Social enterprises have a dual mission to achieve impact and financial returns and often find it hard to raise patient capital for growth as they don’t offer the hockey stick projections that investors are looking for. Confronted with this challenge, they may be forced to drift away or abandon their social mission all together, to chase after more lucrative customer segments or product pricing. Impact-linked debt instruments such as Social Success Notes provide an elegant solution.

India consumes one-third of the global standards when it comes to per capita energy consumption. The level of plastic usage is among the lowest and there is a meagre 4% air conditioning penetration in the country. As India moves up the development ladder and aims to be a $10 trillion economy in the next 10 years, there is going to be a great demand for housing, energy, food and transportation. This scenario will hold true for all emerging economies across the world. A scenario that creates a tremendous opportunity for capital to be deployed in these sectors should be good news.

Jagriti Yatra (JY), an ANDE member initiative in India, is an annual train journey of discovery for hundreds of enterprising young people. Through the journey, they meet, interact with, and get inspired by highly reputed senior social entrepreneurs and the growing band of small and growing businesses (SGBs) that are creating an impact across the country.

In a recently released Roadmap for the Small and Growing Business (SGB) Sector, improving access to talent was identified as one of the key pillars to enhance support to SGBs. Some of the facets highlighted are: Improving job prospects for new graduates, fostering peer-to-peer learning and focusing on development.

The discussion focused on understanding Masala Bonds as instruments of debt both from an investor's and an entrepreneur's lens.

Social Success Notes (SSNs) hold the promise of addressing the missing-middle financing gap for impact SGBs by mobilizing commercial capital into these businesses while overcoming the long-entrenched trade-off between social impact and financial return.