Around three percent of Pune city’s land possesses half the slum population. This glaring inequality is dominant at a socio-spatial level. The failure of government-incentivized market solutions to resolve the affordable housing crisis (like the Slum Rehabilitation Scheme and Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojna) is evident across Pune, except in a handful of projects. This research plans to investigate the lesser known examples in Pune, where communities have mobilized themselves to become housing providers, as a response to these market failures. A social innovation in itself, the process of Self Redevelopment involves communities coming together, registering themselves as a cooperative housing society, acquiring land and being at the forefront. Through a case by case analysis of scattered attempts of self-redevelopment in Pune, and a comparative analysis, we argue the presence and role of multiple stakeholders—like the State, private players, NGOs, activists, academicians, and certainly, the users—without whom this community-led execution shall be impossible. We hypothesize that, slum development/ redevelopment/ up gradation is successful only in places where users have been an integral part of the decision-making process.