There was a time when social entrepreneurship was not so active. But not any more. I met the founders of Rangde.org, a P2P microfinance initiative that has attracted more than committed lenders. We (I, Smita and Ram) met up last Friday to have an informal chart about each other’s entry into the social space and how each one of us had to face challenges. Rangde has more up its sleeve which will be revealed to the world on Aug 15^th. Interestingly, the challenges that we have faced in our paths to make our ventures come to life have been pretty much the same. To list out a few,

1. People think the idea is fantastic but when it come to doing, nothing happens.
2. The constraints of a budget.
3. The reluctance of the investing community to invest in a venture that is ‘socially profitable’
4. The absence of a Social Incubation Fund and Incubator.

An interesting suggestion made by Ram was to create a Social Advertisement Network wherein ventures like us can offset some of our operating costs from posting socially relevant adverts. Good One Ram.

Our discussion was not confined to how each of started but also tried to spell out the factors that ail startups in the social space.They are the same as the 4 points mentioned above.We were also debating ‘Financial returns Vs Social Returns’. Ram,Smita- We must get some PE guys to have an awesome debate.

Another major thought that came out of this discussion was the entry of PE players in microfinance and how the game of microfinance that was established to ensure that credit reaches the poorest of the poor might change drastically when conventional rules of finance are applied

Good Luck Guys. Hope you achieve the dreams that you are set out to achieve.

www.rangde.org