Entrepreneurs are leaders who are responsible for major innovation and progress of a nation. When they are associated with the business realm, they act as the engines of growth, and harness opportunity & innovation to fuel economic advancement. And, when they are involved in societal activities as a social entrepreneur, they recognize a social problem and use entrepreneurial principles to organize, create, and manage a venture to make social change. The social enterprise sector is ripe for realizing the multiplier effects of women’s leadership: Women are more likely to hire other women, to focus on women beneficiaries, and to pass on their gains to female family members. That’s especially true in India, where nearly 25 percent of social enterprises are led by women. By comparison, less than 9 percent of India’s commercial small and medium enterprises have a woman at the helm.
Social entrepreneurs are individuals with innovative solutions to society’s most pressing and daunting social problems. They are ambitious and persistent, tackling major social issues and offering new ideas for wide-scale change. Let have a look on the inspiring stories of 5 social women entrepreneurs, who have dedicated a part of their life to bring changes in the society of India.
Anannya Parekh
Anannya grew up in a joint family who encouraged her towards quality education and career. She had understood the gender inequality issues very early on in her life and realized that societal constructs and socio-economic structures are responsible for this. She dropped out of her university on the second year and started Inner Goddess in September of 2016. At present, she is not only a renowned speaker in Chennai but also has represented India at global summits. Anannya’s venture empowers women by making them understand the importance of financial literacy. It aims to address financial anxiety, mental health issues, and personal investing and has organized more than 70 workshops so far. The workshops earlier charged between Rs. 300 and Rs. 20,000, but Inner Goodness now functions as a non-profit organization. Exemplifying the popular adage, ‘Today a reader, tomorrow a leader’, her social venture has impacted over 10,000 women across Chennai, Mumbai, Hyderabad, and Bengaluru.
Neha Juneja
Neha is a dedicated soul who gave up a lucrative job offer after graduating from the Faculty of Management Studies, Delhi, to follow her passion. After spending two years with a renewable energy and environment markets start-up, Neha decided to start her own ‘green’ venture. Today, through her venture Greenway Grameen Infra, Neha combines her love for the environment with her product design skills to bring about monumental change to rural households. Along with her partner Ankit Mathur, who is also a young entrepreneur, Neha has made lives easier for women in at least a few thousand households in rural India. It’s a real issue that about 3 million people cook using solid fuels (wood, charcoal etc) across the globe and over 10 lakhs people die prematurely every year because of pollution caused by mud stoves in India. Through Greenway, Neha endeavours to introduce alternative of mud chulhas (stoves). It lowers the smoke emission by 70 percent and also saves fuel by 65 percent while using these solid biomass fuels. In 2014, Greenway Smart Stove became India’s largest selling cookstove.
Prukalpa Sankar
At 21, Prukalpa Sankar set an ambitious goal. She wanted to solve complex problems with data intelligence. It wasn’t a spur-of-the-moment decision for Prukalpa and Varun Banka (Co-Founder) when they decided to set up a data intelligence company – SocialCops, in India. Prukalpa realized the value of data and numbers early in her career and its solid reliability to impact any social cause. In 2012, she started her venture SocialCops, a data intelligence start-up. The community data platform was created to eliminate two major problems – lack of right & correct data and an ability to collate various forms of data to get valuable insights. SocialCops is dedicated to bridging the gap between the citizens, government authorities, NGOs and commercial enterprises. It follows three steps to resolve the problems; Collect, Discover and Visualize. Hence, it helps in reducing the time and cost in the decision-making process. It also looks after the problems recorded by the citizens are resolved or not. It uses web, mobile phones and crowdsources citizens to gather data.
Ruchi Jain
Ruchi, the Founder of Taru Naturals, an endeavour to empower small-scale farmers across India by connecting them to fair trade markets and to help them increase their productivity with technological practices. Ruchi left a government job to connect with farmers on the ground who play an important role in the economy. After acting on four different ideas and exhausting all her savings, Ruchi invested Rs. 1,000 to Rs. 2,000 in a group of farmers who were unable to sell their jaggery produce and eventually founded Taru Naturals. Taru Naturals operates under two verticals. The first - sources products from local communities and sells them to customers via its website and online presence. It also supplies ingredients to restaurants and other food businesses. Ruchi gives the credit to her mother Poonam Jain, a naturopathy expert, for the inspiration behind Taru Naturals. Her mother helps her with the R&D for products and also helps come up with recipes. Jain has been working in the development sector since the age of 18. She has an MSc from Oxford University and has even worked for the Ministry of New and Renewable Energy.
Shaheen Mistri
Shaheen was born in a Parsi family in Mumbai, Maharashtra, India and raised in an international standard. She is an Indian social entrepreneur and educator. Shaheen is a Founder & CEO of a program that trains people in the art of education named “Teach For India” since 2008 and also the founder of the Akanksha Foundation, a non-profit organization and Indian educational initiative in Mumbai and Pune. Shaheen founded Teach For India, a non-profit organization in In the summer of 2008, with a vision of providing quality education through building a pipeline of leaders. It was an idea that sparked in 2006 when Shaheen met the Founder and CEO of Teach For America, Wendy Kopp. The Teach For India wants to build student, Alumni leadership to reach one million children in the next five years. Over the years, Teach For India has placed more than 700 students in schools across Pune, Mumbai, and Delhi. Teach For India resolves the deficit of leadership in education with the help of its Fellowship Program and Alumni Movement. Fellows from reputed universities and workplaces teach children from low-income families for full-time. These fellows get the chance to understand the root problems of India. Hence, these fellows identify their roles and work towards ending the inequity in education. Shaheen founded Akanksha Foundation in 1991 as a college to provide education for children who roamed the streets. Today, Akanksha Foundation, a non-profit organization serves more than 10,000 children through its after-school centres and School Project in Mumbai and Pune.
These social women entrepreneurs are indeed doing remarkable work to improve the livelihoods of many. They not only handle their enterprises prudently but also manage their families exceptionally. They all have been awarded by prestigious awards or have won prestigious Business Plan Competitions or recognized by reputed media organizations. India as a nation feels proud for the dedicated leaders.
