Stories on the ground in India demonstrate how social entrepreneurs are stepping up to reach excluded and rural communities during India’s second wave. Local trust in social entrepreneurs makes them uniquely placed to fill service gaps, especially in the last mile. Their work is needed beyond the immediate crisis to build resilience and drive transformative change towards an inclusive economy. In rural Maharashtra, India – seven hours from Mumbai – the queues for COVID-19 testing and hospital beds are getting longer every day. For social entrepreneurs like Chetna Sinha, founder-chairperson of Mann Deshi Bank and the Mann Deshi Foundation, the situation is beyond heartbreaking. “We don’t know when the vaccines will come ... We have a local saying that the sky has burst – we are trying to fix it with small pieces – it’s a bad situation.”