As I understand, social entrepreneurship will involve not just a business idea, but also an existing social problem being addressed.

I think we can start with the problems and see how to find opportunities around them. I am listing a few of the social problems and possible business ideas associated with them. Please feel free to add.

1) Village arts and crafts: Divert some of the funds being spent on gifts/ mementoes to buy and promote them. Marketing these artifacts can be a viable business.

2) Enuches: There are many home based businesses where they can be re-employed. Apart from the known things like Papads and pickles, we can also explore new ideas like "Pay for a Prayer group".

3) Child labour: There are in fact three needy groups who can be dependent and supportive to one another. Children, women and old people. Once we bring them together, they can support each other emotionally as well as physically. The elders can earn while the kids can manage the home and study in peace.

4) Creches for working women: There is a serious dearth of creches. One of the biggest problems being the location and transportation. A bus can be converted into a "Crech on wheels" with adequate security. This can be located to close to offices as only a parking is required. This can easily support 10 to 20 children.

5) Prostitution: Re-employment by diverting them into alternate sectors. The most important aspect here is to locate the production base in villages. This reduces the tendency to be lured into migration to big cities.

6) Beggers: Another area, where power of coming together can be explored. The beggers can be organized into groups and they can offer prayers/ bhajan for a noiminal fee. Even if one wants to donate alms, it is easy for them to give to a group rather than individuals.

There can be many more similar opportunities where these target groups.

Lets collaborate.

Successfully,

Sridhar