To celebrate the spirit of social entrepreneurship during the Enactus India festival week, Enactus Shaheed Sukhdev College of Business Studies, hosted The Social Startup Fest in collaboration with SSCBS Innovation and Incubation Foundation on February 6, 2018. Enactus is an international not-for-profit organization which aims to take entrepreneurial action for social empowerment with its chapters across 36 countries.

One such chapter of Enactus works in Shaheed Sukhdev College of Business Studies and has two existing projects that work towards providing digital literacy and eradicating open defecation across the country. The fest aimed at providing a platform that brought amass acclaimed investors, incubators, industry experts, CSR Heads and NGOs to interact with a multitude of social startups and Enactus projects that have proliferated recently. It represented an opportunity for Social enterprises from across the nation to demonstrate their intervention in various spheres like those of education, health, sanitation, nutrition and more. Mindpiper, Arogya, Chakr Innovation, Enactus LSR, and Enactus Hindu are only a few of the many participants who turned up.

The event commenced with a welcome address by Ms Poonam Verma, the principal of the college. The chief guest of the event, Mr Satvinder Singh, senior general manager at NSIC, enlightened the audience with his profound words about the need of social leaders and the manner in which each one of us can induce social change. This was followed by a panel discussion on the agenda, ‘Challenge to Change’. It was moderated by Mr Ashish Beergi, a youth activist and a social entrepreneur based out of New Delhi, India. He is the co-founder and CEO of MASH Project which is a youth-led non-profit organisation, building a global ecosystem for young social entrepreneurs. The esteemed panel also included Ms Prarthna Gupta, Mr Shwetabh Verma, Mr Gaurav Singh and Ms Ishita Verma. Ms Gupta is the Chief Operating Officer and the Head of Campaigns at BitGiving, a crowdfunding platform that enables artists, engineers, and creators from all the walks of life to come together in a bid to raise funds online and share their stories. Mr Verma, on the other hand, is the Design Strategist and Chief Innovation Officer at Adisyam who works at the intersection of business, technology, marketing and education along with startups, budding entrepreneurs and young leaders with ideas to solve pressing real-world problems. Ms Ishita Verma, a founder-partner of Nova Growth Partners, also strives to unveil the true potential of individuals who approach her. Her company brings together a panel of high-calibre experts in diverse fields – ranging from social impact to investment banking – to deliver actionable insights and implementation support that further the mission of their clients. Mr Gaurav Singh drives growth and marketing at SocialCops, a data intelligence company that thrives to confront the world’s most critical problems through data. The company seeks to empower leaders by enabling them to make their toughest decisions faster, smarter and more data-driven. By reminiscing the struggles of their own experiences as amateurs, the social leaders deciphered the obstacles that startups tend to encounter and provided prospective solutions against the problems that prevent them from excelling. Post the discussion, the teams dispersed to network and interact with those present, with the aim to collaborate.

A marked success, the fest represented young entrepreneurs who endeavour to change the world and transform lives, thus imbibing the true spirit of Enactus. We look forward to seeing these dreams turn into reality, and transform the world.