Hasiru Dala Innovations Receives SJIM Eminent Social Entrepreneur of the Year 2025 Award
09 March 2025
St. Joseph’s Institute of Management (SJIM) proudly conferred the SJIM Eminent Social Entrepreneur of the Year 2025 Award to Hasiru Dala Innovations for its pioneering work in Inclusive Circularity and sustainable waste management. The award recognizes organizations that drive systemic change through innovative and sustainable solutions.

By integrating waste pickers into the circular economy, Hasiru Dala Innovations has reduced landfill waste through initiatives such as biogas conversion, organic fertilizer production, and Fair Trade-certified waste management. Their efforts address India’s growing waste crisis while providing livelihood security to thousands.

SJIM is proud to recognize changemakers driving social and environmental transformation, reinforcing its commitment to a sustainable future.

SJIM Eminent Social Entrepreneur of the Year Award
St. Joseph’s Institute of Management (SJIM) is Karnataka’s first business school, established in 1968. It is located in the heart of Bengaluru’s business district, off MG Road. For over five decades, the institute has been instrumental in fostering business education, research and industry interfaces that focus on ethics and social responsibility. Our flagship PGDM program completed 25 years in 2021.

Students and staff at the institute espouse SJIM’s values of integrity, honesty, inclusiveness and service to society, within the larger framework of the Jesuit spirit of Magis.

It is fitting therefore that in the 25th year of our flagship PGDM program, we instituted the SJIM Eminent Social Entrepreneur (ESE) of the Year Award. Each year, we recognize an individual or the leader of a group/organization that has applied a sound business model to address, with impact, a social or environmental injustice. Awardees receive a citation and cash prize.

Criteria and Eligibility

Qualifying nominees must be based in India and will be evaluated against the following criteria:

• The individual (or the leader of a group/organization) is a visionary social leader- entrepreneur, whose values are embedded in the operations and culture of the business model.

• The individual (or their group/organization) addresses a current social or environmental injustice in novel, even disruptive, ways.

• The individual (or their group/organization) has a financially sound business model with a viable plan to achieve long term growth and sustainability. Ideally, this model should have achieved, or be in the process of achieving, scalability. Funding sources should be diverse, and aligned with values.

• The individual (or their group/organization) is the key actor, but is embedded in the ecosystem, collaborating and partnering with other local, regional or national players.

• The individual (or their group/organization) must display evidence of having measured and evaluated its and impact, and also display evidence of learning.

• The nominee may be a part of private non-profits, or for-profits, or even hybrid structures. We invite nominations irrespective of linguistic, religious or regional affiliations. We will evaluate all nominations unbiasedly, and so accept nominations from large, small, national, local, older and younger individuals/groups/organizations without discrimination.

• Areas of operation of nominees could include (but are not restricted to) education and training, economic opportunity, health, human rights, livelihood and sustainable markets.

Nominations
You may nominate yourself, another individual, the head of your group/organization, or a member of your group/organization. All entries will be evaluated through a double blinded jury, and the winning entry will be announced on this page. The decision of the jury is final and binding.