AFI, IIITH, IITH, and T-Hub join hands to support 5,000 social impact startups

India, in the last couple of years, has emerged as one of the fastest-growing startup ecosystems in the world. While everyday startups are being launched, they continue to face challenges in scaling especially social startups and entrepreneurs.

To develop an ecosystem to support tech-enabled and social impact startups, four organisations including T-Hub, Action For India (AFI), International Institute of Information Technology, Hyderabad (IIITH) and Indian Institute of Technology Hyderabad (IITH) have announced a collaboration.

The alliance has been created to resolve challenges faced by social entrepreneurs with a special focus on a business model, market discovery, go-to-market strategy, scale-up strategy, right technology application, and securing funds.

It aims to strategic scaling support to 5000 social impact startups over five years. Though, they did not reveal details related to funding allocation for the purpose.

"Social enterprises that improve human life by deploying technology need solid support and a robust growth ecosystem. T-Hub is collaborating with like-minded ecosystem enablers like IITH, IIITH and AFI to utilise our existing assets and experiences to build a social impact ecosystem that will provide scaling support to social entrepreneurs,” said Ravi Narayan, CEO of T-Hub.

Each partner in the alliance will enable social entrepreneurs with the tools, networks and resources.

While AFI will be leveraging its network in Silicon Valley leadership circle, influencers, funds and scaling mechanisms to support the social enterprise ecosystem, IITH and IIITH will enable social impact startups with technology up-gradation and support with government connections.

With this collaborations, the alliance hope to reach out to more social entrepreneurs, who need such ecosystem support to sustain and grow.