Social enterprises must create genuine social impact while remaining financially viable, and the two goals do not always move together. This tension is especially pronounced for small social enterprises in India and South Asia, where limited access to capital sharpens the trade-offs between impact, profitability, sustainability, and growth. This study examines how small social enterprises manage these competing demands without losing either their social or economic value. A Systematic Literature Review (SLR) was conducted across Scopus, Web of Science Core Collection, ABI/INFORM (ProQuest), Business Source Complete (EBSCOhost), and Google Scholar. After applying the inclusion and exclusion criteria, 47 peer-reviewed sources published between 2009 and 2026 were retained for analysis: approximately 17 focused directly on India or South Asia, and 30 provided relevant international evidence. Three themes emerged consistently across the reviewed literature: financial profitability, organisational sustainability, and business growth. Social value creation and financial viability can coexist, but tension surfaces when resources spent on impact reduce what an enterprise can retain, reinvest, or use to scale. Enterprises that combine hybrid business models, multiple revenue streams, close stakeholder engagement, and mission-tied growth strategies appear better placed to manage this balance. However, the review finds this as a pattern across the literature rather than a fixed formula. The review's central finding is that small social enterprises are not simply choosing between impact and profit. They are making ongoing decisions about how to divide scarce resources between creating impact now and preserving the capacity to create impact later. Drawing on evidence from named India- and South Asia-focused studies alongside the wider international literature, this review synthesises what is currently known about how small social enterprises in this region sustain themselves financially while pursuing community impact. It identifies where the mechanisms behind that balance remain under-examined.