Social Impact

US-raised entrepreneur Priya Sultan opens paths to social innovation in Japan

If the future of Earth as we know it is to be secured, not just for ourselves but for generations to come, the way we do business has to change.

That was the conclusion of scientists in a recently released report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), a body under the mandate of the United Nations. In August, an IPCC working group found that human activity is changing the climate of the planet in unprecedented ways, and that a change in course is necessary.

Serial entrepreneur Priya Sultan agrees with the report’s conclusions, adding that the education system—in addition to business practices—must be upgraded.

For Sultan, a new focus has to be placed on education and business models driven by social outcomes if the challenges identified by organizations like the IPCC are to be tackled. That’s the reason she established Social Impact Lab Japan, a company that incubates, accelerates, and invests in businesses that have societal solutions at their core.

Since its founding in 2019 in Tokyo, Social Impact Lab Japan has supported dozens of aspiring entrepreneurs, including high school and university students, as well as professionals. Working with partners in industry and education, the company isn’t just trialing new ideas; it is also inspiring a generation of founders in Japan—and, in the future, overseas.

It is Sultan’s hope that, by supporting social entrepreneurship, new, socially minded leaders will emerge to define the shape of future business opportunities and solutions.

Social Business

The chief executive officer and founder of Social Impact Lab Japan, Sultan speaks in rapid sentences, a sense of urgency and determination rising in her voice.

“The way that we are living in the world is not scalable or sustainable, it’s not good,” she told The ACCJ Journal. “There are a billion people going hungry every year, and it’s worse now because of the coronavirus pandemic. Why is that?”

But it’s not just solving the challenge of global hunger that motivates Sultan. Lack of access to education is another of her bugbears.

“Why don’t people have access to basic education, things that we took for granted when we were growing up?”

There are three ways to begin tackling both issues, all of which are priorities at her lab, she explained:

• Education
• Creating allies
• Raising awareness about social impact as a solution

For Sultan, “it’s about people hearing that things need to change. And so, you have to inspire more people to effect that change, because you can’t do it alone.”

What’s more, she added, “it’s realizing that social entrepreneurship is crucial to how we do business in the future.”

Young people are amenable to socially driven change and businesses. “They want to spend their money on companies that are doing things the right way,” Sultan said. “And if more companies start to do things that way, we’re going to be able to make the changes that are absolutely needed.”

Inspiring Founders

The motivation behind Social Impact Lab Japan goes back to 2017, when a conversation between Sultan and a female student at Showa Women’s University sparked an idea.

“I told them my story; told them about the Hult Prize. At the end, I remember some students coming up to me to say thanks,” she said.

At the time, Sultan was speaking at Japanese universities in her capacity as the global projects director with the Hult Prize, a global competition that incentivizes students to pitch socially focused business ideas.

“So, this girl comes up to me—I think she was 20 or 21 years old. And she burst into tears. I asked, ‘Are you okay?’ Clearly there was something there.” As Sultan recalls, the student said, “This is the first time in my life that someone told me that I could pursue my own dreams.”

For Sultan, the student’s comment was eye-opening. On reflection, she remembers thinking, “How can you be 21 years old and have this sense of hopelessness?”

Speaking to other students during her tour of Japan, she discovered that this sense of hopelessness ran deep among students, especially regarding their post-university career.

“They would say, ‘I have all these ideas, but when my third year comes, I have to start job hunting so that I’m secure in my final year, and that’s it.’”

In other words, students in Japan—quite apart from professionals already in the workforce—often sideline their ideas about entrepreneurship for the sake of a risk-free career in a large company. Social Impact Lab Japan was established to provide such people with the resources necessary to take their burning ambitions from idea to product or service and beyond.

Impact Lab

Working with socially minded startups and founders, Social Impact Lab Japan provides a platform where ideas are pitched, tested, and prototyped—and incubated or accelerated.

Entrepreneurs there can tap into a wide network of mentors from the private, public, and non-profit sectors to learn the ins and outs of developing and launching a business.

The company does “a lot of sessions with entrepreneurs to help them get the skills they need, and for them to hear different voices, meet different people, and leverage our network, which can give them more resources if they need it,” Sultan said.

Sessions include seminars and workshops on subjects such as purpose-driven leadership, pitching for contests, and mentoring.

“We’re focused on the education side, because I think there is an education and cultural change that needs to happen,” she explained. “People need to get a better understanding of what social entrepreneurship is really about.”

And the result? “You can see them light up when they feel that they can make a change in society, and I notice that particularly with young people, especially high school students,” Sultan said.

Because of social-distancing rules during the coronavirus pandemic, these sessions are conducted via video conference instead of in person.

But it’s not just founders and aspiring entrepreneurs who are the focus of activities at the lab. Companies, too, are important players in their social impact ecosystem.

“In talking to, and doing sessions with, corporates, I noticed that there is a big misunderstanding about the concept of social entrepreneurship,” Sultan said. “I think [they believe that what we do is] charity, but it’s not charity. And the reason it’s not charity is that charity doesn’t work, because it’s a donor-based model, which makes it donor-dependent. If charity worked, we wouldn’t see the problems that we are seeing, such as so many people going hungry, or without water or electricity.”

Time to Change

Born in India and raised in the United Sates, Sultan’s own journey into entrepreneurship could not have been predicted from the choices she made early in her career. Like so many in her peer group, her priority on graduating college was to join the workforce, and to do so in a sector that conformed to societal expectations for job security. That’s why she joined multinational financial services provider Wells Fargo & Company in New York, where she worked for a couple of years as a credit manager.

“It’s banking in New York, so working 90 hours a week [was] normal,” she recalls.

But it was not long after joining the bank that she hit a crossroad: continue or change path. In the end, it was her father’s worry for her well-being that helped her decide.

“My dad came up to me and said, ‘Priya, it’s six in the morning. You’re stressed all the time. And you don’t seem happy with your job, so think about changing it.’”

That very same day, Sultan walked into her workplace and tendered her resignation.

“I walk out of there with no job. I’m 25 years old, and I don’t know what I’m doing with my life,” she remembers.

And yet, only two months later, she set off on a new course, boarding a plane to New Delhi, India’s capital. That was 2009.

Meaningful Mentors

Starting her life in New Delhi, Sultan found refuge in a small garage apartment. Her goal? To begin work at World Health Partners, a sustainable healthcare services provider in the city.

In hindsight, her experiences at the organization played an important role in setting her on her current trajectory. In particular, she found a mentor there who inspired her to pursue a career in the social impact sector.

“Gopi Gopalakrishnan, the director of World Health Partners, took me under his wing and said, ‘I’ll teach you everything I know.’ What I learned was that you can do business and make socially positive changes. And that was something that was not often spoken about more than 10 years ago,” she explained. “He really opened my eyes to how you can make profitable companies and create the positive change that society desperately needs.”

After nine months at World Health Partners—but desiring to add new skills to her knowledge belt—Sultan enrolled at the Hult International Business School in London.

During that period, she herself became a student competitor in the Hult Prize (then the Hult Global Case Challenge). Her team made it to the regional finals.

When she graduated with a masters in international relations, another mentor connected her to a job opportunity at the Hult Prize, which was at the time—more than a decade ago—taking on its very first hires.

Full Circle

As the global projects director at the Hult Prize, Sultan is able to leverage the platform’s international network to support her work at Social Impact Lab Japan.

“We exist in over 121 countries; we have over 3,000 universities that participate every year—and that’s just in the on-campus program,” she noted, speaking about the prize.

In Japan alone, student teams from 50 to 100 universities take part in the Hult Prize’s annual pitch contest. The challenge for students in 2022 is “to create 2,000 jobs by 2024 by thinking globally and acting locally.”

Pitches are made at the campus level, with successful ideas going through regional finals and an accelerator program in the United Kingdom. The top prize of $1 million in startup funding is awarded to one team at a ceremony at the United Nations in New York.

Promoting participation in the competition among universities in Europe and Asia was the main thing that drew Sultan to Japan in the first place.

“I first came to Japan because we saw an opportunity to grow the Hult Prize here. Ahmad Ashkar, the founder of the Hult Prize, said, ‘Priya, why don’t you go and check out the scene.’ This was at the end of 2016,” she recalls.

A year later, Sultan had the encounter with the student at Showa Women’s University, a despairing moment that opened new paths of hope and entrepreneurship. And she has been helping young Japanese talents pursue their dreams ever since.

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