding on a positive note, the seminar left the audience inspired by the various stories of change and impact shared enthusiastically by the speakers for the day. A sentiment that was a commonly shared among the participants and the speakers was the innate requirement for social entrepreneurs and the change that they can bring to society, and that such seminars are a vital platform in ushering in that change.