Social Entrepreneurship: Issues and Challenges

Social entrepreneurship (SE), the practice of responding to market failures with transformative, financially sustainable innovations aimed at solving social problems has emerged at the nexus of the public, private and non-profit sectors in India as well as across the world. It is a new breed of entrepreneurship that exhibits characteristics of non-profits, government and businesses-including applying to social problem-solving traditional, private sector entrepreneurship's focus on innovation, risk-taking and large-scale transformation. Although SE is not a new phenomenon, the field has experienced enormous growth over the past 15 years, receiving increasing recognition from journalists, philanthropists, researchers, and policymakers as an important and distinctive part of the nation's social, economic and political landscape. This paper attempts a critical examination of SE in India and the major issues and challenges faced by them.