Innovative Pathways to Social Transformation: Disruptive Maintenance Through Social Impact Start-ups in Kerala

Abstract

This article describes an emergent innovation ecosystem in the southern Indian state of Kerala. In contrast to a dominant national imagination of start-ups in India as spaces for the development of novel products with high economic potential, we suggest that start-ups in Kerala exhibit a tendency towards ‘social innovation’, that is, start-ups that are strongly oriented by the goal of addressing particular societal needs in addition to being successful on the market. Drawing on ethnographic interviews with start-up founders and other related stakeholders, as well as media and documentary analysis, we highlight in this essay key characteristics of social innovation in Kerala, including their reliance on tech-fix approaches. We also highlight the central role of the Kerala Start-up Mission (KSUM), a state-sponsored nodal agency, as a crucial enabler and shaper of the state’s innovation ecosystem. We further suggest that even as this innovation ecosystem is able to address important societal concerns, it nonetheless bypasses underlying social structures that produce them in the first place. Building on the work of sociologist Cornelius Schubert, we argue that it is analytically productive to interpret social innovation in Kerala as an instance of ‘disruptive maintenance’.

Keywords

Social innovation KSUM social impact start-up disruptive maintenance Kerala

Introduction

Innovation and entrepreneurialism has come to be prominently visible in contemporary Indian public culture. Recent scholarship highlights the rise of entrepreneurial start-up ecosystems in several metropolitan centres (Chamaria & Kakkar, 2018; Sinha, 2016) across the country. Current national initiatives, including the Start-up India Policy, New Education Policy, Science, Technology and Innovation Policy, The Technology Vision 2035, and Atma Nirbhar Bharat Abhiyan (Self-Reliant India Campaign) (2020), also stress the importance of promoting technology- based innovation and entrepreneurship in India. The idea of entrepreneurship now pervades all aspects of the political–economy, so much so, that the culturally salient ideal of the ‘state-scientist’ central to the postcolonial imagination of Indian nationhood (Krishna, 2021) has now been replaced by the ‘entrepreneurial scientist’ (Sekhsaria, 2019).

But, critics like Irani (2019) argue that by promoting techno-entrepreneurship as a state agenda, the government cunningly avoids its responsibility of providing basic assurance of employment and places an increased burden of becoming entrepreneurial on the poor. Pansera and Owen (2018) highlight the contested nature of how ‘inclusivity’ is understood by different actors in the innovation ecosystem. Still others suggest that the valorisation of entrepreneurialism and self-reliance has been accompanied by a lack of empathy towards the unemployed and criminalisation of the labour movement (Janardhan, 2016). In other words, a market-oriented national innovation model premised on assumptions of entrepreneurialism, and actualised most prominently through start-ups, is highly exclusionary in ways that undermine the very basic premises of citizenship.

Missing from both celebratory and critical accounts of this new model of political–economy is an engagement with the actual ways in which processes of innovation are operationalised in given social contexts, the different imaginaries that animate entrepreneurial aspirations and the cultural meanings that ideas such as innovation and entrepreneurship have come to assume. In other words, while scholars have focused on the large-scale impacts of entrepreneurialism, we know little about the everyday aspirations and practices that characterise entrepreneurial spaces. This results in significant obfuscations: for example, a dominant image of innovation as market-oriented, technology-based and profit-generating (Godin, 2017; Lagendijk, 2017) is often naturalised in discussions about entrepreneurialism, while other forms of innovation—including bottom-up ‘Jugaad’ innovations in Indian laboratories (Radjou et al., 2012; Sekhsaria, 2019), frugal innovation (Gaglio, 2017) and social innovation (Schubert, 2019)—that respond to very different demands, and are arguably far more pervasive in the context of countries like India, are often entirely ignored (Bathelt & Henn, 2017; Godin & Vinck, 2017). An uncritical dismissal of innovation also does not recognise how opposition to innovation can itself drive further innovation (Bauer, 2017), leading some scholars to advocate for greater attention to issues of governance and regulation of innovation (Irwin & Vergragt, 1989; Vinsel, 2017).

In this essay, we examine the dynamics of innovation in start-ups in the southern Indian state of Kerala. As a state that has historically performed well on human development indicators such as education and health but poorly on employment generation, Kerala is a relative newcomer in terms of its efforts to build a sustainable and inclusive ‘knowledge economy’. Supporting the development and growth of an entrepreneurial ecosystem in the state, primarily through its nodal agency, the Kerala Start-up Mission (KSUM), is a central component of such efforts. These efforts have been fruitful: even though KSUM is a relatively young organisation, it has been repeatedly recognised globally for the rapid strides that it has made in boosting entrepreneurialism in the state (Isaac, 2021). Start-ups in Kerala thus present an excellent vantage point from which to understand the dynamics and potentials of innovation and the factors that shape it.

Through our analysis, we seek to delineate the nature and drivers of innovation in Kerala start-ups. We demonstrate that start-ups in Kerala are oriented towards ‘social innovation’—innovation that directly aims to address important societal problems while also being successful in economic terms. Such an orientation results from both a historical legacy of welfarism in the state as well as a preference for social innovation that many entrepreneurs perceive KSUM to espouse. We further demonstrate that Kerala start-ups centre technological innovation as a means to address societal needs. In this, following sociologist Cornelius Schubert (2019), we argue that social innovation in Kerala start-ups can be understood as an instance of ‘disruptive maintenance’—whereby social order is preserved by providing tech-fixes to otherwise complex issues. We therefore suggest that while social innovation can indeed be a pathway in addressing key societal problems, it cannot be a substitute for other pathways to social change, such as civil-society-based activism. Overall, our analysis contributes to a growing body of critical scholarship on social innovation in India and other developing country contexts (Parthasarathy et al., 2021; Rao-Nicholson et al., 2017; Sonne, 2012).

Methodology

Data for this essay draws on a qualitative study that included participants from 80 start-ups and 20 other stakeholders in Kerala selected using purposive sampling during the fieldwork between January 2020 and October 2021. Our sample includes technocrats, entrepreneurs, start-up employees, academics and IT sector trade unionists. Participant observation and in-person ethnographic interviews were conducted before the COVID-19 period, while data collection since early 2020 has relied on media and documentary analysis and telephonic interviews. Thematic analysis, a qualitative data analysis method, was used to identify patterns in meaning across the data. The interviews were coded, and broader themes were identified for analysis and discussion. All interviews were conducted by the first author; data interpretation and writing have been jointly undertaken by both authors. All names of individuals and start-ups have been anonymised throughout the manuscript.

The text is structured as follows. The next section situates our analysis in emerging scholarship in the domain of Critical Innovation Studies. It also provides a brief overview of the historical evolution of Kerala’s political–economy. The ‘Social Impact Start-ups in Kerala’, ‘Kerala Start-up Mission (KSUM)’ and ‘Automated Scavenger Robot: Change through Technology’ sections present our empirical analysis. The ‘Social Impact Start-ups in Kerala’ section establishes that ‘social innovation’ has become a prominent entrepreneurial orientation in the state. The ‘Kerala Start-up Mission (KSUM)’ section demonstrates the important role that KSUM plays in shaping such an orientation. The ‘Automated Scavenger Robot: Change through Technology’ section then draws out the technology- centric nature of social innovation in Kerala. The ‘Discussion: Social Innovation as Disruptive Maintenance’ section summarises our analysis and argues that social innovation in Kerala can be understood as an instance of disruptive maintenance. We further suggest that this has important implications for how we understand the role of social innovation, not as a substitute but rather as an additional pathway for achieving social change.

Literature Review

Critical Innovation Studies

Recent scholarship on ‘Critical Innovation Studies’ prominently focuses on questions about the nature of innovation and the diversity of innovation models and practices. For instance, Godin and Vinck (2017) seek to understand various non-linear and open innovation models beyond the dominant focus on capital- and technology-intensive innovation systems. Others have also argued for an understanding of innovation that is not ‘linear, atomistic, a-social and technologically and economically reductive’ (Pratt, 2017, p. 240) but rather at the intersection of various social, cultural and technological factors, and carried out by multiple actors, both at the local and global levels (Ferrary & Granovetter, 2017). Still others point to the locational particularities of innovation (Brandão & Bagattolli (2017), arguing for better alignment between regional needs and policy approaches (Pfotenhauer & Juhl, 2017).

Highlighting an ideological and discursive reversal, whereby innovation has come to be resignified from a negatively connoting ‘act of subversion’ to signalling a virtuous ‘act of disruptive maintenance’, critical innovation studies scholarship underscores the dynamic nature of the concept and focuses on ideas and practices of innovation in particular contexts and what they achieve (Glerup & Horst, 2014; Sveiby, 2017). Echoing broader critiques of developmentalism, this scholarship argues that ideas and models emanating from the west and the north cannot be simply replicated in developing country contexts (Gabriela, 2012; Raman et al., 2015). It, therefore, calls for closer attention to the purposes and dynamics of innovation in specific contexts, remaining open to the possibility that more innovation may not necessarily be socially useful (Russell & Vinsel, 2018). It also draws attention to aspects of innovation that have been largely absent in scholarly accounts thus far, for example, maintenance and repair practices as crucial to innovation processes (Vinsel, 2017).

A crucial question from this body of scholarship that we build on in this article is whether innovation can achieve social change. Critical innovation studies scholars often take issue with the determinism inherent in much of the public discourse on innovation (Horst & Irwin, 2010) and are suspicious of claims that technology-led innovation necessarily leads to societal progress (Wyatt, 2008). They also point out that a lack of contextual awareness often means that technology-driven, market-oriented innovation endeavours often produce outcomes that deepen rather than ameliorate social inequalities and are ecologically destructive (Stilgoe et al., 2013).

Going further, these scholars also question the possibility of even ‘social innovation’—innovation explicitly identified as being in the service of society and not just market-oriented—to bring about long-lasting social change. While this idea of social change through innovation has proved attractive for pursuing developmental goals such as poverty eradication and social well-being (Moore, 1960), some scholars point out that a closer examination of underlying patterns reveals that innovations in these contexts often ‘operate as forms of disruptive maintenance that seek to compensate, repair or resolve the manifold “lags” found in contemporary societies’ (Schubert, 2019, p. 5). Schubert argues that social innovations can be viewed as updates or solutions to specific societal problems or maladjustments, similar to Karl Popper’s idea of piecemeal social engineering. Rather than viewing innovation as an act of radical ‘creative destruction’ (Schumpeter, 1943), Schubert (2019, p. 5) therefore suggests that ‘we are then confronted with neither replication nor revolution but with a form of reflexive social change that interrelates aspects of continuity and change’. For Schubert, social innovation figures as a form of ‘disruptive maintenance’ that modifies or disrupts certain aspects of society so that social order, by and large, can be preserved or maintained. Social innovation, in other words, comprises both destructive and disruptive moments, rendering suspect its potential to bring about deeply transformative changes. Following Schubert, and scholarship in critical innovation studies more generally, we are interested in investigating the potential of social innovation start-ups in Kerala to bring about lasting societal transformations.

The Kerala Model

Kerala, a federal state located on India’s south-western coast, exhibits distinctive cultural and political characteristics. It was one of India’s first regions subject to colonial rule, subjugated by the Portuguese in the 1500s and the site of the first anti-colonial resistance in the country (Panikkar, 2007). Kerala was the first Indian state to elect a communist government in 1957 and remains a stronghold of the Communist Party of India [Marxist]. Kerala also has a strong tradition of grassroots mobilisation: one prominent example of this is the Kerala Shastra Sahitya Parishad, or the KSSP, a ‘People’s Science Movement’ promoting scientific literacy at the grassroots in service of a more just and inclusive society (Krishnakumar, 1977). Such historical and political factors have resulted in a strong welfare orientation in Kerala (Elias, 2021).

Kerala’s welfare initiatives trace their roots back to early twentieth-century social reform movements aimed at eliminating socio-economic disparities and prejudice based on caste, religion and gender (Osella & Osella, 2015). The communist movement in Kerala also played a significant role in defining the state’s welfare measures, especially by implementing land reforms and policies promoting free education and healthcare (Jeffrey, 2002). Some argue that these welfare policies hindered entrepreneurship and innovation, while others believe they fostered a skilled workforce and social entrepreneurship through education, healthcare and basic needs (Sreekumar & Parayil, 2002). These welfare policies, popularly referred to as the ‘Kerala Model’ have resulted in the state performing exceptionally well in relation to various social development indices such as literacy rate, life expectancy, sex ratio and quality and reach of healthcare. Consequently, Kerala’s achievements have been recognised globally and the state is often championed as a model for other developing countries to emulate (Sarkar, 2021).

Kerala faced economic setbacks in the 1970s and 1980s due to the closure of factories, which had a significant impact on its development strategy. Scholars consider these events as a turning point in Kerala’s economic history, leading to the emergence of the Kerala model and a shift towards left ideology. Raj (1985), a pioneer economist in envisioning the Kerala model, emphasised the incompatibility of traditional industrialisation models with Kerala’s political-economy and advocated for human development, social welfare and small-scale companies. Franke (2002) viewed the shutdowns as an opportunity to adopt a new industrialisation strategy that prioritised education, healthcare, social welfare and small-scale industries, contributing to human development and social equity in the state. Disagreements nonetheless persist over the success of the Kerala model, both in economic terms (Bhagwati, 2007) as well as its ability to truly include marginalised social groups (Lukose, 2009).

Globalisation had a profound impact on Kerala’s economy and society in the late 1990s and early 2000s. Liberalisation during this period led to a business-friendly transformation, with the IT and BPO industries playing a vital role in economic growth. Tourism and construction, heavily reliant on globalisation and international trade, also contributed to Kerala’s development. To promote a business-friendly environment, the Kerala government established specialised economic zones and streamlined regulations, supporting the growth of entrepreneurialism and innovation (Harilal & Joseph, 2003).

The emergence of a tech-entrepreneurial ecosystem has positioned Kerala as a hub for start-up industries. Inspired by national innovation policies, Kerala formulated its own approach to cultivating a knowledge economy that would foster youth entrepreneurship as a means to Kerala’s continuing development (Elias, 2021; Thomas & K. I., 2020). To achieve its growth goals by 2030, Kerala has created a start-up ecosystem with KSUM as its nodal agency, accompanied by other social innovation plans like K-phone for affordable internet access, K-rail for high-speed train connectivity and Coconics for local laptop computer production. Kerala’s expansive Knowledge Park that serves as an incubator for start-ups is among the largest such facilities in the country.

Kerala thus instantiates a unique social innovation paradigm in a peripheral region within larger national innovation ecosystems. It provides an interesting example of the innovation potentials of non-industrial and not heavily urbanised regions (Eder, 2019). The state’s innovation model pursues its goals by promoting collaboration between government, industry, academia and civil society to create an enabling ecosystem for innovation. Initiatives like the Kerala Technology Innovation Zone exemplify the government’s partnership with industry and academia to drive innovation and entrepreneurship capable of addressing local challenges through customised solutions. Overall, then, Kerala’s historical and cultural distinctiveness evident in its welfare orientation is seen to shape its presently emerging innovation ecosystem as well.

Results

Social Impact Start-ups in Kerala

In our interviews with entrepreneurs in Kerala, two ideas have figured prominently as orienting reasons for establishing start-ups. First is the associated social prestige and second is a stated desire to respond to important societal challenges.

A common articulation across our interviews has been the altered social status of entrepreneurship from one being considered as risky and unstable to one that has become socially desirable. For example, Vijay Nair, a 33-year old male entrepreneur whose start-up focuses on virtual event management and digital marketing, explains:

Our earlier generation were more interested in getting a safe and secure job in their prime time. It was mainly about clerical work in a private firm or becoming a government employee. Business was looked upon as an inferior vocation. The risk of loss and tensions attached about profit making left them with an impression of instability.… Our generation, especially the millennials, who have felt the speed and splendor of technology, were really into how it is made and inspired by who made it. When I was done with my graduation, it did not take much effort to convince my family that I would run a “hi-tech” business. Even though they knew that I did not have much capital and doubted that I am running behind a trend or fashion of the youth, they accepted my choice to become a start-up owner. (Vijay Nair, Entrepreneur, 14 July 2021, Virtual Interview)

In the above quote, Vijay Nair alludes to both his perception of the aversion of a previous generation to entrepreneurialism as an apparently ‘inferior vocation’, attributed to its being a risky undertaking, and preference instead to the safety and security that employment in private firms or the public sector would ostensibly provide. This attitude, he explains, has been replaced by a much more positive appraisal of entrepreneurialism, both among the youth as well as the older generations on whom they often depend for the capital necessary to pursue their ambitions. Such a shift is resonant with broader cultural shifts, whereby the desirability of government jobs ‘short on money but long on institutional perks’ has been steadily replaced by jobs in the private sector (Mazzarella, 2003, p. 1). Pursuing entrepreneurial ventures, apparently characterised by even greater autonomy and dynamism, represent a further evolution of such a sentiment.

A second recurrent theme in our interviews was a stated desire by entrepreneurs to contribute positively to Kerala’s society. Consider Fresh Farms. This start-up, founded by Sudeep, is focused on creating a ‘transparent supply chain’ for agricultural produce. Sudeep considers his virtual agribusiness platform a ‘true social innovation’ that intends to solve farmers’ problems across the country. Fresh Farms provides a virtual online marketplace platform that helps farmers sell fruits, vegetables and spices directly to consumers. It also provides strategic and logistical help to farmers, for example, by helping them in planning their production schedules and by educating them about effective agricultural practices. Sudeep, the company’s CEO, claims that Fresh Farms has been successful in helping farmers to increase their profit by as much as 20%.

Our start-up’s unique cluster approach helps farmers and helps the customers get produce directly as what we call ‘farm-to-fork’ in less than fifteen hours without losing the freshness [of the produce]. It also cuts down the mediator presence, who, in reality, are exploiting the low bargaining capacity of farmers and their monopoly to force the customer to buy whatever they claim. (Sudeep, Entrepreneur, 3 September 2021, Virtual Interview)

He explains that Fresh Farms is based on the idea of the cluster approach, whose aim is to connect rural farmers with urban customers by forming small clusters of farmers in rural areas and establishing the necessary supply chains for their produce to reach urban centres efficiently. According to him, Fresh Farms’ ecommerce platform responds to a demand for fresh and organic produce among its urban customer base. It operationalises the concept of ‘Farm-to-Fork’, a ‘transparent’ supply chain built by the company which allows for closely tracking how produce flows from farmers to customers, thus also ensuring that intermediaries do not unduly profit in the process. Fresh Farms also takes responsibility for planning, logistics and delivery of produce to its customers.

His experience of being from an agricultural family in Kerala that experienced physical and financial hardship led to the establishment of Fresh Farms. One reason his family—like other farmers—struggled, he has come to eventually realise, was that they had not been able to sell their produce at reasonable prices. Connecting farmers directly to consumers via the medium of Fresh Farms bypasses intermediaries who would have been necessary at various stages otherwise, and allows farmers to receive higher financial returns and consumers to receive their produce at lower prices. He piloted Fresh Farms in 2018 in a small geographical area near Kakkanad Infopark, in Kochi, Kerala’s primary commercial centre, and was able to scale up his operations subsequently by securing finances through angel investors. Key to his success, Sudeep explains, was establishing mutual trust between rural farmers and urban customers, by enabling them to communicate and collaborate with each other via Fresh Farms’s ecommerce platform.

Other start-up founders that we have interviewed have also reported their commitments to particular social or ecological causes as driving forces behind their enterprises. Examples of these include start-ups focused on waste management (Star Robotics (see next section)), sustainable, eco-friendly transportation (Surya solar ferry developed by Ravalt Solar) and medical care (Med Cardiac Omnichannel Health Care which offers virtual consultation and personalised remote cardiac monitoring service for heart patients across India by connecting them to experts). Overall, 46 of the 80 start-ups that we reviewed had characteristics that could qualify them under the category of ‘social impact’ start-ups. Around 36 of them self-identified as focusing on what we are describing as ‘social innovation’. Many start-up entrepreneurs who did not identify their enterprises as being engaged in social innovation nonetheless emphasised the impossibility of separating social from non-social or economic innovation, underscoring that they too were undertaking innovative work that was ultimately societally beneficial. Worth noting here is the importance that the idea of ‘social innovation’ has come to assume in the Kerala start-up world, where even those who do not necessarily wholly identify themselves with the idea nonetheless articulate themselves in relation to it.

Kerala Start-up Mission (KSUM)

The Kerala Start-up Mission (KSUM) is the nodal agency designated by the government of Kerala to promote technology-based entrepreneurship, infrastructure development and an environment for high-technology-based businesses in the state. KSUM traces its origins to the establishment of the Technology Business Incubator (TBI) at the Technopark in Kerala’s capital city, Thiruvananthapuram, in 2006. Established as the first non-academic incubator in India, TBI continued to steadily expand, claiming significant achievements and national and international awards in a very short span of time. In 2015, TBI was redesignated as the KSUM.

In its new role as the state’s nodal agency, KSUM has continued to expand and receive significant recognition. Today, KSUM has fortified itself with sector- specific partnerships with outside companies and organisations, 40+ incubators and 300+ innovation centres across Kerala, as well as mentoring and shared spaces and 10 Lakh+ square feet of incubation space. KSUM officials argue that the interventions made by KSUM have brought about cultural change among the youth of Kerala which is evidenced in the sharp increase in the number of start-ups registered under KSUM. Among other markers of KSUM’s success are the generation of more than 10,000 jobs, as well as an invited investment of 2.71 billion Indian rupees as external funding and a turnover of 1.52 billion Indian rupees as revenue generated from the ecosystem. This is especially noteworthy for a state that has historically struggled with high unemployment and low industrialisation rates. In 2019, it became India’s largest start-up hub and was selected as the world’s best Public Business Incubator by the Swedish company, UBI Global. It was also recognised as the ‘top performer’ among state ecosystem enablers by the Government of India from 2019 to 2022, prompting other states to approach KSUM for modelling their own start-up ecosystems.

The primary aim of KSUM is to tap into the potential human resources in the state and to build an inclusive entrepreneurship ecosystem. They operationalise this by selecting, mentoring, monitoring, funding and setting up collaborations and market entry for start-ups. Among prominent initiatives undertaken by them are to provide seed funding for innovative ideas, grants to support research and development for scaling up highly innovative start-ups and establishing a ‘Women Entrepreneurship Start-up Programme’ to encourage greater participation of women in the entrepreneurial ecosystem. For start-ups that they select, KSUM provides subsidised office space and certain tax exemptions. They also provide learning and mentorship opportunities through the organisation of workshops and close supervision as well as facilitating opportunities for networking, funding and greater publicity. Such a proactive approach sets KSUM apart from other business incubators. Explains a KSUM bureaucrat,

We have a holistic approach bonded through sector-specific partnerships with outside companies and organizations. There are more than forty incubators and three hundred plus innovation centers in the state. Through mentoring fresh brains, we made interventions that influenced the youth’s understanding of Kerala’s start-up ecosystem and brought positive entrepreneurial cultural change among budding aspirants of entrepreneurship. This is visible in the number of start-ups registered under KSUM in the last couple of years. Compared to other states, Today, KSUM has one of the most significant numbers of start-ups registered under a government nodal agency, around three thousand start-ups. (Jayaraj, KSUM Bureaucrat, 9 October 2021, Virtual Interview)

Our interviews suggest that KSUM is a strong influencer in start-ups espousing explicitly societal orientations. In part, this can be attributed to the state’s long-standing welfarist orientation. Explains Shinas, a trade union activist from the Communist Party of India Marxist (CPIM), the ruling Left party in Kerala.

It is also important to note that the structures like KSUM or grass root innovation schemes built for social innovations nurturing in the state by the consecutive governments are inspired mainly by the socialist legacy of a state’s welfarism. This federal-state is still governed by an elected Marxist government that adheres to welfarist tendencies with its influences in policy-making, while the entire nation was on the contrary of embracing neoliberalism. (Shinas, Trade union activist, 28 February 2020, In-person Interview)

This legacy of welfarism continues to exert significant influence on the kinds of innovations that entrepreneurs pursue, and the orientation of the KSUM overall. For example, deeming it important that he align himself with the ‘social welfare [character] … of [the] state’s [start-up] ecosystem’ in order to benefit from the KSUM, Riyas, an entrepreneur from northern Kerala reported he decided to establish his present venture that produced care robots that provided contactless care for patients during the COVID-19 quarantine period instead of pursuing his initial idea of producing personalised Artificial Intelligence (AI-based) gaming and entertainment robots.

People are talking a lot about KSUM. I have checked all the start-ups under KSUM. Most of them bear the ‘social responsibility’ tag. I don’t want to take a chance. Working from Kannur [his residence] is a costly matter. Renting an office space is expensive. I heard that KSUM provides a workspace with minimal rent, technical shared spaces, initial capital called ‘Idea Grant’, training, and market exposure.

Initially, my leaning was more into the idea of producing AI-supported game development and virtual plus automated entertainment and personalized automated units of robots. It required investment and infrastructure to be a reality, which is quite impossible in a place like Kerala with a sheer number of angel investors who could take such risk. Further, I felt that the general trend of our state’s ecosystem is more of a social welfare perspective and is imbibed with such values, which can generate a new social economy. I felt that during COVID-19, it was more and more in the media about the contribution of Kerala’s start-ups. I felt I could make care robots when COVID-19 became an eye-opener. The necessity of such innovations and the support system that KSUM offered attracted me. (Riyas, Entrepreneur, 7 October 2020, Virtual interview)

Those who did not necessarily subscribe to social innovation as an orientation for start-ups in Kerala or even see that securing KSUM-support was contingent on such an orientation still recognised it as an important identity for Kerala’s start-up ecosystem. For example, Xavior, founder of 100 vectors, a start-up focused on providing products and services based on 3D graphic solutions in the geospatial domain, reports that he never felt that the KSUM was looking only for start-ups focused on social impact. He presents his case as an example of KSUM’s broader scope but notes that the idea of social impact distinguishes Kerala’s start-up ecosystem as a media strategy.

They will be more interested in start-ups with social impact technology which helps them to indulge in the untapped social economy. However, the truth be told, no ecosystem can exclusively survive upon the social economy and social entrepreneurship. There is too much noise because it is a new frontier, and Kerala needs its own identity like Hyderabad and Bangalore. So they wisely chose this to get media sensationalism and fulfill their PR needs. Otherwise, who will give attention to a start-up ecosystem when big players like Google, Facebook, etc., run ecosystems in Bangalore and Hyderabad. It might be a simple business strategy or a serious welfare commitment. Who knows? Nevertheless, it worked. (Xavior, Entrepreneur, 17 August 2020, Virtual interview)

KSUM officials deny any special emphasis on social innovation on their behalf, emphasising that they select ‘new and vibrant ideas’ regardless of their innovation orientation. While we cannot establish the veracity of this claim, we nonetheless can say that the perception of KSUM as a champion of social innovation seems to be widespread. The kinds of start-ups that have come to be associated with KSUM and celebrated in the media as well as various initiatives that the nodal agency has undertaken to build inclusive innovation ecosystems continue the historical welfarist orientation of Kerala, now emphasising entrepreneurialism as a way to realise it.

Automated Scavenger Robot: Change Through Technology

This section draws out another salient aspect of these start-ups: they aim to achieve societal change through technological means. Exemplifying this tendency is the by-now internationally recognised start-up, Star Robotics. The product that the start-up is most known for is their robotic scavenger, Automated Scavenger Robot. Automated scavenger robot comprises a spider-shaped robot capable of flexibility and shape-shifting to enter inside and clean clogged and congested drainage systems. It is designed to withstand harsh conditions and climates and be controlled remotely through a user interface. As a technological innovation, it aims to replace the inhuman system of manual scavenging that is still practiced in many parts of India.

Manual scavenging is a highly stigmatised occupation in India. It includes work such as manual sweeping of dry latrines, carrying of human excreta from dry toilets and its contemporary and far more risky version: sewerage and manhole cleaning. The practice has been traditionally relegated to people from certain specific castes and sub castes. Contemporary scholarship also suggests that neoliberal economic policies have further entrenched the caste-based nature of this work, because those hailing from castes associated with manual scavenging struggle to find work outside of those particular occupations (Dubey & Murphy, 2021; Shahid, 2015). Beyond social stigmatisation, manual scavenging also poses serious health-effects, including death as a result of suffocation caused by exposure to toxic gasses inside manholes. While manual scavenging has been legally banned since 1993, it continues to be practiced in several parts of the country, including Kerala.

An immediate context for the development of automated scavenger robot was Kerala chief minister Pinarayi Vijayan directing the state’s water authority and other concerned departments, including the KSUM, to find fast and reliable solutions to the problem of manual scavenging; Star Robotics was established by a group of mechanical engineering students and robotics enthusiasts from the city of Malappuram in northern Kerala, who initially shot to fame when they received positive attention in local media for the production of exoskeletons in the likeness of the fictional superhero IronMan’s suit. Subsequent discussions with KSUM officials and the state’s IT secretary resulted in Star Robotics launching into the development of an automated scavenger robot. Arshad, one of the co-founders, recalls:

The discussion about our ideas with the then IT secretary made an unexpected change of plans. We were asked whether we could pull off a project in which robots with high flexibility do the scavenging and cleaning of manholes. At that point, we never knew the in-depth issues related to manual scavenging. All we saw was a need for technical and automated assistance in a perilous job. (Arshad, Entrepreneur, 22 January 2022, Virtual Interview)

Star Robotics founders have since successfully developed the scavenger robot and as of our interview with them in 2022, were operating in six Indian states. Their efforts have also been well-recognised, receiving praise and awards from prominent industrialists, statesmen and international leaders alike. We will return to this discussion again in the following section; for now, we note the central role offered to technology-led innovation in the space of social impact start-ups. Fresh Farms discussed in the preceding section similarly championed its virtual agri-business platform as a solution to far more complex social issues that farmers in the region faced. Other prominent examples include start-ups that are developing artificial intelligence-based solutions for speeding up the legal process, healthcare robotics, technology-assisted hearing aid, COVID-patient tracing interface, etc. This tendency is widespread across the start-ups that we have analysed: at least 38 of the 46 social impact start-ups that we have examined foreground a technology-centred solution to achieving their societal ambitions.

Discussion: Social Innovation as Disruptive Maintenance

Our commitment is not just to make robots to eliminate manual scavenging. We firmly believe that we will be able to teach and make operators out of the workers, who will be otherwise left without any work. That’s why we spent too much time and investment to make the robot’s user interface simple and easy to use. It will help them to have a better life and safer workspace. We hope it will also break the influence of the caste system in the process. (Nithin, Entrepreneur, 17 February 2022, Virtual Interview)

We have suggested that a large number of start-ups in Kerala identify with an orientation of ‘social innovation’, that is, towards developing innovative products and processes that seek to directly address certain societal problems in addition to being successful on the market. In other words, these start-ups are not exclusively oriented by profit motivations, the dominant image that is otherwise ascribed to this sector. This can be attributed to two factors. One is the historical welfarist orientation of the state of Kerala, whereby addressing societal needs becomes a culturally legitimate pursuit. Here, the distinctiveness of Kerala in the global development discourse can be seen to be a more widely shared cultural logic which is shared by entrepreneurs in the state as well. Moreover, as one way of capitalising on such distinctiveness, the state of Kerala is itself seen to proactively anchor and steer the innovation ecosystem. Through various programmes and initiatives, infrastructure provisioning and consistent media presence, the state’s nodal innovation agency, KSUM, is seen—or at least perceived—to be moulding start-ups in Kerala into a ‘social innovation’ model. One significant finding from this research, then, is that innovation systems can be shaped towards responding to societal needs. State agencies might have an important role to play here; rather than simply facilitating the flow of capital, the state can become an enabler of innovation in ways that can produce socially desirable outcomes.

We further suggest a tendency of start-ups to pursue innovations that centre technology. The case of Star Robotics is the most obvious example, whereby a manhole-cleaning robot is positioned as a solution to a complex social issue of manual scavenging. But in other instances as well, such as that of Fresh Farms, technological solutions come to occupy a prominent place in how responses to societal problems are imagined.

In the course of developing such solutions, entrepreneurs may come to recognise the socially complex terrain on which their proposed solutions have to function, and as such may develop further innovations in response. This is evident in the case of Start Robotics, whose founders, as described in the opening quote, have come to appreciate that developing manhole-cleaning robots is not a sufficient solution because those engaged in the occupation struggle to find other means of livelihood. Over time, the automated scavenger robot team has come to appreciate the social complexities that characterise manual scavenging. They admit that change is unlikely to come overnight, and realise that given the semi-forced nature of this work, it is also unlikely that those displaced from this menial work will be able to find alternative sources of income readily. Thus, they have come to envision an expanded focus for the automated scavenger robot, not just eliminating the practice of manual scavenging, but also offering potential employment opportunities for those displaced out of that occupation. The automated scavenger robot team has thus come to recast manual scavengers as operators of the cleaning robots and sought to design the interfaces for operating the robots accordingly.

The underlying system of caste-based discrimination that sustains the practice of manual scavenging, thus, remains mostly intact. Any change to it may unfold over the longer term and only indirectly resulting from the deployment of the scavenger robot. Thus, while social innovation processes address some aspects of the social order that are deemed to be problematic, they seem to pursue narrowly defined technical solutions that do not directly engage underlying structures that produce disorder in the first place. In other words, social innovation does not appear so much as a process of fundamental societal transformation, but more akin to what Schubert (2019) has called ‘disruptive maintenance’.

It is tricky to apply a concept such as disruptive maintenance, because of the need to presuppose the social catastrophe that may happen in its absence. In other words, any disruptive moment needs an assumption that the social issue at hand might spiral out disproportionately and can become a serious threat to the social order. The theory at hand can only assume that disruptive maintenance is happening just because technological intervention resolved the issue without affecting much of the social order. This is one of the major limitations of applying disruptive maintenance as a concept.

Nonetheless, the concept is analytically productive in terms of understanding the nature of social innovation as adaptive and conservative in its orientation. In our analysis, this manifests at two levels at least: at the macro-level and at the level of individual start-ups. The creation of a unique knowledge economy orchestrated through start-up culture in Kerala by KSUM points to the idea of disruptive dialectical maintenance at a macro-level, similar to the social change that Ogburn (1922) argues would lead to social harmony. At the macro-level, the control over a capital-oriented economic sphere, that is, the knowledge economy, can be considered an act of disruptive maintenance by the state: through this direct control, the state can steer the knowledge economy towards a welfare orientation. At the same time, micro-level disruptive maintenance happens through individual start-ups that deal explicitly with questions of social change. Their individual innovations are intended to have a larger effect on the social matrix of their host societies. These start-ups are seen to apply principles of social innovation in identifying particular social issues while also generating capital. Hence, the specific innovations through their services and products embody the idea of disruptive maintenance. Thus, through our analysis of Kerala’s start-up ecosystem, we can further extend Schubert’s conception of disruptive maintenance by drawing attention to its multi-level nature.

To return to our initial question then, we can say that social innovation can be deployed in the service of social change. However, its mechanisms of pursuing social transformation are conservative in nature and unlikely to directly target deeply entrenched social structures and inequities. As such then, we do not believe that social innovation can be a substitute for other ways of pursuing social change—such as those typically pursued in the domain of civil society—but is better understood as one among many possible pathways.

Footnotes

Acknowledgements

Research for this essay has been supported through a doctoral research fellowship awarded by the Indian Institute of Technology Hyderabad and funded by the Ministry of Education, Government of India.

Authors’ Contribution

MR: Conceptualisation, methodology, investigation, formal analysis, writing—original draft, Writing—reviewing and editing.

AK: Conceptualisation, methodology, formal analysis, writing—reviewing and editing, supervision.

Data Availability

Data not available/The data that have been used are confidential.

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The authors declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship and/or publication of this article.

Funding

Research for this essay has been supported through a doctoral research fellowship awarded by the Indian Institute of Technology Hyderabad and funded by the Ministry of Education, Government of India.

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