2 BITS Pilani Entrepreneurs on MTV Youth Icon

It is a pleasure to be back to serious blogging after such a long break. I promise, dear E-Factor, that I would not neglect you and not take away your name (not yet).

This post is triggered by the euphoria that is prevailing at the Center for Entrepreneurial Leadership, BITS Pilani right now. The Pepsi MTV Youth Icon has released 23 of the 30 nominees for this year's award.

We have 2 BITS Pilani alumni on it. And the reason for euphoria at CEL is the fact that both of them are entrepreneurs!

Siva Prasad [BITS Pilani+ IIM Kozhikode] is the founder of dhanaX, a micro finance based start-up. I have always loved the concept of Social Lending pioneered by them. And you know what? Abhishek Nayak, our very own CEL Anna, has worked with him in the past. And you know what? I would not be surprised if I see Nayak on that nominee list very soon.

Vote for Siva Prasad here

Sarath Babu [BITS Pilani + IIM Ahmedabad] is the founder of Food King and with healthy balance sheets is on the way to become a literal King in the organized food business. His story started selling idlis with his mother in Chennai before a Chemical engineering degree from BITS Pilani opened new vistas.

Vote for Sarath Babu here

Wish both of you all the best from everyone at BITS Pilani!

An interesting observation was the number of start-up people (like Natasha of Mama Mia) and social activists (Vishal of Dream a Dream or Devika of Mumbai Mobile Creches) on the list. I hope it means as a society we have more meaningful icons to look up to. Amen!

Tweets on twitter

I have been on twitter for three months, yet became an active user only last week. Guess the exams did quite have a positive effect on me for I simply love it. I was talking about twitter.

Twitter, which is soon making its way to become one of the most popular microblogging platforms has got me hooked. I feel commercial enterprises as well as entrepreneurs can really benefit from it in a LOT of ways. For start-ups, this can be the perfect way to keep in touch with thousands of people consisting of many social marketers, net geeks, other young entrepreneurs, update them on current happenings and it can act like the perfect platform for a start up story. It can also help existing players to promote their products. It could help get volunteers together and spread the word about contests etc. It helps keep in touch with a lot of people at once. Not as formal and rigid as linkedin, not as cluttered as orkut, its pretty.

For students this is a great opportunities to connect to some of the biggest names out there. Did you know Barack Obama is on twitter and has nearly 12000 followers and follows a similar number(though I seriously doubt that). Guy Kawasaki, Kiruba Shankar, Scobel....yada yada, they are all there...giving it a try, and far more responsive on twitter than on their personal blogs :P

From a personal point of view, its a far better way to advertise your blog posts through twitter for a majority of people might not have subscribed to your feeds and hence reach a larger audience quicker.

At the end of the day though, twitter does an effective job of pissing you off too. Cummon, accept it. It does crack their vein up. It gets really annoying and irritating because people just go on and on and nothing is structured. Who the hell said chaos is good?

But I'd still say its just in its early phases and has the potential to become something really big. This can become the ultimate social networking space, but as is the case with all social networks these days, it will get hit by the application bug. That will get people attracted though personally it will just destroy the simplicity of this wonderful application.

Twitter, with its mash-up with cell phones, you can update it through SMS, and now the great thing is you can do it in India too at local rates. So this makes live blogging so much more simpler. You don't need wi-fi or a laptop anymore. This was what saved a journalist who got into some serious trouble with the Egyptian authorities a while back and was thrown into jail. Twitter helped save his life get the embassies to his rescue.

Next Conquest lets Twitter it up then!

And do follow me on Twitter

What is the role of the social entrepreneur?

I originally posted this on my blog at Abhishaken.
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I'm reading 'How to Change the World: Social Entrepreneurs and the Power of New Ideas' by David Bornstein. The book is a collection of stories and essays on social entrepreneurs; and a must read for anybody fascinated by social change. I'm on chapter 8, which is an essay titled, 'Role of the social entrepreneur'. Its very well written and I wish I could reproduce it. In this post I've written a few of my views on the essay and have quoted Bornstein contextually.

The main motive behind the chapter was to show how social entrepreneurs are hidden behind their path-breaking ideas and rarely given credit. Actually its not a matter of credit, but also that social entrepreneurs are not as well scrutinized or researched as the case with business entrepreneurs. While business entrepreneurs have been given due credit for their role in changing the economies, social entrepreneurs are yet to be recognised as important forces of societal change. This is because sociologists consider factors driving social change- demographics, technology, economics, political processes- but do not consider the role of a 'charismatic leader'. In social innovation, ideas are more valued than people. People are just audience and are considered to have minimal role in an idea's successful propagation.

Such a thought would not fly for a second in the world of business, because its been proven over and over again that people driving ideas are more important than ideas. An idea with a great prospect will fail to reach its true potential if not fanatically pursued by a passionate and determined leader.This reasoning holds true in the social entrepreneurship world too.

A contemporary example will be Al Gore for 'Global warming' (personally, I think his picture is biased and very distorted. But thats another story.). His main role was that of an evangelist, a whistle blower or a lobbyist. He's made the US and Europe, frantic and paranoid about global warming. Thats no mean task. I think he's done more, than any scientist could have with research statistics.


Bornstein says, "An idea is like a play. It needs a good producer and a good promoter, even if it is a masterpiece. Otherwise the play may never open; or it may open but, for lack of an audience, close after a week." Ideas need champions and this is especially true for ideas which threaten status quo and go against all traditional wisdom or norms. Bornstein quotes James O' Toole from the book, 'Leading Change: The Argument for Values-Based Leadership', "The major factor in our resistance to change is the desire not to have the will of others forced on us." So if ideas need to take root as concrete realities, they'll need an obsessive, bullheaded tyrant with motivation to drive, persuade, cajole or inspire others into accepting the idea and its prospects.

Today when we try looking at various major social change that were once revolutionary and today, seem only logical, there was certainly one leader/entrepreneur who ignited the change. I can think of dowry abolition, sati abolition, widow remarriage, etc all being pioneered by various personalities like Ram Mohan Roy, Dayanand Saraswati, Babasaheb Ambedkar, etc. The fact though is, there's hardly any literature on scrutiny of their methods employed to reach their targets. Its probably because all the above people were praised as saints or mahatmas, one beyond any comparison with normal humans. In Christianity all the saints were almost certainly just proponents of great positive social progress and not really 'Holy' in the strictest terms. Since their motives were so selfless, their methods of achieving them haven't been recorded. It so appears that even though social entrepreneurs were identified and glorified much before business entrepreneurs (who were first identified in 'The Wealth of Nations' by Adam Smith in 1776), there's hardly any popular study on their methods.


I hope you read 'How to Change the World'', for essays on some contemporary entrepreneurs, who are Steve Jobs and Bransons of the social world. And if the world is lucky, you'll decide to change the world too.