Indian Entrepreneurial Journalism: Building a typology of how founders’ social identity shapes innovation and sustainability

This qualitative study based on interviews at 10 digital news startups in India fills multiple gaps in entrepreneurial journalism literature by exploring how social identities of founders shape innovation and financing at their ventures. In line with extant managerial literature, this study showed founders can be classified according to a typology: Darwinian, Communitarian, Missionary, and Guardian, the last being a new identity specific to entrepreneurial journalists, and perhaps, India. Findings suggest social identity is tied to understandings of innovation, financing, experimentation, audience interactions, and mission. Results also indicate founders’ concepts of entrepreneur and journalist are not necessarily related to social identity.