Huge numbers of incubators and accelerators have come up to support early-stage entrepreneurs. Growth-stage social businesses (in the Indian context, say above revenue of $1 Million) grapple with complex and important issues on strategy, operations, human resources and finance as they mature into larger organizations and start competing with larger businesses as they start stepping out of the “impact ecosystem”, but find no avenues for deep and sustained support, mentoring and help that is relevant, high quality and affordable.
This is a blind spot as these organizations are best positioned to scale-up and create large scale impact, as they already have a proven product / business model, customers etc. But their success and impact is far from assured. Supporting businesses at this stage is very difficult and challenging, but also very important. The gap is even more prominent in sectors that have not seen a lot of investment and large-scale success stories. WASH, urban sustainability and agriculture are some examples in the Indian context.
This session will bring together Accelerators and entrepreneurs to discuss the needs of enterprises and how Accelerators and investors can better meet this need.
While I have mentioned speakers from the India context (we can find others also if the idea of this session is approved), the scope should be broadened to include other markets also–maybe South East Asia, Africa or LatAm?
