GetSocio Ltd.

A live project sourcing platform to connect students, specialists, and professionals to social enterprises, social startups, NGOs, rural businesses, and sustainability-oriented businesses.

Our platform Identifies and connects sustainable business projects to student communities and professionals in a wide range of fields, enabling a platform for them to have access and work on verified and much-needed impact projects in their respective regions. We bridge the access and provide a one-roof solution to social enterprises to get quality hires from various sectors and fields.

Our problem identification is two-fold.

1. Students and professionals in various areas are looking for paid impact projects and bringing about a change but there is a: 

•  Lack of access to verified and worthwhile projects
• Lack of a one-roof platform to provide this facility to them.

Moreover, there is a lack of knowledge among graduate and post-graduate students today about local businesses and practical exposure to startups and small businesses during their academia.

2. Social enterprises in India suffer from a lack of good talent for their projects, let alone good hires. 

Our target population is students above 16 years of age, high-schoolers, college students and academic professionals (PhDs) to connect them to social projects and businesses.

While the former seek more exposure and is willing and woken to solve issues, they have no access to credible projects. The latter on the other hand lacks the human resource to scale up their business.

Since the common choice of students is to get a job rather than starting up or solving the various problems of a developing nation, there is a dearth of people who can contribute. Hence, offering a platform that provides good talent as gigs can work well.

We would provide projects in a huge array of sectors such as:

Textile producers

• NGO’s

• Online shopping sites

• Handicraft businesses in cities

• Ethnic footwear stores

• Women run home businesses such as candles, accessories etc.

• Instagram businesses of artists/ crafts – crochet, paintings, sustainable cutlery etc.

• Waste management businesses

• Home-tech energy startups

• Green packaging businesses

• Organic beauty brands

providing opportunities in areas such as:

Digital marketing

• Content writing

• Market research

• Market penetration and strategies

• Business strategy

• Promotions

• Supply chain problems

• Accounting

• Fundraising

• Market reach

• Branding

• Data entry

• Web development

• Advertisement

• Product development

• Design

• Business Research

We conducted a survey among a sample size of 567 participants ranging from students in undergraduate, school and postgraduate programs and 96% of them said:

They would love to lend their talent to social enterprises

93% said they would love to solve social problems

34% said they would love to start their own social enterprise and would love exposure to the same.

We have chosen this as a concept because we are yet to determine what aspects and features this platform could have, how it exactly differentiates our service, and more on-ground research needed to understand the needs and skills required by social enterprises in India. 

This idea is purely data-driven.

• We would be using SocialCops technology by way of:
• Find all kinds of potential social enterprises in a given area: dig out all companies that come under given categories (NGOs, clubs like Rotary Club, Lions, associations and other affiliates, startups, companies that have careers in sustainability, etc.) and widen client company network

• Student - collect database of different colleges in different industries and disciplines such as civil engineers, architects, accountants, marketing professionals, digital marketers, influencers etc.

The process:

We would use this database to shortlist and visit schools and colleges for selecting and onboarding on our platform and give them access to our portal, fetching credible projects.

• This would be further utilised by our client companies to do targeted advertising on the platform to get the specific talent they want. 

In the first year, we would be able to onboard at least 20-30 colleges across disciplines in Bangalore city and fetch about 150 projects in and around the city. This would mean, approximating an onboarding of 100 students from each college - a minimum of 2000 students and a minimum/average of 2 projects per client which would be around 300 projects on the portal.

Our solution serves students (undergraduate, masters and doctorate levels) across all disciplines and all socioeconomic strata by providing them practical hands-on experience with industries and NGOs thereby providing them experience not only with how organizations work in real life but also the impact they have on society. This helps in skill development and helps create a skilled and capable workforce for the future.

Therefore, our impact goal for next year is to connect at least 100 rural and social enterprises to the best match interns/freelancers and increase their productivity by at least 5%.

A lack of technical knowhow

We are a team that have taken up government projects in the social arena and have a sense of what problems surround different fields of social enterprises in the country. We also, as students, have access to a large set of the student communities, many of whom, eager to such a possibility.