In Kerala’s startup landscape, this young woman builds a ‘social town’

Kochi: In Kerala’s startup landscape, a young woman has created a ‘town’ of her own. Her investment is her passion to bring positive changes in society. The Social Town, a startup founded by Kochi-based Neenu Rathin, is a rarity in an ecosystem where tech companies rule the roost.

The Social Town is a multi-stakeholder platform which enables and empowers change makers with connections, opportunities, and knowledge, fostering social development.

Neenu, who has a degree in Electronics and Communications Engineering, chose the path far from her trained profession out of her passion for social development. 

The Social Town, in short, is an entity that works as a conduit between NGOs, volunteers and corporates. It was born out of her desire to combine various impactful programmes through social innovation. 

Neenu launched her venture after volunteering for different causes and working with organisations like the Art of Living Foundation, Good Karma Foundation, OISCA, Compassionate Keralam, Chekutty and THAMPU. She was a core team member and coordinator for the ‘Chekutty’ Project, which was one of the most acclaimed resurgence projects, post the 2018 Kerala floods. During the 2019 floods, apart from online volunteering, she was involved in the rehabilitation work of people affected by the floods, especially in the tribal settlements of Attapadi, Nilambur and Wayanad.

In between she also got trained in marketing and project management from the Indian Institute of Management, Kozhikode. 

The Social Town is incubated by NSRCEL, IIM-Bangalore and is part of Stanford Seed Entrepreneurs Network. TST also won an Innovation Grant from the Kerala Startup Mission. 

According to Neenu, her startup’s USP is its multi-stakeholder approach, which enables it to bring together various stakeholders to solve social problems collaboratively. 

Since it was incorporated in 2020, The Social Town has engaged more than 6000 stakeholders and about 100 leaders and experts from across the globe to disseminate knowledge. It has also conducted six international talk series events attended by over 2200 participants. The venture has also designed and conducted various boot camps and learning programmes.

Being a non-profit, The Social Town finds its revenues from grants and paid activities. For marketing, it depends on social media, events, and partnerships. “We don’t have any product innovation to boast of. Instead, our focus was on process innovation,” Neenu said. 

Neenu was one among the 20 selected social entrepreneurs from South India for a fully funded leadership programme by Amani – a global institute developing individuals and organisations to lead social impact. 

(Startup Saturday is Onmanorama’s weekend series featuring promising startups from Kerala. Find the previous stories here)