IDEAS Insights Reflections on Social Innovation in Context: India | Page 3

There is something truly stimulating about finding communities of social entrepreneurs and
driven towards social change. In the UK, experiences at events coordinated by social
change networks such as Ashoka and Skoll has exposed me to a vast number of changemakers, bucking trends and challenging the ordinary, gathered together to share stories,
challenges, and lessons learned. Travelling to India in search of understanding the nation’s
context in social innovation, I felt this same motivation daily.
As part of the British Council’s Generation UK India programme, I took my interest in social
change in a more academic direction, studying Social Entrepreneurship and Scalable
Change at the IILM Institute for Management in Gurgaon, India. Jumping between
classroom and communities, our immersive experience introduced to us India’s very
different relationship with social entrepreneurship. Rather than ‘Is social entrepreneurship
the new answer to this current problem?’ in the eyes of many, it was far from an
abnormality, or even a new norm. In actuality, the ethos and practices of social
entrepreneurship and innovating for social good were embedded in Indian society.

In the classroom we considered the work of organisations such as Unilever and Coca Cola,
and how they adapt to engage with those at ‘the bottom of the pyramid’. The breadth of
demographic, culture, taste and need in India was evidently a strong catalyst for innovation
- be it multinational corporations attempting to break into new markets, or passionate
community members striving to raise the quality of living for those around them.
The course itself involved field visits to a wide range of operations striving to create social
change - from Kegg Farms Ltd, working to make rural households sustainable through
generation of poultry-related social capital, to the Navjyoti Foundation, an NGO focusing
on increasing opportunities for rural women, including training them as entrepreneurs. The
Navjyoti Foundation was particularly striking, drawing a strong parallel to the work of
IDEAS Globally - Navjyoti ran numerous vocational and academic classes, as well as acting
as a broker between rural businesswoman and international buyers. One woman traded in
herbs and spices, and described her former self as being as useful as a buffalo tied to the
house. She now takes purchase requests via email and text.