Lakshya: Helping the urban poor save to improve their financial health

Posted on by MSC

This blog is about a FinTech startup from the Financial Inclusion Lab accelerator program, which receives support from some of the largest philanthropic organizations across the world—the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, J.P. Morgan, Michael & Susan Dell Foundation, MetLife Foundation, and Omidyar Network.

Ravi Varma, an auto-rickshaw (tuk-tuk) driver from Bengaluru, could not save regularly. However, since the COVID-19 lockdown, he discovered that regular savings could compensate for the volatility of his income. This pool of savings could also take care of his family in an emergency. Since June 2020, Ravi started saving up to INR 100 (~USD 1.35) daily with Lakshya and accumulated more than INR 10,000 (~USD 135) by March 2021 for medical emergencies. He had set himself a goal of INR 15,000 (~USD 202) for an emergency. Regular savings helped him to achieve his goal within few months. Auto drivers like Ravi Varma lack regular savings habits and fall prey to loan sharks to meet their daily expenditures.

The frequent reliance on informal credit for small expenses pushes this segment into debt traps. They need access to flexible and customized savings products to save as per their cash flows.

The light-bulb moment

Lakshya started with a mission to improve the financial health of the low- and moderate-income (LMI) segment by using digital platforms to deliver financial products and literacy to build traction.

Founder Nishant Kumar, a development sector professional who has also worked at MSC, has seen the silent revolution in financial inclusion for a decade. He observed that formal financial services, especially savings, have remained low despite a massive macro-economic push for financial inclusion in India. Financial providers neither emphasized nor innovated around savings due to the lower margins and challenges in digital distribution to the target segments. In January 2020, Sonal Agrawal joined the Lakshya team bringing her rich experience in financial inclusion from her stints at MSC, the World Bank, and the Indian government’s National Rural Livelihoods Mission.

Lakshya began its operations on 15th August 2020. Around 80% of India’s working population is engaged in the informal sector in micro or small enterprises or works independently. Only a handful of FinTechs has worked directly with them due to the high cost of aggregation and trust-building. Nishant identified this as an opportunity to drive impact by improving the financial inclusion metrics beyond access. While initially, Lakshya dealt with savings, it progressed to include insurance and credit over time.

Lakshya has built a framework (Figure 3) with the following five pillars to focus on improving financial health:

Additionally, Lakshya also nudges customers to enroll in suitable government schemes like Jan Suraksha Yojana (Figure 4). It supports them to complete income tax returns and thus builds the income history necessary to access credit from formal institutions. To begin with, it started by focusing on the first two pillars—manage expenses and build savings.

Initially, Lakshya identified auto-rickshaw drivers in Bengaluru as their target segment because:

  • They form a large group with nearly 400,000 drivers
  • They are the primary financial decision-maker of the family
  • Most of them own smartphones and are familiar with digital payments
  • They have a bank account that helps them sign up for channels like UPI
  • They are aggregated at digital platforms or unions, therefore easily accessible to Lakshya and can provide “word of mouth” referrals

After understanding this segment’s financial need of providing credible sources of savings, Lakshya developed a solution that would meet their need for customized financial products. Lakshya plans to build on this initial work to transform it into a ubiquitous platform for other segments.

Lakshya has since onboarded semi-organized artisans, weavers, and gig workers on its platform. By May 2021, despite two waves of the COVID-19 pandemic, the LMI segment saved more than INR 4 million (~USD 53,880) and bought more than 500 health insurance policies on the platform.

Lakshya’s unique pitch

Lakshya offers its users relevant and flexible savings products on a digital platform. It allows users to make small-ticket savings, as low as INR 5 (~USD 0.07) a day, to help build a daily savings habit. Regular savings coupled with basic insurance reduce dependence on informal credit and the risk of debt for medical exigency and household expenditures.

Lakshya’s team designed the platform with a straightforward user interface (UI) to ensure users unfamiliar with digital payments find the platform user-friendly. It harnessed existing technologies, such as UPI, wallets, and mobile banking to reach its target segment. To plan for external shocks and build assets, Lakshya partnered with financial institutions, such as ICICI Bank and Dvara SmartGold.

Lakshya works with local aggregators – associations, unions, and social enterprises, to onboard their target segments. These partners typically have a local presence and work with the community, for example, artisans and drivers. By aggregating them on a common platform, Lakshya builds large homogeneous communities to serve similar financial needs and reducing onboarding costs. Large groups will also allow Lakshya to curate products addressing the specific needs of a particular segment, such as health insurance, working capital credit.

The impact on LMI segments

Many of Lakshya’s customers have had bank accounts for years, but they remain dormant. With Lakshya, customers can develop a habit to save or insure, which will help build a credible savings history that allows them access to formal credit products in the future. Lakshya reinforces and normalizes savings behavior within the LMI community, as they rely on “word of mouth” for credible information on financial management.

The roadblocks

All of Lakshya’s customers are not confident smartphone users. Lakshya makes it easier for such customers to use its services by offering transaction assistance at their office and over the phone and sharing app-tutorial videos on YouTube. In Bengaluru, users from LMI segments receive support from their associations or Lakshya staff while conducting initial UPI transactions.

Previous instances with fraud and complicated insurance terms and conditions have eroded trust among many users. Lakshya simplifies the product’s key features and shares them with users in the local language to improve uptake and usage.

The FI Lab support

The Centre for Innovation Incubation and Entrepreneurship (CIIE) and MSC (MicroSave Consulting) conducted boot camps and diagnostic sessions with Lakshya.

Nudging consumers toward savings is challenging, especially with the prevalence of easy-to-access informal credit. Auto drivers frequently rely on credit to pay mandatory vehicle insurance. However, Lakshya wanted to challenge this existing practice and provide an alternative recurring deposit option to build that corpus. MSC supported Lakshya in the journey to nudge their clients towards regular savings.

MSC segmented users into different personas based on extensive analysis of Lakshya’s user data and in-depth qualitative field research. This will help Lakshya work with them based on their different financial habits and journey with various financial products that build their economic well-being. MSC also uncovered the impact that Lakshya has created on the financial health of the households of their 3,500 unique users. Previously, Lakshya’s users relied on informal credit to manage their daily household expenses. With Lakshya, they can create a savings pool to manage expenses and emergencies.

Creating opportunities amid the COVID-19 crisis

Despite fintech financial products taking a hit during the pandemic, Lakshya reactivated and instilled savings behavior among its dormant clients. Lakshya nudged them to save in small denominations regularly during the first wave of the pandemic. In addition, during the nationwide lockdown from March 2020 to June 2020, Lakshya onboarded 800 new customers by working with partners such as gig platforms and artisan aggregators.

During the disastrous second wave of the COVID-19 pandemic, users who built a corpus could better manage their loss of income. They could maintain their financial health since they had planned, accessed, and used suitable financial products.

The path ahead

Lakshya will continue to target homogenous segments — drivers, security guards, and gig workers. Building on its vision of improving financial health for the LMI segments, Lakshya will focus on digital communication to impart product literacy to empower users.

In the future, Lakshya intends to provide services, such as financial advice, insurance, and small-ticket credit products, to become the one-stop shop for financial health.

This blog post is part of a series that covers promising FinTechs that make a difference to underserved communities. These startups receive support from the Financial Inclusion Lab accelerator program. The Lab is a part of CIIE.CO’s Bharat Inclusion Initiative and is co-powered by MSC. #TechForAll, #BuildingForBharat

Fello: Follow this team to know about a game-based approach to savings and investments for the LMI segment

Posted on by MSC

This blog is about a FinTech startup from the Financial Inclusion Lab accelerator program, which receives support from some of the largest philanthropic organizations across the world—the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, J.P. Morgan, Michael & Susan Dell Foundation, MetLife Foundation, and Omidyar Network.

Nishit, a young employee at a startup, used to deposit his salary into his savings account. He did not know of any other financial instruments to save or invest elsewhere. However, he is an avid gamer and spends more than INR 1,000 (around USD 14) per month on mobile gaming applications. Many such Gen-Z users in India like Nishit reportedly lack enough savings to meet the needs of their daily consumption but have a habit of paid mobile gaming. They usually deposit their salary in traditional savings accounts that do not yield high interest rates.

India currently has 365 million mobile gamers, with Gen-Z making up a third of the population. The paid mobile gaming sector has gained valuation dramatically in recent years, currently valued at INR 133.59 billion (approximately USD 1.2 billion), thanks to the vast number of gamers. The pandemic also saw people take up mobile gaming to earn money. Some popular mobile games, such as Cricket even offered significant cash-backs for achieving game milestones and time spent on the game.

Fello identified this trend as an opportunity to capture this market with its game-based savings app. 

The light-bulb moment

Shourya and Manish met during an investment talent program and realized that they shared a passion for developing accessible FinTech solutions for Gen-Z. Shourya is a computer engineer with prior experience developing software for FinTechs, while Manish has a technical background with experience in management and finance. They knew of the challenges people from Gen-Z face when they try to use formal investment products for the first time. Their shared passion to solve similar problems drove them to explore ideas together.

They soon joined hands and conducted quick and dirty market research of their target segment to validate their idea and gauge the customer interest firsthand. This exercise revealed that the respondents were digitally competent, used smartphones for digital transactions, and played paid mobile games. Yet, these users were apprehensive about using digital saving and investment products. 

Manish and Shourya realized that they could make savings and investments fun for first-time users through a game-based savings app. If the app could provide users with an engaging gaming experience, they would be motivated to build a regular savings habit. 

Fello’s unique pitch

Fello offers flexible savings and investment products incentivized through popular mobile games, such as Tambola. The app encourages its users to save on its platform at regular intervals and does not impose any lower limit on savings. Users can do small-ticket savings as low as INR 10 (~ USD 0.13) a day. Fello’s low limit is explicitly designed for Gen-Z users from the LMI segments who may have an unpredictable and volatile cash inflows and may wish to try investments for the first time. As users save their preferred amount on the app, they receive tokens that they can use to redeem and play games, such as Tambola, plugged-in to the app. This improves the users’ experience of saving by making it game-based and therefore engaging.

At the backend, Fello invests these in highly liquid mutual funds, which earn double the interest (5%-6%) compared to a regular savings account in the same duration. Fello also offers its users the option of investing in digital gold. Rewarding users with game tokens nudges them to build a regular savings habit. This helps them build savings for their future and discourages them from spending money on paid gaming apps. 

Fello uses existing technologies, such as UPI and digital wallets, to make digital transactions accessible to its target segment. Fello has partnered with financial institutions, such as ICICI Prudential and Augmont digital gold to offer its customer products with comparatively high returns.

Fello currently onboards users from LMI segments living in tier-1 (major) cities. It works with users from the gig economy who are comfort with digital payments but lack the financial awareness to make active investments in other financial instruments. Fello offers knowledge collaterals on its app in simple, easy-to-understand language to bridge the information gap among its users. It also provides investment calculators and dashboards to improve the visibility of their savings (Figure 2).

Since its inception in December, 2020, Fello has onboarded 2,000 unique users on its platform, of whom 70% were first-time investors. Most of these users were onboarded through word-of-mouth referrals. These are young individuals with an average age of 24 years, earning between INR 15,000 (~ USD 202) to INR 35,000 (~ USD 471) per month. 

The impact on LMI segments

As stated previously, Fello’s users earlier used to save a small portion of their income in their low-yield savings account, which remained stagnant. They would spend INR 100 (~ USD 1.35) on average on each paid online game. However, in most of these cases, they were not winning money back from these betting games and instead got trapped in a vicious cycle of spending money on these games in the hopes of earning rewards. 

With Fello, these users can now save instead of spend while playing mobile games. They also build a regular savings habit and learn about using formal savings and investment tools. 

Fello recognizes the challenges that users from LMI segments face, such as requiring sudden access to cash when their income is disrupted. Therefore, Fello has made it possible for users to invest small amounts of money and immediately withdraw up to 90% of their funds from the app. 

Roadblocks in its journey

Due to the complex nature of the regulatory landscape around alternate investments in India, Fello had to delay its launch to ensure compliance with laws. Being only a few months old, Fello has yet to achieve high visibility in the FinTech space and thus found it challenging to hire employees as it lacked brand visibility. 

Lastly, building a startup during the COVID-19 pandemic came with its own set of challenges. Earlier in 2020, Fello was conducting offline marketing by installing QR codes in cafes and other popular locations during its ideation phase. However, it had to pivot to online marketing strategies during the pandemic and through the multiple subsequent lockdowns.

The FI Lab support

The company faced hurdles while trying to scale up during the pandemic. CIIE.CO and MSC supported Fello by conducting market research in its target geography of tier 2 and tier 3 cities to understand the gaming and savings behavior among the Gen-Z population. We developed go-to-market strategies for the various segments of users identified from the research. Fello will use and implement these in its select geographies to improve its outreach and customer base.

Creating opportunities amid the COVID-19 crisis

Because Fello was launched during the pandemic, it intended to build a COVID-19-resistant solution. Both mutual funds accounts and the gaming industry expanded during the pandemic, and Fello positioned itself in a sweet spot between the two sectors. The inherent idea of game-based savings was validated when Fello witnessed 60% of its first-time users become repeat investors on its platform. 

The path ahead

As part of its mission to make finance easy and fun for Gen-Z, Fello wants to emerge as the first pit stop for young users starting their journey with formal financial products. It expects to support all the financial needs of its users, including savings, investments, and insurance – all through, quite literally, fun and games!

 This blog post is part of a series that covers promising FinTechs that make a difference to underserved communities. These startups receive support from the Financial Inclusion Lab accelerator program. The Lab is a part of CIIE.CO’s Bharat Inclusion Initiative and is co-powered by MSC. #TechForAll, #BuildingForBharat

SureClaim: Improving the healthcare and health insurance experience for LMI users

Posted on by MSC

This blog is about a FinTech startup from the Financial Inclusion Lab accelerator program, which receives support from some of the largest philanthropic organizations across the world—the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, J.P. Morgan, Michael & Susan Dell Foundation, MetLife Foundation, and Omidyar Network.

Since SureClaim participated in the first cohort of the FI Lab, it has created a streamlined communication plan for reaching out to a broad audience. It formed strategic partnerships with health and wellness aggregators, such as Apollo Life, CNH, and Truworth Wellness. SureClaim assists the low-and moderate-income (LMI) customers of these aggregators with hospitalization and insurance claims.

The premiums for health insurance in India increased by 41% in March, 2021. The increase was driven by rising demand for health insurance products amid the surge of COVID-19 in India. However, LMI customers find it challenging to choose the right insurance policy. They cannot process their claims smoothly due to lengthy and complex terms and conditions from insurance providers. SureClaim’s vision is to become the single-window solution for any patient seeking affordable hospitalization. It will guide them to the most appropriate treatment centers based on their healthcare requirements and insurance plan and assist them with the claim process.

SureClaim’s unique pitch and the FI Lab support

SureClaim seeks a holistic understanding of the experience of LMI customers throughout their journey as they use healthcare and insurance. People from the LMI segments face several challenges and respond uniquely through this journey—from searching for a primary healthcare provider, selecting an appropriate hospital, using health insurance, to claiming the settlement successfully.

Through CIIE.CO and MSC, the FI Lab helped SureClaim build this understanding by conducting market research with urban LMI respondents (Figure 1).

We segmented LMI users into different persona groups and uncovered critical factors that influence their choices at each stage of their journey as they seek healthcare. This segmentation exercise will help SureClaim approach them based on their specific characteristics. The startup can design appropriate nudges to sensitize users on the intricacies of hospitalization and help them avail the most of their eligible amount in the claims settlement process. MSC also recommended various B2B2C and B2C partnership strategies for the startup to increase its customer outreach.

We also developed a hospital navigator prototype that SureClaim can offer to their customers to guide them through their entire healthcare journey. With this prototype, the startup’s users will have a hassle-free healthcare experience. This prototype covers researching doctors, finding suitable hospitals for procedures, and retrieving details of their insurance policy coverage to ensure that the insurance covers their treatment or visit.

Creating opportunities from crises

During India’s second wave of the pandemic, SureClaim helped more than a thousand patients find hospital beds, access life-saving treatments, and assisted in their insurance claim processes. The startup thus played an impactful role in instilling the importance of health insurance coverage in the LMI community in its own small yet significant way.

The path ahead

SureClaim plans to scale up its current user volumes tenfold through corporate networks under B2B2C business models. SureClaim believes it can reach out to a diverse range of end customers through such tie-ups, ranging from small business owners to microfinance institutions, small finance bank customers, to white-collar workers in semi-urban areas. Building on its goal of becoming a single-window healthcare solution, SureClaim will assist these users in improving their experience of health insurance and trust in it.

This blog post is part of a series that covers promising FinTechs that make a difference to underserved communities. These startups receive support from the Financial Inclusion Lab accelerator program. The FI Lab is a part of CIIE.CO’s Bharat Inclusion Initiative and is co-powered by MSC. #TechForAll, #BuildingForBharat

One chit at a time: How has myPaisaa been transforming the traditional avatar of chit funds

Posted on by MSC

This blog looks at a startup called myPaisaa, part of the Financial Inclusion Lab accelerator program, which is supported by some of the largest philanthropic organizations across the world—Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, J.P. Morgan, Michael & Susan Dell Foundation, MetLife Foundation, and Omidyar Network.

Archana is a 28-year-old who works at a call center in Hyderabad. She earns INR 25,000 (USD 350) per month. After she remits a portion of her income to her parents and pays her expenses, Archana has hardly any money left to save. During emergencies, she usually borrows from friends, colleagues, or local chittis. In Hyderabad, chitti is the common name for rotating savings and credit associations (ROSCAs). Though Archana knows of formal financial products, she prefers to save and borrow through ROSCAs due to their flexibility and convenience, compared to a bank. Millions like Archana in the LMI segment choose chit funds for their credit and saving needs.

How does a typical Indian chit fund work?

In a popular version of ROSCAs, people regularly pool their money in a common fund, usually each month. The members bid for the accumulated pool at each auction, and the lowest bidder wins the amount they bid. The rest of the pool is distributed equally among other members. India has chit funds run by authorized government entities and registered companies, alongside unregistered and informal chit funds. Each of these types of chit funds poses different challenges for investors like Archana.

As the government does not regulate unregistered chit funds, such funds are not generally well-managed, especially the auctions. They also have limited in-person interactions and lack transparency in their operations. On the other hand, registered funds, though regulated, often have poor customer experience due to delayed payouts coupled with inadequate audits and inefficient grievance redress processes. Unethical practices and stories of scams and fraud in recent times have marred the reputation of the chit fund industry.

Can someone salvage the chit fund industry?

Enter myPaisaa, a transparent and innovative digital chit fund platform

Praveen and Ravi, the cofounders of myPaisaa, became friends in college. Praveen used to work in the financial services industry before they founded the startup. While Praveen developed expertise in business development and management and gained experience by running another startup, Ravi worked with multiple top companies in leadership roles.

Their experience with chit funds helped conceive myPaisaa. Both Ravi and Praveen saw their parents save through chit funds and struggle with multiple challenges. These included mismanaged chit funds, fledgling trust, and irregular or delayed payments, especially when needed the most. To overcome these obstacles, Ravi and Praveen founded myPaisaa. The idea was to create an alternate financial product based on the concept of chit funds and social capital, coupled with the power of cutting-edge technology. myPaisaa delivers instant payments after bidding, eliminating multiple processes and irrelevant steps involved in traditional chit funds.

The myPaisaa pitch: Reinventing the traditional concept of chit funds in India

The myPaisaa mobile app is an easy-to-use digital chit fund platform. It offers affordable and accessible financial instruments to help its customers, who are usually from the bottom of the pyramid, develop financial discipline.

The evolution: Identifying challenges and overcoming them

The Financial Inclusion Lab organized clinics, boot camps, and diagnostic sessions and offered technical assistance and mentoring to help the myPaisaa team devise relevant strategies to expand its business.

A significant challenge for myPaisaa was to develop an impactful marketing strategy to increase customer reach and target. The Lab helped the team analyze existing customer data and identify key segments. As part of the Lab, MSC collected insights on the customer journey and identified the role of targeted marketing, as well as ways to implement it to drive the acquisition and engagement of customers.

Investing in a brighter digital future

myPaisaa plans to boost its customer reach and performance through a phygital—the combination of physical and digital—strategy. The myPaisaa team has been focusing on expanding as it reaches out to existing and new chit fund users by showcasing its offerings as a reliable and rewarding investment tool. myPaisaa will continue to educate customers, enhance their experience, and provide personalized products to expand its community of users.

As myPaisaa widens its reach, its larger vision is to remove the skepticism associated with chit funds and make chits an integral instrument for the financial health of millions like Archana in India.

This blog post is part of a series that covers promising FinTechs that have been making a difference to underserved communities. These startups receive support from the Financial Inclusion Lab accelerator program. The Lab is a part of CIIE.CO’s Bharat Inclusion Initiative and is co-powered by MSC. #TechForAll, #BuildingForBharat

FinTechs: Democratizing financial services

Posted on by MSC

The FinTech ecosystem in India continues to thrive with innovative products and solutions that cater to the bottom of the pyramid. The role of enablers in this space, especially start-ups, remains invisible—they develop disruptive products and provide the infrastructure necessary for innovative financial solutions to materialize and flourish. This video highlights how start-ups under the FI Lab have been transforming the ecosystem with new tech solutions. It also discusses the impact of these solutions on the low- and middle-income segment.

Numer8: From space to sea, solving for fisherfolk—numerically

Posted on by MSC

This blog is about a startup under the Financial Inclusion (FI) Lab accelerator program’s fourth cohort. The Lab is supported by some of the largest philanthropic organizations across the world – Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, J.P. Morgan, Michael & Susan Dell Foundation, MetLife Foundation, and Omidyar Network.

According to the World Wildlife Fund (WWF), 3 billion people worldwide rely on seafood for their dietary needs. Marine fisheries generate employment for millions of people across the globe. In India, the seafood industry employs about 5 million fisherfolk and laborers, who face several issues that remain unresolved for various reasons, as illustrated in the image below.

The resolution of these problems offers an opportunity to improve the lives of fisherfolk. However, only a few platforms are willing to build solutions for marine fisherfolk. One of these is Numer8, a startup that strives to analyze the problems fisherfolk face and uses its data analytics capabilities to develop scalable solutions for the sector.

The eureka moment

Devleena Bhattacharjee, the founder and CEO of Numer8, has a background in data science. A serial entrepreneur who used to develop data solutions primarily for urban customers, Devleena was keen to use her skills to address more significant global issues, such as climate change, disaster recovery, and livelihood resilience.

Devleena met Nandhini Karthikeyan, the current CTO of Numer8, during a machine learning course. Their shared perspectives and passion for solving global issues helped them conceive Numer8.

Numer8 launched its operations in 2017. Its first product, “QResq,” was a geographic information system (GIS) application that collected data on natural disasters and provided a multidimensional outlook on the consequent geo-critical changes. While studying the effects of disasters like the Kerala floods of 2018 and cyclone Fani, the Numer8 team was shocked by the disproportionately colossal loss of life and property due to climate disasters.

Coastal disasters, in general, threaten to demolish the livelihood of families associated with marine fisheries. Climate Central further projects that India could face coastal floods every year by 2050. Cumulatively, such disasters would affect more than 36 million people. This frightening prediction was an eye-opener for the duo. They decided to invest all their time and resources in supporting the livelihood of marine fisherfolk. This investment led to their second product, the “Ofish” mobile app, which quickly gained prominence. “Ofish” provides a data-driven analysis of hyperlocal weather, sea tides, and fishing conditions to help fisherfolk with market linkages. The Numer8 team is now hard at work to build and integrate a portfolio of solutions to serve the fisherfolk holistically.

Numer8’s unique pitch

The Numer8 team conducted primary and secondary research to delve deeper into issues that marine fisherfolk face in India. They identified four significant challenges that, if addressed, hold the potential to improve the livelihoods of marine fisherfolk. The graphic below provides a snapshot of these issues.

In 2018, Numer8 partnered with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) and the European Space Agency under the Copernicus Master’s program. These partnerships helped the team to access geospatial data, especially for the Indian coastline, and offer timely and accurate results. These partnerships allow Numer8 to offer timely and accurate alerts on fishing and natural disasters, which was the initial focus of “Ofish.”

In 2019, the World Food Program (WFP) selected Numer8 as a part of its technology-based program on food security solutions organized in Sri Lanka. As a part of the program, Numer8 conducted a hunger management pilot and discovered that most digital food security solutions focus on agriculture or inland fisheries. The marine fisheries sector had a severe lack of technology-assisted global food security solutions. MSC estimates that India’s 5 million marine fisherfolk cumulatively generate an income of INR 322 billion (~USD 4.32 billion) annually. Numer8 decided to safeguard the income and livelihood of marine fisherfolk through data-driven insights to support supply-chain linkages and offer formal financial assistance and business advisory, among others. Besides helping fisherfolk improve their livelihood, Numer8 also seeks to operate at the ecosystem level and address critical sectorial issues, as outlined below.

The impact of Numer8 on LMI fisherfolk

Numer8 helps low- and middle-income fisherfolk move toward profitable and sustainable fishing practices. To date, the startup’s “Ofish” product has onboarded and benefitted more than 2,000 fisherfolk, empowering them to improve their livelihoods.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, Numer8 offered advisory services for fisherfolk to increase their net income. It suggested ways to reduce operational costs and increase their sales margin.

The challenges

The image below summarizes the challenges Numer8 faced during the design of its products.

COVID-19: An unexpected catalyst

When the pandemic first struck, Numer8 had anticipated an impact on its operations. The team turned this adversity into opportunity—they devised and piloted new ideas, such as market linkage solutions for fisherfolk. The pilot sought to identify and form partnerships with forward and backward players in the supply chain like raw material suppliers, retailers, and customers. Devleena and her team took to the streets to sell fish to upgrade their approach to design thinking and understand the on-ground dynamics of the supply chain.

However, the second wave of COVID-19 dented the startup’s business revenues and obstructed its operations. Pandemic-induced lockdowns and travel restrictions led to a severe market disconnect. Despite these challenges, the team managed to bounce back and revive the business after the government eased restrictions on movement.

Support provided by the Financial Inclusion (FI) Lab

A collaborative effort of CIIE.CO and MSC, the FILab organized boot camps and diagnostic sessions and offered mentoring support and technical assistance to help Numer8 identify challenges and build robust strategies to overcome them. MSC’s help improved the overall user interface for “Ofish.”

MSC also helped Numer8 understand the financial needs and capabilities of fisherfolk, their socio-economic footprint, and other financial trends based on research across coastal Indian states. Based on this research, we designed a credit assessment framework that identifies the potential credit needs of fisherfolk based on basic information provided by them such as their past credit behavior, asset ownership, and alternate data, among other parameters. The framework assesses the creditability of fisherfolk based on. This assessment will enable Numer8 to extend formal credit to fisherfolk and other relevant players in the supply chain who lack proper documentation to substantiate their income and assets. This tool will provide another channel for Numer8 to scale up its business model.

The next steps

Numer8 plans to strengthen its geographical footprint through a hub-and-spoke model. It will continue to maintain a central workforce in India to develop “Ofish”. Simultaneously, local teams will customize and provide geography-specific services across different countries like the Philippines and Sri Lanka. The team has been conducting pilots in Bangladesh, Indonesia, and Papua New Guinea.

In the medium term, Numer8 will set up a digital marketplace to help fisherfolk connect with relevant players in the supply chain, such as input suppliers and retail buyers or wholesalers. The team believes that educating fisherfolk on the relevance of social and economic factors will drive the adoption of technology. Through community-driven workshops, Numer8 plans to provide financial education to fisherfolk, especially fisherwomen, on various market offerings and government plans and subsidies by partnering with relevant players. We hope that Numer8 achieves its objectives and creates its intended impact soon.

This blog post is part of a series that covers promising FinTechs that are making a difference to underserved communities. These startups receive support from the Financial Inclusion Lab accelerator program. The Lab is a part of CIIE.CO’s Bharat Inclusion Initiative and is co-powered by MSC. #TechForAll #BuildingForBharat