“UnLtd India has supported 300+ social impact organisations over the past 15 years. Reaching out to these numbers requires a constant and structured effort through the year, to scout for high quality, high potential social entrepreneurs for our incubation program. This process is as significant as laying a strong foundation for any structure – stronger the foundation, sturdy and robust would be the structure.
To build a pipeline of potential applicants, there is a round-the-year effort, to build and nurture strategic and collaborative partnerships at a pan India level within the entrepreneurial ecosystem. This includes partnerships with government bodies supporting entrepreneurship programs, other incubators, academia (predominantly Management and Engineering colleges), communities, fellowships, and other stakeholders who work on the Sustainable Development Goals.
The partnership model works purely on collaboration and one needs to constantly be a part of these platforms / networks to (a) support partners on a need basis (b) talk about UnLtd India – build brand UnLtd India in the network and (c) collate a list of potential applicants. In the past five years we have built and nurtured strong partnerships with State Innovation bodies and other enablers and incubators.
‘Referrals’ from other organisations, our well-wishers and from our alumni is another important source to get the applications. This is one of the most reliable sources to finding good applicants since you get direct access to the potential applicant.
Closer to the application period, we organise a series of small workshops in tier 2 and tier 3 towns with our partners, to source applications, as entrepreneurs from these belts do not have access to the right networks and support systems despite doing impactful work. In the past five years we have curated 25 such workshops across India, including Varanasi, Chandigarh, Lucknow, Dehradun, Jaipur, Nashik, Aurangabad, Solapur and Pune.
Hence the overall of success of scouting is a mix of one’s ability to reach wider networks to identify, evaluate and assess right individuals for the incubation programme, build strategic partnerships and finally run effective end to end campaigns to get desired applications. For this we need a well-laid out strategy coupled with precise execution.
We are thankful for our 70+ partnerships and strong network that has led to an increase in our applications inflow by 40% from tier 2 & tier 3 towns, and additionally more applications from wider geographies including the North Eastern states of India.”
Last but not the least I wish to end by a very powerful quote I read – “If you have big audacious goals, you need to have best of both – the strategy and execution. Strategy without execution is hallucination, and execution without a good strategy is aimless and will lead to chaos.”
