The eight leg of the Tata Social Enterprise Challenge was organized by IIM Calcutta Innovation Park in association with the TATA Trusts, to find India’s most promising early-stage social innovators. This program was organized in multiple rounds starting with the Thinking Social Seminars, followed by the Challenge. 8 Seminars were held across the country in association with partners from academic institutions and the entrepreneurship ecosystem. Seminars were conducted at Indian Chamber of Commerce (Kolkata), Rabindranath Tagore University (Bhopal), NIRD (Patna), BIMTECH (Greater Noida), Derbi Foundation (Bengaluru), SP Pune University (Pune). These Seminars witnessed social entrepreneurs from across the country inspiring youth to take on social entrepreneurship as a career option and motivated them to partake in the Challenge. Post the short selections from a record 1,080applications received in this leg,the Regional Rounds were held. The Grand Finale along with the ESummit was held in Kolkata in January this year where the winners were felicitated. Out of 22 startups 10 startups were qualified for the finale. Greenock & Aerobiosys won the 2nd runner up title followed by Padcare as the first runner up and Trestle Labs emerged as the winner. Applications spanning 27 Indian states and 1 from the UK spanning the following wide variety of social sectors, viz. Agriculture, Healthcare, Education, Energy, Handicrafts, Technology and IT, Housing, Microfinance and Financial Institutions, Water and Sanitation were received. The eighth edition of Tata Social Enterprise Challenge stood testimony to the growing popularity of the country’s largest social innovation challenge amongst social entrepreneurs from India as well as abroad.
