Social Entrepreneurship in India

Abstract

Social entrepreneurship (SE) has emerged as a strong force to bridge the gap between the demand and supply for fulfilment of socio-economic and environmental needs. SE emerged as a response to failure of market, state or both in meeting needs of society particularly at the bottom of the pyramid. SE has been rapidly growing in all the sectors: private, public and non-profit. It focuses on social impact and an innovative approach to achieve its purpose with the combination of social mission, entrepreneurship and creativity. It is of particular importance to India because the developmental needs of India cannot be solely addressed by government efforts or by the market forces. This chapter aims at explaining about SE as a field of knowledge, i.e. how social entrepreneurship and social entrepreneurs work to address the unmet needs of the society, its emergence in India, coherence of SE and Indian values, and a typology of social entrepreneurs for the Indian context. We also propose a research agenda on the topic.