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Bank-led individual enterprise loans for SHG women: Promise, practice, and field realities

Posted on by Srijan Paul

Could the next wave of women-led economic growth be emerging from India’s self-help groups?

For decades, self-help groups (SHGs) have been at the heart of India’s financial inclusion story, helping millions of women build savings, access credit, and strengthen their economic resilience. Through years of disciplined savings, timely repayments, and collective support, SHG women have established a proven track record as reliable borrowers. Yet, as their enterprises grow and ambitions expand, many face a familiar challenge: accessing the larger amounts of capital needed to scale their businesses.

Today, a new generation of enterprise loan products is helping address that gap. Across India, public sector banks are moving beyond traditional group-based lending and introducing individual enterprise loans for women SHG members. These products mark an important shift in the SHG finance journey. By offering higher-ticket loans above INR 75,000 (USD 786), they enable women entrepreneurs to invest in business expansion, acquire productive assets, and meet larger working capital requirements.

The Deendayal Antyodaya Yojana–National Rural Livelihoods Mission (DAY-NRLM) and the State Bank of India (SBI) helped drive this progressive shift to support women’s economic advancement. In September 2023, SBI launched Svayam Siddha, an individual enterprise loan product for women in SHGs. The bank designed the product as a step towards the Government of India’s Lakhpati Didi scheme. The scheme seeks to enable SHG women to achieve an annual household income of at least INR 100,000 (USD 1044). Since then, other public sector banks (PSBs) and regional rural banks (RRBs) have launched similar products. These include Star Sakhi, Union Nari Shakti, IND MSME Sakhi, and Digi Shrestha.

Moving from group loans to individual enterprise loans

Traditional SHG-bank linkage loans are extended to SHGs, which then lend internally to their members. Enterprise loans represent a further stage in this journey. While SHG credit linkage enables women to access formal finance and build a credit history, individual enterprise loans help them expand businesses and make larger investments.

Under these products, the individual SHG member becomes the borrower. However, their SHG journey remains relevant to the lending decision as it provides banks with useful information on membership history, savings discipline, previous credit linkage, and repayment performance.

These indicators can help reduce information asymmetry between banks and women entrepreneurs, particularly where conventional financial records remain limited. The shift from group lending to individual enterprise lending does not replace the SHG model. Instead, it builds the institutional relationships, financial discipline, and credit history that SHG participation develops.

How are these products working in practice?

Individual enterprise loan products can serve as an important bridge between financial inclusion and enterprise growth. Through state rural livelihoods missions (SRLMs) cadres, banks identify potential loan applicants and source applications. These cadres also support entrepreneurs in preparing proposals, handling documentation, and conducting initial validation.

For women entrepreneurs, these products create a pathway to individual credit that recognizes their economic activity beyond the group framework. They can provide larger or more flexible financing for enterprises that exceed group-based borrowing limits.

However, MSC’s (MicroSave Consulting) field experience indicates that implementation remains a work in progress. The products appear to work better when applicants have an operating enterprise, formal documentation, visible cash flows, and clear business ownership. Implementation becomes more difficult when enterprises operate informally, rely on family members, or depend on local procurement practices. These features are common among rural enterprises but often conflict with conventional banking requirements. Banks typically require clear processes for appraisal, documentation, procurement, and disbursement.

This gap highlights the need to align product processes more closely with the realities of rural enterprises.

Challenges across the credit journey

MSC’s work to scale enterprise financing for SHG women entrepreneurs across multiple states in India has highlighted challenges at different stages that may limit product uptake, timely credit delivery, and impact despite collaboration with banks, NRLM, SRLMs, community institutions, and women entrepreneurs.

1. Loan application stage

Bank processes often require additional documents, land records, rent receipts, quotations, and registrations. While necessary for risk management, these requirements can pose challenges for rural women entrepreneurs operating informal enterprises with limited documentation.

Common issues include mismatched identity and business details, assets registered in family members’ names, and limited familiarity with loan procedures, resulting in incomplete applications. This may lead to repeated branch visits, increasing the time and cost of accessing credit and discouraging eligible borrowers.

2. Appraisal stage

During appraisal, banks assess the borrower’s repayment capacity, enterprise viability, cash flow, and overall credit risk. Branches generally prefer applicants with established businesses, stable income, and adequate supporting documents.

Enterprises in agriculture-allied sectors face additional scrutiny. Disease outbreaks, livestock mortality, and income volatility create risks for these enterprises. These risks do not necessarily make such enterprises unviable. However, they highlight the need for sector-specific appraisal tools.

From the borrower’s perspective, several factors make it difficult to demonstrate individual repayment capacity. These include limited credit history, weak business plans, and a lack of formal records. Limited branch-level sanctioning authority and staffing constraints can further extend processing times. They can also increase the risk of borrower drop-off.

3. Disbursement stage

At disbursement, banks may require vendor verification, formal invoices, or Goods and Services Tax (GST)-compliant documents to independently verify the transaction and end use of funds through conventional documentation.

In practice, rural entrepreneurs typically purchase inputs and assets from multiple small local vendors and informal suppliers, many of whom do not provide invoices, hold GST registrations, or accept direct bank payments. When banks require formal procurement channels, borrowers face higher costs and lower enterprise returns, sometimes prompting them to abandon the loan process. This reflects a structural mismatch between formal banking requirements and the practices of informal businesses.

A balanced way forward

The field challenges do not undermine the relevance of individual enterprise loan products. Bridging the gap between formal banking requirements and rural enterprise realities requires action at three levels: product design, operational processes, and the broader policy environment.

1. Product-level

  a. Align credit products with enterprise needs

Financial institutions should focus not only on expanding credit but also on offering the right type of credit. While banks are often more comfortable financing fixed assets through term loans, many micro and small enterprises primarily need working capital, creating a product mismatch that can constrain growth and increase repayment risk. A simplified cash-flow-based assessment of working-capital requirements can help lenders design more appropriate products and improve portfolio quality.

  b. Refine operational guidelines

Product features and operating guidelines should reflect the sector, enterprise stage, loan purpose, and borrower profile. Banks can allow alternative procurement verification where formal invoices are not feasible. Options can include SHG or federation certification, local vendor confirmation, transaction receipts, or post-purchase asset checks.

Banks can retain supplier payments where practical and allow borrower-account disbursements in suitable cases, with safeguards and post-disbursement verification.

  c. Use alternative data for credit assessment

Where formal credit histories are limited, banks can supplement conventional underwriting with alternative data sources, including behavioral, transactional, and digital indicators such as bank account statements, utility payment records, gig-work earnings, and UPI/digital payment records.

In the SHG context, savings discipline, internal lending, repayment records, and bank account transaction data can provide valuable insights into members’ financial behavior. The Account Aggregator (AA) framework can also enable secure, consent-based sharing of relevant SHG data. This can strengthen women’s financial identities while preserving their control over how their data is used as borrowers.

MSC’s whitepaper on the AA framework and SHG ecosystem shows how verifiable financial and behavioral data can improve credit assessment. This approach can potentially expand credit access to more than 100 million SHG women. Banks should use this data through transparent, context-specific scoring methods. Community validation and safeguards should support these methods to prevent exclusion or misuse.

2. Process-level

  a. Strengthening enterprise-readiness support

Access to credit alone may not ensure successful enterprise growth. Borrowers often need support with business plans, documentation, investment estimates, cash flow management, and procurement plans.

MSC’s experience across Bihar, Uttar Pradesh, and Uttarakhand shows that training and support through community cadres can improve borrower preparedness.

Enterprise-readiness support should therefore form part of the financing ecosystem. It should cover business diagnostics, financial management, application support, digital literacy, and post-disbursement mentoring.

Community cadres and SHG federations can help borrowers prepare stronger applications. They can also help borrowers manage enterprises after disbursement, thereby improving both credit access and outcomes.

3. Policy level

  a. Risk-sharing support for financial service providers

Under the traditional SHG Bank Linkage Programme, SHGs’ collective guarantee and peer accountability largely manage repayment risk.  Enterprise finance lacks this social collateral, thereby increasing banks’ perceived risk of individual borrowers.

A dedicated risk-sharing facility can complement existing guarantee mechanisms, such as the Credit Guarantee Fund Trust for Micro and Small Enterprises (CGTMSE), particularly where lenders find the available cover inadequate from a risk-management perspective. Long cooling-off or claim-settlement periods can also require lenders to make provisions before guarantees are realized, affecting their balance sheets and appetite for enterprise lending.

Banks, NRLM, and SRLMs can therefore explore more responsive risk-sharing arrangements, including appropriately structured first-loss mechanisms, while maintaining prudent underwriting and borrower accountability.

  b. Waiver of stamp duty on loans

Stamp duty adds to the cost of borrowing and can increase the financial burden on entrepreneurs. The Assam Cabinet has approved a waiver of stamp duty on loans of up to INR 1 million (USD 10,445) availed by SHG members under ASRLM, helping reduce the cost of accessing formal credit. Other states could consider similar measures to lower borrowing costs and encourage enterprise development and livelihood generation among rural women.

Conclusion

Bank-led individual enterprise loans for SHG women are an important step in the pathway from financial inclusion to enterprise growth. However, scale and impact require more than product availability.

Banks can bridge the gap between formal banking requirements and rural microenterprise realities through better-aligned products and processes, as well as alternative data-based underwriting. Credit guarantee support and strong enterprise-readiness systems can further strengthen this approach. Together, these measures can create a more inclusive and sustainable enterprise finance ecosystem and support the next phase of the Lakhpati Didi scheme, enabling an additional 30 million Lakhpati Didis.

The strategic blueprint of co-lending: Expanding credit access and institutional collaboration in India

Posted on by harshita

This policy brief examines India’s co-lending framework and its evolution into a broader approach to formal credit delivery. It explains how originating and partner-regulated entities share funding, risks, revenues, and operational responsibilities. It also distinguishes co-lending from traditional lending, consortium lending, and loan transfers. The brief highlights how digital public infrastructure, APIs, electronic know your customer (e-KYC), e-Sign, and AI credit scoring improve efficiency and expand access for underserved and new-to-credit borrowers.

Why gender equality and social inclusion matter? Scaling climate adaptation in the Hindu Kush Himalaya

Posted on by harshita

The Hindu Kush Himalaya (HKH) are, in the truest sense, the world’s water tower. Stretching over 3,500 kilometres across eight countries, the region is home to around 270 million people, while its river systems sustain the water, food, energy, and livelihood security of more than 2.1 billion people living both within and beyond the mountains. Within this broader landscape, the Integrated Climate Adaptation Solutions for the Hindu Kush Himalaya Region (HI-CAS) project focuses on Bangladesh, Bhutan, and Nepal, where changing precipitation patterns, rising temperatures, land-use change, and ecosystem degradation are intensifying climate risks for mountain communities that depend directly on natural resources and climate-sensitive livelihoods.  Rapidly and unequally.

In Bangladesh’s Chittagong Hill Tracts (CHT), for instance, eleven recognised ethnic groups including the Chakma, Marma, and Tanchangya make up roughly half the population of the Chittagong Hill Tracts (CHT). Historically, they depended on ‘jhum’ or shifting cultivation, but shortened fallow cycles, land availability, and erratic monsoons have eroded its viability. With springs reported to be drying in 74% of Nepal’s local governments, water scarcity is intensifying and increasing unpaid care and water collection responsibilities for women  to fetch water. And in Bhutan, women make up nearly two-thirds of the agricultural workforce but earn just about half the annual income of their male counterparts. When water, irrigation, and agrobiodiversity systems fail, the costs land on their primary users who have the least role in creating the crisis and the fewest resources to absorb it.

Existing interventions helping these communities adapt often fall into one of three areas: springshed management, which focus on rejuvenating drying mountain water sources through nature-based catchment interventions; renewable energy-powered irrigation, which replaces diesel-dependent pumping with solar-based systems to improve irrigation access; and agrobiodiversity practices, which restore indigenous crop diversity and traditional seed systems whilst supporting livelihoods, nutrition and food security. Putting this into practice, ICIMOD, with funding from Global Affairs Canada, and in partnership with CEAPRED, Arannayk Foundation and Tarayana Foundation have recently launched the Integrated Climate Adaptation Solutions for the Hindu Kush Himalaya (HI-CAS) project.

Where are interventions falling short?

Our baseline assessment for the HI-CAS project examined the current status of these interventions. We found that none of these solutions build resilience at scale and in sustainable ways unless they are understood as interconnected and designed and implemented holistically. And that none can support inclusive climate justice without deliberate attention to gender equality, disability and social inclusion. Power doesn’t shift just because the technology does and four dimensions unmask places where exclusion shows up, where gains could stall, or reverse, as the work scales.

Women from Athpahriya community from Dhankuta Municipality, Ward 8, providing existing knowledge and recommendation to incorporate in the climate adaptation solutions during community consultation meeting for GESI-responsive integration adaptation solution packages. Photo credit: Neha Thapa/CEAPRED

Technical training defaults to men because the technology is socially constructed as men’s work. While this pattern was noted in solar irrigation technology, it holds wherever access is“open to everyone”. In Bangladesh’s CHT, the assessment found that only 1 of 47 participants had ever accessed an agricultural training, and that language and literacy barriers mean information about subsidies and opportunities often does not reach women or is not understood when it does. In Nepal, focus group discussions described long waiting periods for irrigation turns of up to 13 days compressing labour into narrow windows that leave little space for training or participation. And even where governance structures open a door, walking through it takes years: a female Karbari (village chief) in Khagrachari, an outlier in a governance structure dominated by male traditional authorities, noted that it took years to gain the men’s trust.

Governance structures that produce tokenism. Water user committees are male dominated by design. When women are present, their roles tend toward administration rather than in decisions over allocations and budgets. Springshed governance that extracts women’s maintenance labour while excluding them from authority over water allocation reproduces inequality even when it delivers ecological outcomes. In Bhutan, the same pattern holds in community forestry structures linked to springshed protection: the presence of women and most disadvantaged groups is institutionalised but not their leadership.

Indigenous knowledge unrecognised and undocumented. Women across all three countries play a critical role as custodians of traditional ecological practices, seed diversity and post-harvest management. This knowledge, though directly relevant to agrobiodiversity interventions, remains largely oral, informal, and absent from formal training content. Extension systems that increasingly prioritise uniform commercial crops are eroding intergenerational transmission of knowledge and skills.

Women’s economic contribution made invisible. Labour in water collection, spring maintenance, and subsistence farming is categorised by country statistical systems as domestic support rather than economic work. Women receive no compensation, generate no employment records, and accumulate no assets through their adaptation-related contributions. Women remain invisible in the technology systems that increasingly mediate access to productive resources. Control over income and assets remains concentrated with men regardless of who performs the work.

Community consultations should prioritise including voices of women, Indigenous Peoples and marginalised communities. Photo credit: Neha Thapa/CEAPRED

So, what does GESI-responsive scaling require?

Adaptation solutions need certain non-negotiable commitments if outcomes are to benefit the populations who bear the greatest climate burden. We propound three commitments which would anchor this approach:

First, decision-making authority must be shared structurally. Water user groups require co-chairs holding equal authority, not a token deputy seat. That only holds if men engage as allies rather than gatekeepers and how GESI responsive orientation is built into technical delivery rather than bolted on as a separate workstream. Second, every adaptation intervention must demonstrably reduce women’s time poverty. This requires baseline time-use surveys and embedded childcare and mobility support from the start. Third, gender-responsive budgeting must apply across all activities, with institutional GESI-responsive codes tracking allocation and expenditure against GESI outcomes at each governance level.

Beyond these non-negotiables though, a second set of actions targets the specific indicators along which climate adaptation either narrows or widens gender gaps, i.e., GESI-analysis and data segregation in feasibility studies, decision-making role in livelihoods, asset ownership and income control, group membership and leadership, and time poverty/workload linked to unpaid care.

Meaningful inclusion and engagement. This requires redesigning how trainings are delivered, not just who attends. Facilitation teams should include women, IPLC knowledge holders, and persons with disabilities. Sessions should run in local languages at care-friendly times. Training content should combine tasks women already lead such as seed management, water scheduling, and post-harvest handling with the skills and access to engage with technology adoption which has historically been male domains.

Equitable distribution of benefits. A role charter system for each user group should set at least 50 percent of overall roles and 30 percent of decision-control roles for women, with rotation rules to prevent elite capture. A community knowledge centre near intervention sites, gender-balanced in staffing and offering onboarding, technical advisory, and safeguarding support, creates a trusted access point that does not depend on male-dominated networks. Women’s groups and Indigenous Peoples’ networks must evolve from project participants into accountability actors who can engage with policies, budgets, and implementation processes long before and after programme cycles end.

Social and economic empowerment. Women’s adaptation-related labour must be directly compensated at or above local wage rates and paid via mobile money to prevent interception. Indigenous knowledge must be documented, recognized as prior learning (RPL) and integrated into adaptation curricula as climate expertise rather than informal background. Community-level water economics dashboards can normalise women as economic stakeholders rather than service users.

Finally, and in conclusion, governance structures that embed Free, Prior and Informed Consent principles, prevent concentration of decision-making power, and link all user bodies to functional grievance and safeguarding pathways are what will make such change durable. Without them, technically sound climate solutions will deliver uneven benefits and perpetuate layers of exclusion. Populations that carry the greatest climate burden will continue to have the least say in shaping the solutions designed in their name. Once gender-responsive, indigenous-centric practices move beyond individual projects into sub-national plans, policies, and institutional systems, livelihoods and community capacities in the HKH will be better safeguarded.

This was first published in ICIMOD on 10th August 2026

The impact assessment study of Pink Bus in Patna, Muzaffarpur, and Gaya

Posted on by harshita

The impact assessment study of Pink Bus in Patna, Muzaffarpur, and Gaya examines women’s mobility, safety, affordability, and access to education and employment. It finds that 93% of women respondents choose the “pink bus” primarily for safety, while 78% use it for education or work. The study also identifies priorities for strengthening gender-responsive public transport in Bihar. MSC is proud to be a knowledge partner to the Government of Bihar in advancing sustainable and gender-responsive transport initiatives.

Beyond the construction of toilets: The missing innovation layer in India’s sanitation sector

Posted on by harshita

“Access to safe water and sanitation is not a privilege, but a fundamental human right.”  

Ban Ki-moon 

India has transformed access to sanitation through unprecedented investments, but can these gains be sustained over the long term? As sanitation infrastructure continues to expand, the focus must extend beyond construction to the systems that keep assets functional, efficient, and financially sustainable. 

Over the past decade, India has implemented one of the world’s largest sanitation infrastructure programs. Between 2014 and 2021, the Government of India allocated a cumulative budget of INR 620 billion (USD 7.2 billion) to the Swachh Bharat Mission – Urban (SBM-U). The program supported the construction of 6.4 million individual household toilets and 637,000 community and public toilets. According to the latest data from the SBM-Urban portal, 4,692 of India’s 6,166 urban local bodies (ULBs) have achieved the Open Defecation Free (ODF) status.  

The Atal Mission for Rejuvenation and Urban Transformation (AMRUT) and AMRUT 2.0 have complemented these efforts by strengthening urban water and sewerage infrastructure. Together, these programs have approved 583 sewerage projects and enabled nearly 15 million household sewer connections, including 6.5 million under AMRUT 2.0. Collectively, SBM-U and AMRUT represent India’s largest public investment in urban water and sanitation. India’s sanitation programs have delivered impressive infrastructure outputs. They have exceeded construction targets and expanded ODF coverage. The next challenge is to ensure that this infrastructure consistently delivers better health, higher productivity, and stronger economic returns. The World Health Organization (WHO) estimates that every dollar invested in sanitation generates USD 5.5 in economic returns through better health, higher productivity, and lower mortality.

Despite exceeding the sanitation infrastructure targets, inadequate sanitation continues to cost India an estimated 6.4% of its gross domestic product (GDP) each year. This gap highlights that India now needs enabling conditions for private sector innovation rather than additional public investment alone. 

India has demonstrated its ability to build sanitation infrastructure at scale. The next phase requires these investments to deliver safe, reliable, and sustainable sanitation services over the long term. 

 

Figure 1: From sanitation infrastructure creation to sustained service delivery 

Figure 1 shows that India’s next sanitation opportunity lies in unlocking greater value from existing infrastructure. Three interconnected priorities can accelerate this transition: stronger monitoring and information systems, modernized operations and maintenance (O&M), and sustainable financing models. Together, they can help sanitation assets deliver reliable services, healthier communities, and stronger economic outcomes throughout their lifecycle. 

This transition also creates a significant opportunity for the private sector. The shift from asset construction to performance optimization can create new markets for technology, service delivery, resource recovery, and innovative finance. Demand for wastewater treatment, water reuse, and circular resource recovery will continue to grow. These markets can generate recurring revenue streams while improving sanitation outcomes. For example, the volume of treated wastewater available for reuse is projected to triple between 2021 and 2050. If India had effectively reused the 2021 wastewater volumes, it alone could have generated an estimated USD 11.1 billion in agricultural value. This estimate demonstrates the commercial potential of improved sanitation services. 

Enhancing monitoring to build a data-driven sanitation services market

 India has developed robust systems to track sanitation infrastructure, expenditure, and mission-level outputs. The next opportunity is to extend these systems beyond construction to monitor asset performance throughout its lifecycle. Operational data remains fragmented across water supply, sanitation, and municipal systems, limiting cities’ ability to identify deteriorating assets, prioritize maintenance, and link financing to measurable service outcomes. As a result, many ULBs respond only after assets fail or service quality declines, increasing costs and reducing the infrastructure’s service life. 

Digital monitoring systems can address this gap by shifting sanitation management from reactive to preventive, performance-based service delivery. Technologies such as IoT sensors, GPS tracking, Geographic Information System (GIS) platforms, digital asset management systems, satellite imagery, and AI analytics provide real-time visibility into asset condition, service delivery, and maintenance needs. These technologies enable municipalities to plan interventions before failures occur. 

Telangana’s Pattana Pragathi Toilet Monitoring System (PPTMS) demonstrates how structured and parameter-based monitoring can deliver asset-level visibility within existing institutional frameworks. Such models create an opportunity for private-sectorn innovation in monitoring tools, analytics platforms, and data services that municipalities can procure. 

Modernizing O&M from reactive repairs to preventive service delivery 

India’s investment in sanitation infrastructure has not always translated into equivalent investment in maintenance across the full asset lifecycle. These assets require regular maintenance, timely repairs, skilled personnel, mechanized operations, and eventual replacement. Construction budgets do not typically cover these costs. Programs such as AMRUT 2.0 include provisions for O&M. However, this funding remains a small fraction of capital expenditure. ULBs often reduce it first when budgets come under pressure. 

As a result, many ULBs lack the technical capacity, asset management systems, and operational resources needed to maintain infrastructure effectively. This gap results in declining asset performance over time. It also creates opportunities for private sector innovation through mechanized services, digital asset management, predictive maintenance, and performance-based service delivery models. These solutions can improve efficiency, extend the life of the infrastructure, and reduce the operational burden on ULBs.  

Genrobotics pioneered robotic manhole and sewer cleaning with its Bandicoot system, eliminating the need for human entry into sewers. Deployed across more than 100 Indian cities, it shows how technology procured as a service can embed preventive maintenance into routine municipal operations while removing a major occupational hazard. 

Financing sanitation services beyond capital expenditure 

India’s sanitation sector presents a growing opportunity for innovative financing and circular economy business models. Public programs have successfully mobilized capital for sanitation infrastructure. However, financing for operations, preventive maintenance, repairs, and asset replacement remains constrained and unpredictable. This imbalance directs capital expenditure toward the construction of sanitation assets.  

Addressing this gap requires financing models that link resources to asset performance and service outcomes. These models include predictable operational budgets, performance-based contracts, blended finance, and stronger municipal revenue models. Resources across the sanitation value chain, such as treated wastewater, fecal sludge, nutrients, and biogas, can generate economic value, offset operating costs, and improve financial sustainability.  

Beyond municipal systems, private capital is also beginning to reach household-level WASH access. Water.org’s WaterCredit model illustrates this potential. Water.org channels private capital through microfinance institutions rather than lending directly, which extends small loans to households for water connections and toilets. Across multiple countries, this model has disbursed 20.4 million loans worth USD 8.2 billion, demonstrating that private financial institutions can profitably serve the WASH market at scale. 

Creating an enabling ecosystem for innovation 

An enabling ecosystem underpins all three priorities. Policies, regulations, standards, institutional arrangements, and procurement mechanisms can embed proven solutions within mainstream sanitation systems. Clear frameworks for treatment, reuse, and resource recovery across the sanitation value chain are particularly important for circular sanitation models to achieve scale. 

Private-sector innovation is growing, with startups developing solutions for greywater treatment, sensor-based monitoring, and fecal sludge management. However, procurement, regulatory, and financing constraints continue to limit scale. Impact investors, such as WaterEquity, Incofin, and Navaka Social Business Fund, formerly Yunus Social Business, have begun to address this financing gap in India. For example, discussions around a digital public infrastructure (DPI) for water seek to create open and interoperable data layers for the water sector. These shared data layers could lower barriers to private-sector entry because individual companies would no longer need to build them independently.  

Figure 2: Innovation case studies and service outcomes 

Shifting from infrastructure delivery to sustained service delivery 

India has demonstrated an extraordinary capacity to build sanitation infrastructure at scale; the next phase requires delivering safe, reliable, and financially sustainable sanitation services.  

The country has built the foundation. Unlocking its full returns depends less on additional public investment and more on conditions that enable private-sector innovation to flourish across monitoring technologies, O&M services, circular economy models, and financing. This innovation layer remains the missing piece in India’s sanitation sector.  

The opportunity now is to embed innovation across every stage of the sanitation value chain, from monitoring and maintenance to financing and resource recovery. This shift will help ensure that India’s sanitation infrastructure continues to deliver value long after construction ends. 

Aqua connect turning local fisheries into engines of jobs and growth

Posted on by harshita

The latest edition of Aqua Connect shares stories and lessons on how women and youth access opportunities across Africa’s fisheries value chains. It features the Women and Youth Economic Empowerment in Fisheries (WEEF) program, implemented by TradeMark Africa and the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) Secretariat, with the Mastercard Foundation.

This edition highlights how governments, the private sector, development partners, and communities work together to improve financial inclusion, expand cross-border trade, strengthen safeguarding, and create blue economy opportunities.