Entrepreneurship is the core force of economic growth; the economic development which one

experiences is just due the prevailing force of entrepreneurship. The commonality between all
the developed nations all around the world is the presence of entrepreneurship. Economic
development is totally based upon the growth of entrepreneurship and more the entrepreneurship
is grown, infrastructure as well as all the indicators of development has also grown. . The very
basic element of overall development including social, can be contributed to entrepreneurship’s
detailed development. For the sake of understanding, entrepreneurship was first used for
business/economic context in 18th century by a French economist Richard Contillon, who
associated entrepreneurship with business risks and uncertainty bearing. The entrepreneurship
has many other types as well; it is divided on different traits and criteria, one of the criteria being
Social. This type of entrepreneurship is very unique in nature and has different blends of
components. The prime objective of social entrepreneurship stands different than the usual
objectives of entrepreneurship; here social benefits are clubbed with economic benefits Most of
the times, social entrepreneurship is used in synonymous with social service/work. The
similarities are there, but the biggest difference is existence of profits. In social work, NGOs or
social workers only focus on work which is being done for the poor or deprived section; it is not
for profits, but for service. On the contrary, social entrepreneurship includes profits in social
service together and puts non personal benefits in focus

Social entrepreneurship beginnings can be found in the 19th century when people such as
Florence Nightingale (founder of the first nursing school) and Mathilde Franziska Anneke
(founder of the first school for women) operated toward finding solutions to social issues
tackling unemployment, education, gender inequality and other. Also, the founder of the
cooperative movement, Robert Owen, can be added to that list with a great contribution to the
rise of social entrepreneurship a century later (Sepulveda, 2014). Some scholars state that social
entrepreneurs were always present, but were not perceived as such, because the concept was not
established yet. In order to better understand social entrepreneurship as a new and upcoming
field we have to look in the reasons for its emergence. It is safe to say that the history thought us
that in every country, region or continent the reasons for the beginning of the concept vary.

Beside the global causes for emergence of social entrepreneurship, it was the American
economist Bowen who introduced the terms ‘social entrepreneurship’ and ‘social entrepreneur’.
It was also Bowen who sparked the interest about corporate social responsibility in the late
1950s. While Bowen introduced the terms, it was Bill Drayton, the founder of Ashoka
Foundation, and Muhammad Yunus, the founder of Grameen Bank, who modernized the terms.

Social enterprise is a business, market oriented and usually associated with the local community,
addressing important and neglected societal problems or/and making clear social impact by
innovative approach” (Murzyn et al., 2020).

The relevance of the social entrepreneurship/ entrepreneurship in Kerala is visible from the
functioning of various enterprises working under DMC / DIC and many others. So, as a part of
the internship programme, we visited enterprises under DIC, DMC and cooperative societies to
gather information regarding its functioning, and fulfil our internship objectives.