The present study aims at identifying the social entrepreneurial intention among undergraduate students in Indian context by using the theory of planned behaviour as the research framework. A 50-item questionnaire was responded by 230 students who are enrolled in the universities in India. The data were collected by employing a systematic random sampling method. In total, 72% (N = 166) of the respondents were male and 31% (N = 64) were female and the average age of the respondents was 20 years. The questions measured emotional intelligence, self-efficacy, attitude towards becoming a social entrepreneur and social entrepreneurial intentions. The result shows that the proposed model in the present study explains 42% of the variance, explaining the social entrepreneurship intention. Both Emotional intelligence and self-efficacy showed the positive significant relationship with both attitude and social entrepreneurial intentions. © 2017 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.