Entrepreneurship & Innovation

Entrepreneurship & Innovation Be.artsy: A Social Entrepreneur's Dilemma in Scaling Women Empowerment
Women's empowerment means empowering women on multiple dimensions: economically, psychologically, socially, and politically. Historically, women have suffered from disproportionately reduced access to resources and opportunities. Financial literacy and inclusion are especially important to overcome the dependence of women on their husbands. This aspect is more important in situations where the husband-wife relationship was strained for a variety of reasons. Shikha Mittal founded Be.artsy to empower women to speak up and manage their finances, with financial literacy and consequent empowerment acting as the impetus for overall women's empowerment. Experiences of sexual harassment at the workplace and domestic violence prompted Mittal to design and offer programs to corporates. These programs aimed to address the above problems through customized training programs for employees of these companies, which comprised Be.artsy's business to business (B2B) markets. Although these programs were supplemented with street plays and interventions in colleges, the B2B channel was the primary channel Be.artsy used to reach out to women; it generated revenue and created an impact. Be.artsy chose financial literacy as the key pillar for women's empowerment and drove its programs through tie-ups with institutions. With the advent of the COVID-19 pandemic, Mittal launched an online program, Be Your Own Lakshmi (BYOL), that imparted financial literacy education. With free initial sessions that demonstrated the importance of financial planning and promotions through social media, BYOL had garnered some traction, with many people wanting to sign up for the paid BYOL offering. However, Mittal's desire to use BYOL as a vehicle to speed up the achievement of her vision of empowering millions of women remained unfulfilled. She needed to choose the right approach to scale BYOL, but the dilemma remained: Should she scale BYOL using the B2B or business to consumer (B2C) route?

Learning Objectives

Understand how personal experiences influence starting up a venture and the subsequent entrepreneurial journey

Compare B2B and B2C as approaches for start-ups, in the context of Be.artsy

Analyze Be.artsy's various scaling-up options.

Consider the challenges in scaling up Be.artsy in particular and start-ups in general.

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Dolly Kovvali,

Sanjana Gorti,

D.V.R. Seshadri

Published: Jul 17, 2023
₹399.00

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Entrepreneurship & Innovation Organic Mandya: Challenges in Scaling a Social Enterprise

The Organic Mandya (OM) case explores the journey of Madhu Chandan, a successful entrepreneur who gave up his comfortable life in the United States to return to his home state, Karnataka, in India and set up OM, a first-of-its-kind organic movement led by farmers in Mandya. Over the years leading up to his return to his roots, Chandan had observed certain disturbing trends such as increasing farmer suicides in Karnataka, the reduced life expectancy of the rural population, and large-scale migration of youth to cities for employment opportunities. He began to delve deeper to understand the problems faced by these farmers. He observed that the adoption of chemical farming in Mandya over the past few decades had led to an increase in lifestyle diseases and reduced life expectancy-a phenomenon hitherto unheard of within rural communities. OM was born out of Chandan's journey to change consumer and farmer behavior and encourage farmers to revert to traditional and more ecologically friendly farming practices. The case examines the challenges that Chandan encountered in convincing farmers to revert to sustainable farming practices, while simultaneously attempting to change the mindset of urban consumers by encouraging them to seek health-promoting, organically grown farm produce. This case will help students understand the traits that an entrepreneur driving a socially oriented business and led by a strong sense of purpose will need for success, as well as the challenges and opportunities in building a community-based enterprise. The case is set in August 2020, when Chandan was forced to reflect on the sustainability of OM's business model in the rapidly changing social context and increasing competition from big players. Consumer preference for online shopping for foodstuff was making it imperative for Chandan to continue to innovate OM's business model and to identify new opportunities to continue to stay relevant.

Learning Objectives

Understand the challenges in setting up a social enterprise in the agricultural sector. - Explore strategies that can be adopted to build agricultural value chains and rural market linkages. - Consider whether scale is necessary or possible in social enterprises, specifically in organic farming. - Identify sustainable growth models for a social enterprise, balancing the twin goals of profitability and social upliftment of farming communities, without compromising business ethics.
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Sanjana Gorti,

Raj Krishnan Shankar,

Rajesh Pandit,

D.V.R. Seshadri

Published: Jan 15, 2023

₹399.00

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Learning Objectives

Learning Objectives