--- layout: default title: "Social Entrepreneurs Set Out to Change India" description: "A Times of India feature on early debates around social entrepreneurship in India, profiling practitioners working across technology, livelihoods and civil society, including Sunil Abraham." categories: [Media mentions] date: 2007-01-09 source: "The Times of India" authors: ["Frederick Noronha"] permalink: /media/social-entrepreneurs-set-out-change-india-times-of-india/ created: 2025-12-25 --- **Social Entrepreneurs Set Out to Change India** is a news report published by *The Times of India* on 9 January 2007, based on an IANS dispatch. The article documents an emerging movement of social entrepreneurs in India who apply business principles to address social problems, profiling figures including Sunil Abraham of Mahiti Infotech, Stan Thekaekara of Just Change, Vishal Talreja of I Dream a Dream, and others. The piece covers an international conference on social entrepreneurship held at Tata Institute of Social Sciences in Mumbai, organised by the UK-based charity UnLtd, marking one of the earliest mainstream media explorations of this approach to development in India. ## Contents 1. [Article Details](#article-details) 2. [Full Text](#full-text) 3. [Context and Background](#context-and-background) 4. [External Link](#external-link) ## Article Details
đź“° Published in:
The Times of India
✍️ Author:
Frederick Noronha
đź“… Date:
9 January 2007
đź“„ Type:
News Report
đź“° Newspaper Link:
Read Online
## Full Text

Bangalore: They call themselves social entrepreneurs and their business is to make the world a better place by changing communities they touch through their altruism.

Donning various roles and leading various organisations, these men and women are not only winning praise for their innovativeness but helping to change the lives of communities they touch through their altruism.

Pioneering Indian names like Stan Thaekkaekara, Milind Ranade, Vishal Talreja, Sunil Abraham, Anand Shah, Rahul Barkatky and Shalabh Sahai among others are building and sharing ideas on how entrepreneurs can help re-engineer society — even while earning profits.

A social entrepreneur recognises a social problem and uses entrepreneurial principles to organise, manage and create social change. Unlike business entrepreneurs, they don't measure performance in profit and returns but by the impact they have on society and often work through non-profit groups.

Stan Thekaekara of Just Change attempted a deconstruction of the concept of Social Entrepreneurship from the perspective of people who struggle to live every day. He shared his experiences of working with tribals of Nilgiris in Tamil Nadu.

For over two decades, Stan and his wife Mari worked alongside the Adivasis, or indigenous people, for their social, political and land rights. They began with helping the tribes people to reclaim the land usurped by the non tribals. Soon they had to begin working on issues of health, education and livelihood-issues critical to the growth of the Adivasi community.

Stan then talked about his latest venture, Just Change, which expands on the concept of fair trade and is working towards a system of production for the common man and by the common man.

Vishal Talreja of I Dream a Dream gave up a successful investment banker career in Mumbai to transform the dream of his 12 young friends, from diverse backgrounds and united towards a common goal. I Dream a Dream today builds life skills of over 500 children in Bangalore.

Shalabh Sahai and Rahul Barkatky of Mitra Technology Foundation have given up a lot of high paying jobs to pursue their dream of bringing about social change by leveraging the very skills that help businesses succeed.

MITRA Technology Foundation initiated and manages India's largest volunteer placement initiative, iVolunteer.

Milind Ranade of KVSS, the Waste Collectors and Transporters Union, began his journey while travelling in a bus and happened to see a garbage truck that smelt awfully and workers eating their food sitting on the same garbage dump.

Sunil Abraham of Mahiti aims to help the voluntary groups with IT solutions. He thought that social entrepreneurship is a western concept that is market friendly and places the spotlight on the social entrepreneurs.

Change Loomi awards programme to encourage and support social action by young people across India. Jointly launching the awards are Pravah and Ashoka Foundation with support from Youth and Civil society Initiative of Sir Ratan Tata Trust in 2005.

Anand Shah, co-founder of Indicorps www.indicorps.org, explains that the organisation is created to leverage Non Resident Indians (NRIs) for India's development. It provides opportunities for NRIs to dedicate one-two years volunteering with grassroots groups in India.

In recent weeks, the first international conference on social entrepreneurship was held at the Mumbai-based Tata Institute of Social Sciences (TISS). Coordinating it was a Britain-based body called, not without a touch of irony, UnLtd.

The 2000-formed UnLtd is a charitable group set up by seven leading bodies that promote social entrepreneurship.

UnLtd's development consultant Pooja Warier told IANS: "As the first in a planned series of annual gathering, the conference aimed to celebrate social entrepreneurship as a tool for social change, encourage the development of social entrepreneurship in India, and create mutually beneficial links between social entrepreneurs and institutions."

It brought together 85 individuals and organisations from India and Europe, including "social entrepreneurs".

UnLtd's Sarah Dodds says it "strongly believes in the power of the individuals to change the community and eventually the world". After working in Britain, UnLtd is now looking at resourcing social entrepreneurs in India.

Institutions like Britain-based Oxford University's Skoll Centre, Anil Gupta's Honey Bee Network, Ashoka, UnLtd as well as NMIMS (Narsee Monjee Institute of Management and Higher Studies) support work of such individuals.

TISS director S. Parasuraman has argued that India is in a state of paradox with few individuals accumulating the wealth whereas majority are losing livelihoods, are landless and continuously marginalised. From this arises the need for entrepreneurial approaches towards social change.

Some examples from India are already being pointed to as successful models of social entrepreneurship - SEWA, Just Change, Childline, Fair Trade Forum, Barefoot College and Aravind Eye Care.

Scholars like Anil Gupta, of the HoneyBee Network (which works to pick up and promote innovation from the grassroots) argue that besides 'natural capital', what is also important is 'social capital, intellectual capital, and ethical capital' or "the guiding forces from within us".

He points to amazing stories of grassroot innovators like Mohammed Saidullah who invented a cycle that can be ridden on land and on water, Dhanjibhai Karai who was behind a scooter for the handicapped, Ramya Jose who invented pedal operated washing machine and Appachan with cycle attachment that can climb trees.

(Courtesy: IANS)

{% include back-to-top.html %} ## Context and Background This article captured social entrepreneurship's arrival in Indian development discourse, reporting on a conference that occurred approximately two years earlier in 2005. The timing reflected growing enthusiasm for market-based approaches to social problems, influenced by global institutions like the Skoll Foundation and Ashoka Fellows programme. Sunil Abraham's scepticism about social entrepreneurship as a "western concept that is market friendly" presaged critiques that would intensify over subsequent years. By 2007, Abraham had transitioned from founding Mahiti Infotech in 1998—which provided affordable IT solutions to voluntary organisations using open-source software—to joining the Centre for Internet and Society as Executive Director. His positioning of the concept as potentially privileging individual entrepreneurs over grassroots movements reflected tensions within development practice between technocratic interventions and community-driven change. Stan Thekaekara's work with Nilgiri Adivasis represented a different model. Beginning in 1984 with land rights struggles, he and his wife Mari had spent over two decades organising tribal communities before launching Just Change in 2000. That initiative reimagined fair trade as a cooperative linking producers, investors and consumers rather than extractive commercial relationships. His "deconstruction" of social entrepreneurship from the perspective of daily survival challenged romanticised narratives about innovation-driven development. The conference's organisation by UnLtd, established in 2000 by seven UK social entrepreneurship bodies, signalled international interest in exporting this framework to India. UnLtd's model combined small grants with mentorship for individual social entrepreneurs, contrasting with traditional development aid channelled through governments or large NGOs. The organisation's very name—UnLimited—embodied optimistic assumptions about scalable individual action. TISS director S Parasuraman's framing identified genuine contradictions—wealth concentration alongside mass immiseration—but the prescribed solution of "entrepreneurial approaches" remained contested. Critics questioned whether repackaging social change as entrepreneurship naturalised market logics within domains previously governed by solidarity, rights, and redistribution. The examples cited spanned diverse models. SEWA represented membership-based labour organising for informal sector women workers. Aravind Eye Care pioneered tiered pricing for cataract surgeries, cross-subsidising free operations through paying patients. Barefoot College trained rural women as solar engineers. These varied practices were grouped under social entrepreneurship despite fundamentally different theories of change. Anil Gupta's Honey Bee Network documented grassroots innovations like amphibious cycles and tree-climbing bicycle attachments, emphasising indigenous creativity over imported solutions. His invocation of "ethical capital" alongside financial and social capital gestured towards values-driven development, though the article left this concept largely unexplored. The piece appeared during India's rapid economic growth period, when corporate social responsibility budgets expanded and impact investing emerged as an asset class. Social entrepreneurship offered appealing narratives—heroic individuals solving problems through innovation—that resonated with neoliberal assumptions about market efficiency. Whether this framework genuinely advanced social justice or merely rebranded charity remained an open question that practitioners like Abraham continued interrogating through his subsequent work on internet governance and digital rights. ## External Link - [Read on The Times of India](https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/life-style/relationships/love-sex/social-entrepreneurs-set-out-to-change-india/articleshow/1111473.cms)