Social Entrepreneurship

The Indian Institute of Management Calcutta (IIMC) has spread its wings on various new initiatives, the latest one being the responsiveness towards society in developing unique and cost-effective devices for our daily needs.

It has started its journey in incubation with a focus on social entrepreneurship through the newly formed entity – IIM Calcutta Innovation Park (IIMCIP).

The idea of focusing on social entrepreneurship came from IIM’s association with the Tata Social Entrepreneurship Challenge and its own INCA project.

The IIMCIP through its partnership with the TATA group aims to promote awareness about social entrepreneurship in India by engaging with stakeholders and the general public through an endeavour named RACE: Roundtable, Awareness, Challenge and Engage to promote social entrepreneurship to the general audience and work towards capacity building of the practitioners in the social entrepreneurship sector.

1. Roundtable:

The Roundtables are conducted at various Institutes to promote social entrepreneurship.

The aim of these Roundtables is to interact, build bridges, and gather inputs for future strategies and plans for an evolving Indian social sector from active players in the ecosystem. It is hoped that from these deliberations by decision makers and influencers  key issues & ideas will emerge that will help pave action plans for the future.

In 2014-15, we have conducted roundtables in Bangalore, Chennai and Mumbai.

2. Awareness:

The objective is to create awareness among students about social entrepreneurship through the following activities:

  1. Seminars – The Seminars are aimed towards students and budding social entrepreneurs to familiarise them with the concept of social entrepreneurship.
  2. Lecture series – The lectures series are aimed to inform the audience of different social problems and the dif¬fer¬ent inno¬v¬a¬tive enter¬prising solutions to those problems in the local community. This is delivered by the local social entrepreneurs or the social activists.

In 2014-15, we have conducted seminars in Guwahati, Pune, Noida, and Trichy.

3. Challenge:

Tata Social Enterprise Challenge (TSEC) – a joint initiative of the Tata Group and Indian Institute of Management Calcutta (IIMC) was started in 2012. The challenge endeavours to find India’s most promising early-stage social enterprises, and create an ecosystem for social entrepreneurship – encouraging sustainable, scalable and measurable social impact.

The 4th edition of the business plan contest was launched on 7 August 2015.

4. Engage:

This platform will provide comprehensive guidance and support to any budding social entrepreneurs and explain “how tos” about establishing a successful entity. Going beyond just a website, this will become an interactive digital space to share ideas, best practice and create an enabling environment that promotes innovation and creativity.

This online platform would carry the latest status reports, articles, interviews and best practices by social entrepreneurs, throughout the year. Believing in the power of partnership, this platform would unite actors from government, academia and business, both from the corporate and social sector, in the belief that collaboration is the key.