Practicing Social Business

I think it was the romance of it on some level. It was the stuff of dreams. The stuff that you read about in books and see in movies. Guy from small town becomes an engineer, writes code for an investment bank, makes it to IIMA, does a course on social businesses and the experience forever changes the mold in which this character is cast.

I guess I could stylize myself that way - but that would be quite, quite far from the truth - off by a few parsecs give or take.

The course offered by Prof. Ankur Sarin is being described as an experiment at best by everyone including the instructors. Prof Pathik from Southampton and Prof Sarin attempt to provide 20 students an immersive experience of the intricate workings of a social enterprise.

On the first day, we spent time discussing what a social business is and exploring the apparent conflict between  the terms "social" and "business" and if/why they could not co-exist together. And like most classes in IIMA, towards the end, we are not left with a "solution" or an "answer" but rather experiences from which we draw upon to make our own judgements. On the one hand, today we have organisations in all manner of businesses donning the hat of social responsibility and conspicuously at that. On the other, we as human beings have an innate tendency to be cynical and get on a moral high horse whenever anyone appears with a "holier than thou" attitude. Personally, for me it came down to an individual's sense of morality and what each of us is comfortable calling a social business. For some people, making carpets to sustain a rural family has more "social" connotations than supporting a community of struggling app developers in cities and for others, these details are cosmetic and the fundamental social impact is the same.

To get the immersive experience, we were split into groups and assigned social ventures to work with. Ultimately, we hope to help them in any one aspect of their business. Our group met Roshan from Awaaz De- a company which aims at providing solutions via mobile voice services in the rural hinterlands. From being a social venture, they want to make it a self sustaining business and this means at some stage, in some form or the other, either some of their operations have to make profits or they have to figure out another sustainable source of revenue.

So far as providing rural solutions is concerned, two aspects are well documented
1) It is expensive to service the bottom of the pyramid
2) This large expense makes it unviable for anyone without deep pockets and an almost Sisyphian determination to service the rural market sustainably
Yet Awaaz De wants to play here. The eight of us were forced to think beyond conventional management wisdom.

We not only had to come up with solutions, but also evaluate what these solutions would mean for the business which wants to think of itself as a fundamentally social need driven organisation. Sure, mobile services could be supported by advertising. MNCs would pay an arm and a leg to reach the rural customer - but is that social enough? At what point does the organisation say "No, I shall not sell my soul" ?

And the issue here is that there is no real answer to these questions apriori. After the fact, five, ten years down the line, when Harvard and IIMA write a case about this, it could all be very obvious. I expect students like myself would be vehemently saying ("putting CP" in IIMA language) in class that "Oh! such and such actions of the organisation are not in line with their strategy of being social" and would get an A+ on that 10% component. But living this experience, seeing an organisation which needs to stay afloat and alive and feed itself tomorrow, we are realizing that the meaning of the question "how realistic is it to stick to our principles if one cannot survive?". Sure, our social compass is attuned to romanticising the notion of "going down with the ship" and sticking to our guns unto death, but we found ourselves asking the question - are we the only stakeholders here?

The added burden on the organisation and the need for this fundamentally social need driven organisation to survive is felt not only by those people who have invested their lives in setting it up but the customers/beneficiaries who have now got accustomed to a standard of living and a service - who now have hope that technology and development is for them as well. The implication of not staying afloat will be felt not only by Awaaz De but by the next ten companies who try to enter these markets later and will be snubbed by the rural populace because of the inability of Awaaz De to persevere. In effect, we are trying to do a category development and the responsibility we need to shoulder is indeed onerous.

As these aspects come to life, we get a flavour of real challenges in the social space.

And it is these conflicts, bordering on internal strife that provide us the intellectual fodder and the furnace of practical experience to hone our business acumen in a world which is becoming increasingly socially sensitive.