There Shouldn't Be A Distinction Between Social Impact Business and a Regular Business: Experts

Entrepreneurs with confidence, belief in their ideas, and good intent to make a difference to the society are there to create a social impact business.  Anurag Batra, Chairman & Editor-in-Chief, BW Businessworld, and Exchange4Media Group while chairing the session asked about the experience during the initial days of pandemic up until now. Lt. Gen S M Mehta shared his experience and said, “Anxiety and uncertainty had hit very hard personally and professionally.” For Kunal Kapoor, it was a time of mixed emotions. He said, “I got a chance to spend with my family, to learn to play the guitar, to watch and read, also managed to do a course in artificial intelligence, and a lot of work at Ketto.”

Democratisation of Philanthropy
The well-known actor Kunal Kapoor was already working with many NGOs in the social space. He joined hands with Varun Seth and started his journey as the co-founder at Ketto, India 8 years back. While discussing the name he mentioned that ‘Ketto is the abbreviation for Key To Tomorrow’ because they believe that ‘Crowd-funding is the key to tomorrow’. At Ketto, their aim is to make a bridge using technology for people who can help and people who are in need of help.
Kapoor highlighted various challenges:

1. Raising Money
2. Making the process of donation transparent and feasible for people
3. Reaching out to new donors

Starting the conversation they discussed thousands of workers on the borders trying to get back home when the lockdown happened and the fact that the kind of organization that was needed was absent. Lt. Gen Mehta, explained that he was shocked to see the images of migrant labourers struggling "we at Hans foundation managed to arrange the logistics and create one of the biggest isolation camps within 7 days even when everything was under lockdown", he said Lt. Gen. S N Mehra.

Kunal Kapoor- The Multifaceted Personality
“Being an entrepreneur and an actor seems to be poles apart but they are really similar. As an actor one needs to be creative, but as an entrepreneur it is important to be creative to create disruption and to make a difference". He listed three major things one needs to keep in mind:

1. Creativity: Be creative to make a remarkable difference
2. Listen to the audience: You can be great in your head but listen to the feedback from the audience
3. Self-belief: Believe in yourself and your idea while putting yourself out there

If we go by what Elon Musk says, education comes in the way of being an entrepreneur. Kapoor while speaking about entrepreneurship said, "I don’t know if it is really necessary to be trained for starting a business. A number of successful people just had a great idea, good intent, confidence, and self-belief, they went with it."

We aim to Transform Lives – Lt. Gen S M Mehta
Discussing Indian foundations and global organizations Lt. Gen. Mehta shared his experience working on a global level. There are people who are passionate about and care for causes and want to make a difference, but they definitely look for ‘clean intent’ while stepping towards donations and NGOs.

Lt. Gen. Mehta while claiming The Hans foundation as ‘one of the finest organizations in the country’ shared their goal; they aim to create an equitable society and transform lives for the positive.

At The Hans Foundation we are helping transform lives  and are running a national level program with the government for setting up homes for people in need. We are helping people who are suffering from mental health issues, have integrated village development programs, programs for corneal blindness and many other programs for creating an equitable society.

While concluding the discussion, Lt. Gen. Mehta stated that he is still learning from his grown-up daughters. He believes Covid-19 has been a blessing in a way that he got time to learn to play the guitar.