Part 1 of 14 in How Social Impact Startups Build on Success: A Positive Deviance Guide for Indian FoundersPart 2 →
This book introduces Positive Deviance as a practical approach for Indian social impact startups. It helps founders find and spread solutions already working within the communities they serve, using Indian examples and artificial intelligence.
- Indian communities often contain people achieving better results under the same constraints.
- Outside-designed solutions may fade when projects, funding or enthusiasm end.
- Positive Deviance studies unlikely innovators and amplifies practices already working inside affected communities.
- The book adapts Positive Deviance for Indian founders with Indian case studies, stories and artificial intelligence.
- Founders are encouraged to find, honour and help communities own effective local solutions.
Dear Indian social impact founder,
India does not lack problems. We lack the habit of systematically looking for the solutions that already exist inside the communities we claim to serve.
I have spent more than three decades as a fertility specialist in Mumbai and more than a decade investing in and mentoring Indian startups through Malpani Ventures. In both worlds I have watched the same cycle repeat. Well-intentioned people design better solutions from the outside, train communities to adopt them, and then watch the gains fade once the project, the funding or the enthusiasm ends. Meanwhile, a few individuals or organisations facing the same constraints quietly achieve far better results. Almost no one studies them carefully enough to understand what they are doing differently, and almost no one creates the conditions for the wider community to own and practise those differences.
This book is my attempt to bring the Positive Deviance approach of Jerry and Monique Sternin and Richard Pascale into the everyday toolkit of Indian social impact startups. The original book, The Power of Positive Deviance (Harvard Business Press, 2010), showed how unlikely innovators solve intractable problems by discovering and amplifying what already works inside affected communities. I have adapted that core idea for an Indian audience, filled it with Indian case studies and Indian stories, and shown how artificial intelligence can make the discovery and amplification of positive deviance faster, cheaper and more scalable than ever before.
I am publishing this as a series of chapters on www.indianangel.in so that founders can read, discuss, argue with and apply one chapter at a time. Use it. Test it in your communities. Improve it. The solutions you need are already somewhere among the people you work with. Your job is to find them, honour them, and help others own them.
Dr. Aniruddha Malpani, MD
Mumbai, October 2026
Frequently asked questions
What is Positive Deviance?
Positive Deviance is an approach that discovers and amplifies solutions already working inside communities facing difficult problems.
Why do social impact projects often lose their gains?
The gains may fade when the project, funding or enthusiasm ends, especially when solutions are designed and introduced from outside communities.
How can Indian social impact startups use Positive Deviance?
They can study individuals or organisations achieving better results under the same constraints, then help the wider community practise and own those differences.
How can artificial intelligence support Positive Deviance?
The book shows how artificial intelligence can make discovering and amplifying positive deviance faster, cheaper and more scalable.