MSC is engaged as a technical assistance and knowledge partner to support in strengthening the Women Entrepreneurship Platform (WEP). The WEP is a Government of India-backed initiative launched by the NITI Aayog in 2017 to promote a conducive ecosystem for women’s entrepreneurship in India. WEP intended to do this by becoming a unified aggregator of all relevant information and services for women entrepreneurs in India. Our work focuses on the following aspects of WEP:
- Research and policy insights
- Access to finance
- Mentoring and Networking
- User data analytics and outreach to states and smaller cities
- Content management
Outcomes and impact
1. Research
2. Mentorship
- A Dedicated mentorship platform at G20 for WEs
- Launch of WEP-Unnati mentorship cohort
3. Access to finance
- A roundtable discussion with key stakeholders from the financial sector on “Access to credit for micro and small women entrepreneurs”
- Launch of “Financing Women Collaborative”
4. Content management
- Platform hosts information on schemes supporting entrepreneurship which includes 70 central, 433 state, and 52 SIDBI and NABARD schemes, and information on incubators and accelerators across India
5. Outreach
- Increased outreach of the WEP platform to new states
- Increased the number of women entrepreneurs regularly using the platform to ~30000
To make certain that the platform caters effectively to ‘small-scale producers’, especially women SSPs in Bihar, and is inclusive in its design and use. The platform aims to be a one-stop platform for all farmer-facing requirements like finance, availing schemes, market linkages, inputs and outputs, and relevant ag-advisory to improve climate resilience.
The platform will be guided by the following strategic considerations:
- Targeted Approach
- Human-centric design and robust architecture
- FAIR Data Principles
- Adaptive Rollout
- Leverage Existing Innovations
- Expert Partners with a focus on physical and assisted services
- Co-Creation
- Streamlined Approvals
- Data-Driven Insights and agile development
Approach to drive access to and adoption of the DFS platform by SSPs in Bihar:
- Partnering with GoB to integrate DFS with existing farmer-facing schemes, leveraging support from agricultural directorates.
- Utilizing institutions like JEEViKA and community organizations for SSP onboarding, awareness building, and gradual adoption of the platform.
- Conducting awareness campaigns through KVKs, agriculture universities, SBCC initiatives, and various communication channels, including social media and government communication channels.
Envisaged Outcomes and impact
- Holistic access to tailored services for all Bihar’s small-scale farmers.
- Lowered costs and increased income for farmers, enhancing their livelihoods.
- Significant boosts in agricultural productivity and food security.
- Empowered women farmers excelling in various roles.
- A transformed agricultural ecosystem with streamlined coordination.
- Enhanced competitiveness through access to diverse services.
- Greater resilience to climate change for sustainable farming practices.
- Potential outcome is that by the end of 5 years, we anticipate having 7 to 8 million registered SSPs, with 3 to 4 million actively using at least one service or feature.
This investment would target women’s self-help groups (SHGs) and female smallholders to improve women’s nutrition, livelihoods, and empowerment in aquaculture and fisheries. The investment will therefore focus on small-scale indigenous aquaculture and fisheries, driven by women’s economic collectives, particularly WSHGs and women-led fisheries producer groups. The systems-level goals of the project are:
- Women-centric and gender-transformative
- Market-led
- Replicable
- Sustainable aquaculture and fisheries programs and models integrated with JEEViKA, across Bihar, with potential for replication at the national level
The implementation will leverage a strategic partnership between MSC and the following key investment players, to achieve the envisaged outcomes:
- JSPVAT: Leverage JSPVAT’s strength, supported by JEEViKA and the World Bank, to create scalable aquaculture models for women’s self-help groups (SHGs).
- BAVAS: Collaborate with BAVAS and DAFR to improve aquaculture policies, using lessons from the successful BAMNet program, supported by the Gates Foundation.
- WorldFish: Partnering with WorldFish to tap into global and local aquaculture expertise, aiming to reduce poverty and malnutrition in Bihar.
Envisaged Outcomes and impact
- Increased incomes and resilience for women and men engaged in small-scale aquaculture and fisheries, fostering economic growth within local communities.
- Greater access to affordable aquatic nutrition, particularly benefiting women, girls, and young children, resulting in improved health and cognitive development.
- Strengthened Women’s Economic Collectives (WECs), promoting economic autonomy, collective marketing, and value-addition opportunities for women.
MSC supported the district administration of Varanasi in India’s Uttar Pradesh state to implement and monitor the unique gram panchayat-level saturation program called “Sewapuri Vikas Abhiyan (SeVA).” MSC set up a full-time program support unit (PSU) that comprised development sector professionals. The team reviewed the on-ground situation and consulted relevant government ministries and departments, development partners, and sector experts to gather critical insights and support the implementation.
MSC developed strategic plans for the five sectors in focus—health, education, nutrition, sanitation, and financial inclusion. We developed detailed action plans and designed a monitoring, evaluation, and learning (MEAL) framework to monitor and evaluate key performance indicators (KPIs) regularly. We developed the Abhiyan’s communication plan and a note with key principles and approaches to transform the Abhiyan into Jan Andolan—a people’s movement. The team supported development partners to train, hand-hold, and increase their community outreach through a cadre of SeVA volunteers and submitted periodic reports with the analysis of KPIs and qualitative observation.
The Sewapuri Vikas Abhiyan made tremendous progress in infrastructural development, beneficiary enrolment, training and capacity building, health promotion, disease prevention, and change in the local population’s behavior. It impacted more than 230,000 lives. It transformed more than 34 community health centers into health and wellness centers and improved the infrastructure of more than 124 governments through the introduction of smart classes. It built public convenience facilities, such as community toilets, gram panchayats, and Common Service Centres in all the gram panchayats. It led to increased enrolments under the multiple welfare programs run by the government.
The NITI Aayog commissioned the project with funding from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation (BMGF).
MSC has been working on four key work streams to increase financial inclusion across four Indian states, Uttar Pradesh, Odisha, Madhya Pradesh, and Bihar, under the PFICP project. MSC engaged with State Rural Livelihoods Missions (SRLMs) and National Rural Livelihoods Mission (NRLM) to provide technical assistance to scale financial inclusion initiatives. MSC facilitated partnerships between SHGs and new generation, technology-led financial service providers from the private sector to support SHGs to offer their users a broader choice of financial products. We also extended support for digital literacy and behavior change communication. We built the capacities of SHG women to adopt and use digital channels for financial services.
We supported Uttar Pradesh SRLM to select 56,875 BC sakhis within six months. This resulted in financial services for around 42 million rural people. The operational BC sakhis have already facilitated around 2.3 million transactions with a flow of USD 69 million (INR 5.2 billion).
MSC collaborated with the Secretariat for National Financial Inclusion (SNKI) to design an e-KYC pilot and provide operational support to implement it. Alongside the pilot design, MSC helped the banks and government ministries document processes, develop monitoring and supervision protocols, build staff capacities, and conduct concurrent evaluations to refine the processes.
MSC also developed a roadmap after the e-KYC pilot was completed. The roadmap process included consultations with industry players, such as the Ministry of Home Affairs (MoHA) and SNKI, documentation of the guidelines to implement e-KYC across different financial service providers, and the development of a process to enable access for different FSPs to e-KYC infrastructure. We also evaluated the e-KYC rollout and shared the findings through blogs and policy briefs to benefit the industry.
The insights from the pilot enabled the Directorate of Population and Civil Registration to develop and enhance its product and service offerings for the financial services industry. The pilot would yield valuable data to inform policy in Indonesia and guide financial inclusion and social transfer initiatives.
The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation commissioned this project.