The case traces the 25-year-long journey of SELCO (Solar Electric Light Company) from its inception in 1995 to the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020. SELCO's aim was initially to provide solar home lighting systems for India's impoverished rural communities. After the success of this phase, SELCO's first phase (SELCO 1.0),the organization, under founder Harish Hande's leadership, began to explore how it could better serve the communities it was helping. This led to SELCO 2.0, which focused on creating livelihood opportunities through solar-powered appliances. SELCO realized that it had the potential to do more. It evolved further, progressing to SELCO 3.0, which strove to deepen its social impact with SELCO Foundation and the development of a unique SELCO ecosystem. The case explores how for-profit social enterprises such as SELCO evolve with time, how the landscape of the field they work in changes, and how their success is often determined by multiple factors: a unique organizational culture, exceptional leadership, and an on-ground understanding of real issues. The case questions how an organization like SELCO should proceed as it tries to apply the SELCO model in new locations, and how the SELCO culture can be preserved as the leadership changes.

Banglanatak dot com (BNC) is a unique example of an initiative that grew from a folk-theater-based social effort in rural Bengal to a pan-India effort, evolving different needs-based programs with the mission of fostering pro-poor growth and protecting and upholding the rights of women, children, and indigenous communities. In the last two decades of its evolution, BNC has built a unique model of community-led development riding on the cultural heritage of the places where it intervened. Over the years, BNC came to occupy a unique position, having developed a series of innovative programs during its journey and evolved to become an institution spread across multiple programs and with different capabilities. From a management perspective, BNC might be stretched across divergent objectives, but in the social sector, it appears to be an enlightening story of successfully building an institution for impact. By 2020, Amitava Bhattacharya, the founder of BNC, was grappling with the challenge of scaling up BNC and building capacity within the organization. This case gives us the opportunity to explore multiple areas in the context of social enterprises and the sector: 1. Growth drivers (social development goals) 2. Social enterprise business models 3. Scaling-up challenges 4. Organizational evolution