Giving Compass' Take:

• Srikumar Misra explains the six dimensions of a comprehensive framework that can build purposeful startups. 

• Why are these frameworks essential for potential investors to understand?

• Here are four startups using technology to improve women's lives. 

Many startups could make long term change happen to address the two large problems that the world faces – inequality and climate change if entrepreneurs consciously build purposeful startups. So, what is being purposeful and why is building purposeful startups especially important? Purposeful businesses don’t get built by putting a layer of corporate social responsibility on the supply chain as an afterthought, neither by just launching some do good products, nor by cause-driven marketing. Purposefulness is certainly not something that can just be built into a businesses’s annual or medium-term plans or be injected suddenly. That’s why its important to build purposeful startups—because if the purposefulness is not there in its inception, its very difficult to infuse it somewhere down the road. It’s, of course, possible but that would involve a massive pivot for a company.

I founded Milk Mantra, a new age dairy foods startup to solve trust deficit between consumers and food in India arising out of opaque supply chains and adulterated food. And I believed that we could solve this problem by not just building a premium and innovative food brand and a scalable business, but also by creating an ethical sourcing network that would impact the lives of poor farmers as we grew.

This deep impact was possible even whilst being a fully commercial startup and targeting industry-leading margins and with alpha return-seeking VC investors. To touch multiple aspects together early in our existence as a company we needed to have a strong sense of organizational purpose. This is how I think about a framework for a purposeful startup or business. If there are six dimensions – 1) Scale, 2) Commercial Business Model, 3) Financial Robustness, 4) Governance or Ethics, 5) Systems Thinking, and 6) Impact at Community Level.

Read the full article about purposeful startups by Srikumar Misra at The Aspen Institute.