Social Entrepreneurship Case Study

DesiCrew Solusions Pvt. Ltd.'s Reverse Migration Model: Going Rural with Socially Relevant BPO

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Abstract:
In February 2007, Saloni Malhotra, a young Indian entrepreneur, launched her social entrepreneurial venture, DesiCrew Solutions Private Limited (DesiCrew). With its reverse migration model, DesiCrew has been able to make a social impact by generating employment opportunities through its chain of BPO outlets in rural India. With its simple business model, DesiCrew has earned decent profits within just three years of its inception. By generating non-farm based fruitful employment opportunities in rural areas, DesiCrew has given India and the emerging economies a socially relevant inclusive business model. It already has many awards and recognitions to its credit – FICCI FLO award to Saloni Malhotra for Best Woman Social Entrepreneur and Sankalp 2009 award in the growth category for highly scalable social model, being few of them.

The success of DesiCrew’s rural BPO model offers two broad positive outcomes. Firstly, replicating this model pan-India will go a long way in rural upliftment. Secondly, as DesiCrew benefitted being an incubatee of RTBI, the significance of incubators at academic institutions gets highlighted. This evokes an interesting debate – Do the ventures borne out of academic incubators have a better acceptance because of their inclusive business models and powerful networking effects? Can they foster entrepreneurial clusters and would that augur well for the economic upliftment of the people involved directly or indirectly in particular and economic growth in general?

Pedagogical Objectives:

• To understand the making of a social entrepreneurial venture and to underscore the role and importance of social entrepreneurial ventures in alleviating poverty, especially in emerging economies and poor countries
• To explore the role of incubators in nurturing social entrepreneurial ventures and to debate on the relevance of incubators in creating entrepreneurial clusters
• To highlight the importance of academic institutions/universities actively engaged in incubation and to contrast the academic incubators with business incubators
• To understand the business model, operating model and revenue model of DesiCrew in creating a socially relevant entrepreneurial model
• To debate and discuss on the impending challenges that DesiCrew faces in its second phase – the scalability, the choice of relevant organisational form, the issues related to operating model and the competitive pressures.

Keywords : DesiCrew Solutions Pvt. Ltd., Social Entrepreneurship in India, Inclusive Business Models, RTBI, Rural Technology and Business Incubator, Scalability and Sustainability Challenges in Socially Relevant Business Models, TeNeT, Saloni Malhotra, Dr. Ashok Junjhunwala, The SCALERS Model, Business Incubation, Types of Incubators, Sustainable Development, Poverty Alleviation