A Report On Social Entrepreneurship General Studies Essay

Idea - The National Institute for entrepreneurship teaching (NIET) through the entrepreneurship education would help young people from low-income communities to build skills and unlock their entrepreneurial creativity. Vision of the organization would be to help these people find a pathway to dignified life.

Problem statement- The issue is that these youth people from low income communities usually end up begging or doing other anti-social activities but there is no concrete & consolidated effort by government to put these people on the path of sustainable income generation

Feasibility of this idea- This idea is quite feasible as social entrepreneurship is one of the fastest growing segment in entrepreneurship & one can get good amount of funding from various sources. NIET will provide experiential learning experience to these people that would be relevant to the real world. Also there is no doubt about the huge market for this type of entrepreneurial venture. The NIET would like to implement the above idea through the following action points:

• Creating engaging, experiential curricula and tools to improve academic, business and life skills


• Training and supporting teachers and youth professionals


• Partnering with schools, community-based organizations, and post-secondary institutions


• Offering volunteers meaningful opportunities that connect students to real world experiences


• Linking the educational and business worlds in the classroom and beyond


• Providing services to program graduates


• Demonstrating outcomes of entrepreneurship education through research


• Building public awareness to expand entrepreneurship education

2. The product/services

Product of services :

• Entrepreneurs in Profile, inspiring stories of entrepreneurs who launched well-known businesses


• The Casebook for Young Entrepreneurs


• Starting and Running Your Own Business video


• Classroom posters

Programs would teach entrepreneurship using its exciting, experiential curriculum. There would be versions for middle school, high school, and young adult students, with corresponding reading levels and complexity.

The curriculum may be used in a semester-long or year-long entrepreneurship course, integrated into an existing course, or used for an after-school program or intensive camp. The programs would be offered in a variety of settings, including public schools, after-school programs at community-based organizations, and intensive summer business camps.

In a NIET program students would learn business concepts, practice skills including negotiation and pricing, and work on completion of business plans for their own individual businesses. Many teachers and youth workers also organize field trips to a wholesale district, where the students buy goods to sell later in a selling event at their school or after-school program.

Business plan competitions would be often held in schools by the teachers with help from NIET. Regional competitions would be organized by the NIET offices and program partners in an area.

Pricing- Since this is a social entrepreneurship venture, so the venture would be run mostly through donations etc. However various earned income activities would include selling of these books/ CDs at various price points of Rs150-300. Other earned income activity would involve fees from franchisees who would like to use our brand name/curriculum to start similar centre in their own area.

Percentage of total gross sales that these products/ services comprises of etc- I would consider it to be around 25% of total gross revenues.

3. Market assessment

Target market's pain identified; compelling benefits of your solution identified, with evidence that those in this segment are willing to pay- As discussed the pain undergone by young & creative misguided youth of our country across the streets is not beyond anyone's imagination .Compelling benefit of our solution is to uplift these youth to positions of economic self-sufficiency. Although initially these youths won't be able to pay for these services instead NIET would have to provide them small seed fund but over a period of time the alumni of NIET would be able to contribute.

• Target market segment, size and growth rate- Target segment include young people from low-income communities


• Overall market size and growth rate & Trends analysis to assess future market growth and attractiveness- As already discussed the market size is enormous due to India's huge population, growing income disparity, growing crime rate of poor youth in cities & no concentrated effort by govt.


• Proprietary elements- All these teaching materials & courses that would be developed would be proprietary of NIET.


• Superior organizational processes, capabilities or resources identified that are not easily duplicated or imitated- These learning resources, the dedication of volunteers hired by the organization & amount of strong alumni network of NIET entrepreneurs that would be created over a period of time is quite difficult for others to copy as it would be something inbuilt in the organization gene.


• Competition- There is hardly any competition in this social entrepreneurship venture.

4. Economic viability of the business model

In this section you will discuss:

• Revenue forecast- It can be dealt under the following headings:

Fixed assets - It would involve furniture equipment, computer software , documentary films etc

Revenue generators - It would include government grants, licensing fees, contributions, contract services, training fees, material fees, internal sales, contributed software & services, teacher's in kind contribution, investment income, royalty income, investments etc

Major expenses- It would include program services at various locations, support services which would include fund raising expenses, total salaries & benefits would include student expenses, teachers expenses, consulting fee, marketing expenses, travelling expenses, publications & subscriptions, depreciation etc



• Customer acquisition and retention costs, and time required to obtain a customer- Here customers are youths so acquiring them to the course would require some minimum spending in holding seminars where speakers/ entrepreneurs would be briefing about their experiences thereby encouraging youth to take to this path


• Capital investment required- Initially capital investment would be quite low & it would increase at NIET would pitch to sponsors to provide aid. However as usual in solical entrepreneurship there will always be a need for more & more investments as the scope of the work to be done is huge.

5. The team

Basically the team would comprise of me initially & later I would bring more people from academia & industry to work as board member/ volunteer.

My brief profile is Electrical engineer from BIT, Mesra + PG in TPPE from NPTI + 34 months work exp at ESSAY Power + PGP in management from IIMK (continuing)

6. Conclusion and summary

NIET aims at dropout prevention and academic performance improvement program for students who were at risk of failing or quitting school. NIET impacts students' basic academic and life skills through an experiential entrepreneurship curriculum that reinforces math, reading and writing, and develops skills in critical thinking, teamwork, communication and decision-making.

NIET will offers its entrepreneurial training to low-income youth through in-school courses, after-school programs, and summer camps held in partnership with schools, universities and community-based organizations around the country. NIET's curriculum would range in scope depending on the needs of the students and teachers, and the resources of the site.