Here’s why startups are considering social entrepreneurship

Social entrepreneurship is a practice that integrates innovation with solving social and environmental problems. There are many issues that need to be addressed today, and this is why most startups consider social entrepreneurship.

There are already plenty of businesses across the globe covering various industries. What the world needs now are businesses with the purpose of solving problems—not creating them. The issue with the current economy is that most businesses always focus on money. Some do not care about the social and environmental impacts of their businesses as long as they are profiting. Social entrepreneurship is trying to change that.

Solving problems one business at a time

A recent study has shown that more startups are venturing into social entrepreneurship, per Financial Times. These startups are usually founded by younger entrepreneurs, and though they still struggle to get sufficient funding, the word is already out there.

Rwanda doctor Peter Drobac said, “Social entrepreneurship has gone mainstream and global.” He has developed healthcare ventures in the said country.

Larger companies are now looking to support social entrepreneurs—especially the startups—as part of their corporate social responsibility initiatives. Just recently, telecom company Optus has selected finalists for its third Future Makers tech accelerator program, which intends to help several startups develop their business models. The startup with the best pitch gets to receive $300,000 in funding.

Why do social good rather than sticking to traditional business models?

Traditional business models, when done right, are usually bulletproof. You are guaranteed with revenue, and you can always expand your business. But would that make any difference? This may be the question that young entrepreneurs are trying to answer.

By creating a business that’s trying to solve a certain problem, social entrepreneurs believe that they can also help change the world by dealing with one concern at a time.

What are the problems that these startups are trying to solve?

There are more social enterprises than you think, and they cover wide-ranging issues. Though they tackle more issues, each startup focus on a more niche issue.

For instance, there are startups like Innovision and BleeTech that focus on visually and hearing-impaired people, respectively. They improve the lives of these people through their products. Necesse, meanwhile, provides hygiene products, particularly tampons, to women who do not have access to them.

There are also startups that focus on people who do not have access to quality education like Zaya Learning Labs, which provides free and usable content for students around India. There also startups that develop applications that assist people with mental problems such as Calm and Elefant. Social entrepreneurship could provide limitless solutions to the issues that the world is facing.

These programs do not dramatically solve each problem, but with multiple startups worldwide solving each problem one at a time, there sure is a hopeful future ahead of us.