As India celebrates the rise of more than 100 startup unicorns, a new national conversation is emerging in the social sector. Can the country build 100 non-profit unicorns by 2030—organisations that impact over a million lives each?
Addressing this question, Change Engine has announced the launch of the Mission Billion Summit, scheduled to take place on January 29, 2026, at the India International Centre. Positioned as India’s first large-scale, founder-first platform for the social sector, the summit will convene more than 200 non-profit founders, philanthropists, and policymakers focused on enabling national-scale impact.
The Mission Billion Summit is anchored in the idea of building “non-profit unicorns”—mission-driven organisations capable of reaching over one million beneficiaries across domains such as welfare, education, and governance. The initiative comes at a time when India’s social sector is witnessing the rise of ambitious founders tackling complex challenges at scale, yet continues to face systemic barriers to growth.
Speaking on the vision behind the summit, Varun Aggarwal, Co-founder, Change Engine, said, “We need a movement towards non-profit unicorns in India, much like the startup movement a decade ago. Mission Billion Summit will bring together all stakeholders to solve our most pressing developmental challenges. With founders at the centre, we are creating an ecosystem where you can move beyond pilots and master the playbook to reach national-level impact using evidence-driven interventions with the right collaborators.”
Echoing this focus on scale and execution, Shubham Bansal, Co-founder, Change Engine, added, “The Mission Billion summit serves as a startup school for non-profits, providing the actionable toolkits—from how to partner with government to building evidence to raising capital. Our goal is to empower founders to build for the entire nation, not just a single zip code.”
The one-day summit will be structured across two parallel tracks, featuring over 25 speakers, 12+ sessions, and three workshop-style masterclasses designed to address the core challenges of scaling non-profits.
The first track, Building Non-Profit Unicorns, adopts a startup-school approach, with sessions focused on evidence-building beyond randomised control trials, fundraising and innovation capital, partnerships with government, and strategies for community-led scale.
The second track, Tackling Wicked Problems, will host focused conversations on what works—and what does not—across key areas such as welfare and social protection, education, and governance. These sessions will bring together practitioners and thinkers working at the cutting edge of large-scale social change.
A major highlight of the Mission Billion Summit will be the release of Change Engine’s first ‘Ease of Doing Non-profits’ report. Based on a first-of-its-kind survey of social entrepreneurs, the report identifies structural barriers that prevent high-potential non-profits from reaching unicorn scale. Preliminary findings point to a significant gap in access to ‘innovation capital’—flexible, high-risk funding essential for experimentation and scale in the social sector.
The summit will see participation from prominent philanthropists, including Sanjeev Bikhchandani, Aakanksha Gulati, Murugan Vasudevan, Chetan, and Riti Mohapatra, among others.
It will also feature senior leaders from organisations that have demonstrated success in scaling impact, including Vidhi Centre for Legal Policy, Central Square Foundation, Avanti Fellows, Rocket Learning, Agami, CORO, Sneha, and XKDR.
Through Mission Billion Summit, Change Engine aims to deepen its commitment to building a robust ecosystem for mission-driven founders—one that provides the capital, knowledge, and partnerships needed to transform promising pilots into national solutions.
For more information and registration details, interested participants can visit the Change Engine website.
