Anurag Batra addressing the social enterprise summit organised by Business World 7 years ago, jokingly said they run a media company so that they are a social enterprise. The people who are gathered for the summit, who are driving social enterprises, who are doing something that is needed in the country. Anurag Batra was introduced these years back. He wrote a column in the entrepreneur magazine on entrepreneurship. And seeing that article, one of his friends asked him to write an article on social enterprises. And Anurag's interest to know more from his friend about the topic and by learning by it he was pleasantly surprised that so much work is happening in this domain. His friend told him about the institutions and the individuals that are working in this domain. He says that entrepreneurs who want to create just wealth for themselves are selfish and he calls it “sampati”. He feels that people in the social entrepreneurship space are creating what he called shared wealth which is termed as “sampatha”.
Anurag Batra questions the need for law for CSR in India when everywhere else in the world, businesses are becoming a force for good. But here it is just 3% of it is need to be done for good. That means with the rest 97% nothing good happens. More people can contribute to the growth of this country in a meaningful manner and by sharing the wealth. When Anurag Batra started, he wasn’t aware of social enterprise. His thought was always to achieve something and then give back. But now he knows many young people who want to give and then achieve something. In Anurag’s case when it started happening years back, it was kind of a difficult notion to digest. He didn’t know if these young people for real. But over a while, he realised that these people want to give first. He feels that’s the mission that they put first. The real achievement for them is being successful in a social enterprise.
Anurag Batra advises the young entrepreneurs that they are doing something that will go into nation-building. He also wants to give them 2 cautionary notes. All of us read international magazines and articles on Indian NGOs. He was very worried to read that article. He always looks down on NGOs because he knows too many people who are in the garb of NGOs running a commercial organization. Mr Anurag thinks even social enterprises need to be self-sustainable and if you are self-sustainable you can gift something to someone. He wrote an article in entrepreneurship about young entrepreneurs who get lots of awards but rarely build anything.
He is too worried about how much is the circulation. this month how much money did we build did we lose that story or not how much did we bill on events. He is not really in touch with what’s happening in the country beyond what he sees. The institute of competitiveness in doing a social enterprise summit because this is a domain that needs to be talked about the heroes and the leaders of the social enterprise movement need to be brought to so that more people can be inspired and do work. He hopes that as we go along as a business world and institute of competitiveness, we can celebrate your journey and can contribute to your journey.
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