TISS to offer online course on social entrepreneurship

Tata Institute of Social Sciences (TISS) will soon offer an online Master of Arts in Social Entrepreneurship (MASE) available to students across the country.

Tata Institute of Social Sciences (TISS) will soon offer an online Master of Arts in Social Entrepreneurship (MASE) available to students across the country.

MASE is one of the flagship programmes of TISS. It is hosted by the Centre for Social Entrepreneurship under the School of Management and Labour Studies (Getty Images/iStockphoto/ REPRESENTATIVE PHOTO)

MASE is one of the flagship programmes of TISS. It is hosted by the Centre for Social Entrepreneurship under the School of Management and Labour Studies. The two-year online programme, with an intake of 34 each year, is aimed at helping students become social entrepreneurs.

Students are taught to identify social problems, understand the economics, polity, and sociology of the problem, design innovative solutions, and create a venture start-up.

“We are planning to launch an online module of the MASE course to make it accessible to more people. The fees will be minimal so that anybody wishing to learn about social entrepreneurship can get access to our modules,” said Satyajit Majumdar, professor, Centre for Social Entrepreneurship.

Since its inception in 2006-07, the centre has helped incubate 47 social start-ups in the field of healthcare, education, agriculture, governance, and waste management. “We have a success rate of 50%, which is much higher than the industry standard,” said Majumdar.

According to Sujay Dixit, senior programme manager at the centre, social entrepreneurship is often misunderstood as NGO management. “Any start-up conceived to make a social impact is considered a social start-up here,” he said, adding that the online MASE course will be available starting January 2020.

The centre houses an incubation lab at the Mumbai campus. However, the institute is planning to expand the lab along the lines of the Society for Innovation and Entrepreneurship at the Indian Institute of Technology-Bombay (IIT-B). TISS is currently in talks with City and Industrial Development Corporation (Cidco) to obtain land for the new incubation lab.