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About the contest

The Tata Social Enterprise Challenge is a joint initiative of the TATA Sons with the Indian Institute of Management Calcutta (IIM-C) started in 2012. The Challenge (B-Plan Contest) endeavours to identify, reward and support India’s most promising early-stage social enterprises, and create an ecosystem for social entrepreneurship – encouraging sustainable, scalable, and measurable social impact.

The Challenge invites social entrepreneurs who have an early-stage venture (not older than three years) or a promising idea with a plan that could create a sustainable social impact in India. In addition, the enterprise is required to demonstrate significant social impact through results or proof of concept.

The Tata Social Enterprise Challenge is being supported by some of the biggest Venture Capitalists in the Social Entrepreneurship space.

The Challenge is held in Five stages

  1. Application Round – In this round, teams are required to submit Impact Proposals through the Challenge website. The Impact Proposal is a detailed business plan format developed to capture the needs and the impact created by a social venture. The Top 100 Impact Proposals are selected for the next round.
  2. Regional Rounds – Pitching Rounds are conducted in 4 regions across the country for the Top 100 teams shortlisted from the application round. The Top 20 teams are selected for the Final round.
  3. International Round – An exclusive pitching session is conducted for the international teams participating in the Challenge, out of which the Top 4 teams are selected for the Finals.
  4. Seed Round- The top 20 selected entrepreneurs from the Regional Round pitch to the TSEC Seed Committee Members and the impact investors from the startup ecosystem.
  5. The Grand Finale – The 20 teams selected from the Regional Rounds make it to the Grand Finale and pitch to a panel of esteemed judges, consisting of TATA Business Leaders, CEOs/Founders of VCs, Social Entrepreneurs and faculty from IIM Calcutta.

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