Abstract:
Rural Tourism is gaining prominence now a day in most of the countries, including India, as means of alleviating poverty and preservation of environment, technically named as Pro-Poor Tourism. This paper tries to find out whether by using the transformational capabilities of Venture Capital (VC) in the form of Social Venture Capital (SVC) financing to the needs of entrepreneurs for developing rural tourism in a geographical region which generates more purchasing power at the bottom of the pyramid. Proper balanced mixture of SVC and rural tourism leads to sustainable development of the rural community. Thus development of rural tourism can be considered as an innovative way of providing livelihood to underdeveloped rural areas whereby poverty eradication becomes a reality in the near future. The paper concludes that developing rural tourism by capitalizing on the novel concept of SVC financing (because both have the inherent multiplier effect on the economy) as the best transformational strategy for the development of profitable and sustainable tourism industry in the region.
