The Road Ahead

“THE PANDEMIC REPRESENTS A RARE BUT NARROW WINDOW OF OPPORTUNITY TO REFLECT, REIMAGINE AND RESET OUR WORLD.” - KLAUS SCHWAB, FOUNDER AND EXECUTIVE CHAIRMAN, WORLD ECONOMIC FORUM.

Social entrepreneurs saw the pandemic as their biggest opportunity to ignite a revolution in social entrepreneurship and to reset the world to accommodate and encourage digital transitions. This journey of change, though sudden, has not been the same for the thousands of social enterprises across different sectors in India. Some of them were not planning for a digital shift until a few years, but most of the organizations had to adapt to that route very soon, even when they were unprepared.

Social enterprises should thus look forward to the ‘new normal’ and the challenges that will come along so that they can grow through them. The new normal is about digitalization – for employees, for consumers, and for all business operations. The hybrid model of working where there is an offline and online amalgamation is here to stay. An acceleration in the pace of digital transformation and a novel hybrid model of working have redefined the dimensions of the evolving workplace and work culture [38]. They need to work collaboratively and even remotely if required, with clients and various stakeholders to create more sustainable and decentralized models of working. 

However, to make all of this possible, support from the public sector in fast-tracking fund allocations, providing support to intermediaries, and removing the unnecessary steps in red tape will be crucial. Different agents of society will need to come together to aid in uplifting the impoverished, even with their roles now being more dynamic than ever. They can bootstrap, restructure, restart, grow, or scale not to make a billion dollars, but to positively impact a billion lives, as Greek-American entrepreneur and author Dr. Peter Diamandis says [39]. And to create this impact, there is no better place than right here, in India.