Missing Social Enterprises in the Larger Picture

When both the market and the state fail to clear the demand for certain services and products, the intervention of civil society organisations and social enterprises becomes inevitable. Whether such enterprises will indeed emerge depends upon the ability of local disadvantaged communities to articulate their unmet needs into some form of demand. They can also arise if the existing enterprises or new start-ups recognise these unmet needs and decide to meet them affordably and inclusively with or without third-party funding.

- Anil Gupta

Anil Gupta

The author is a visiting faculty at the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad, and founder of the National Innovation Foundation

The fact that several niches remain unfilled in some of the most deprived regions, whether in tribal regions of the north-eastern, central or eastern India or some other pockets, shows that the existing social marketplace is not effective enough in clearing unmet needs. These gaps could be for education, nutrition, employment, skill upgradation, material upgradation for tiny fabricators, grassroots innovators or distributed community-level herbal pharmacies, etc. Shodhyatras by the Honey Bee Network in all the states of the country have made such gaps as well as creative solutions for some quite apparent.

Challenges in the Social Sector