MARCH 20198he Asia Pacific region's start-up ecosystem has quickly made its mark on the glob-al map. While it may still be competing with Silicon Valley on a lot of fronts, there is no denying that it has created its own niche in the en-trepreneurial echelons worldwide. Recent developments in this sphere further corroborate this. Singapore emerged as the number one hub for tech talent displacing Silicon Val-ley for the first time in 2017 as per a report by Startup Genome. Valeur, the matchmaking tool for startups and corporations, named Bengaluru in India as the 5th best startup city in the world. In 2018, investments in Australian startups grew at a much faster clip than in European or North American ones. Start-ups in China accounted for 47% of the world's total VC funding in the quarter ended June 2018. A massive shot in the arm for the APAC region came when China's Bytedance de-throned America's Uber as the most valued tech startup in the world at $75 billion. And that's not all, close on the heels of Bytedance and Uber was displaced in China by yet anoth-er Chinese startup ­ Didi Chuxing. While all these numbers make it clear that the APAC startup realm has been experiencing massive growth and investor interest, there is another trend that is subtly but sure-footedly sweeping over this domain ­ social entrepreneurship. Social entrepreneurship, as it is taking place in the Asia Pacific re-gion, isn't necessarily limited to so-cial work or not-for-profit activities. There is a huge focus on applying the region's vast pool of technolo-gy talent and innovative capabilities to solving some of the most criti-cal social problems that develop-ing countries in the region face and achieving measurable results through sustainable business mod-els. The trend is riding on the back of younger entrepreneurs' interest in pursuing meaning in whatever they do. The lure of profits and val-uation doesn't seem to hold enough value for as many millennial entre-preneurs and they're clearly looking for something more... for bringing about a grassroots change. Take the example of Mum-bai-based GreenSole that addresses India's rampant concerns regarding environmental waste and oceanic pollution through a win-win busi-ness model. The athlete founders decided to recycle the thousands of running shoes that are discard-ed by their community each year and turn them into sandals for the many underprivileged Indians who cannot afford to buy footwear. With new footwear given to students, even school attendance in their tar-get government schools went up considerably. In neighbouring Ne-pal, Eco Cell Industries is a startup that focuses on building affordable, eco-friendly and earthquake resis-tant buildings. The trio who found-ed the company came up with the Himanshu is a true entrepreneur who is focussed on solving challenging problems in the domain of environmental sustainability with a large social impactSTARTING-UP THE SOCIAL REVOLUTION: INNOVATIVE VENTURES IN THE APAC USHER IN MASSIVE SOCIAL CHANGEBy Himanshu Agarwal, CEO and Founder, Magneto CleanTechIN MY OPINIONT
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