Photo by Jack Melbourne Efficient last mile delivery of key financial services to small and marginalised farmers, has been at the heart of the implementation challenges that agricultural finance institutions in India have been facing over the past two decades. The economic fallout of the COVID-19 crisis and the Government’s proposed path of recovery reiterates… Continue reading Key concerns for credit institutions in agriculture & importance of meso-level insurance
“Why should I pay for an unnecessary insurance bundle when I just need one or two products?” asks Kumar, the owner of a fabric shop in Delhi. Like many of his fellow traders, Kumar runs a small shop in a crowded, narrow street of Chandni Chowk, one of India’s oldest markets. Low-hanging, rundown electric… Continue reading Riskcovry: Insurance-in-a-box
Gig workers have been facing the brunt of the coronavirus outbreak. This blog highlights the story of a FinTech startup, MIMO, which uses technology to connect service providers to its end customers through gig workers. Learn how MIMO supports gig workers in these tough times. India has 15 million gig workers or around 40%… Continue reading MIMO — Bridging the digital gap for the rural workforce
Image Source: Development News Evidence based research has developed a strong case for mobile phones aiding in women’s entrepreneurial ventures. With a mobile handset and an active internet connection, women get 24/7 access to worldwide e-business channels, which can be operated from anywhere in real time (Hilbert, 2011). It can also be a valuable tool… Continue reading Finding Replicable Solutions To Women’s Livelihood Challenges
Around the world, small and marginal farmers get a meagre share of the overall value created in the agriculture supply chain. This is mainly due to three critical inefficiencies, as highlighted in Figure 1. PayAgri is a platform for farmers that works to overcome them and optimize returns for the farmers. The founders of… Continue reading PayAgri: Transforming the lives of small and marginal farmers
A story of four “monks” using private commissioned blockchain technology to improve accountability in a registered chit fund and how they are impacted by COVID-19 Vijay Babu-a 45-year-old entrepreneur, Gowri-a 29-year-old house help, and Venkata Garu-a 57-year-old government employee, are residents of the same city. These individuals have another thing in common-they save… Continue reading ChitMonks: Simplifying chit funds
Photo by Akash Badave of Bhoomgadi A farmer producer organisation (FPO) or simply a producer organisation (PO) is a collectivisation of the primary producers. Quite unlike the name, they can be farm or non-farm related producers. It is not unnatural to collectivise say even rural artists or weavers to form a PO. A PO has… Continue reading FPOs — Genesis and Evolution
Photo by GCShutter on iStock Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises form the backbone of manufacturing sector of India. Roughly there are 65 million MSMEs in the country across Service and Manufacturing sectors. This sector is vast and diversified. Combined together, the MSME industry is the largest contributor of employment in the country, attributing to around 25%… Continue reading Developing Sustainable Financial Access for MSMEs
Photo by ManeeshUpadhyay on ShutterStock Current State of Affairs The labour ministry’s draft code defines a gig worker as a person who performs work or participates in a work arrangement; and earns from such activities outside of a traditional employer-employee relationship. Going by this broad definition the number of Indian gig economy workers are 426 million… Continue reading Data Ownership and the Gig Economy
Photo by triloks on iStock In India, the government plays an active role in providing insurance cover to the agricultural sector through highly subsidized micro-insurance schemes such as Pradhan Mantri Fasal Bima Yojana (PMFBY) since 2016, the National Crop Insurance Programme (NCIP) since 2015, and the Livestock Insurance scheme since 2006. These schemes have improved upon… Continue reading Meso-level Insurance for Agricultural Risk Management
Walking along the streets of Kolkata’s South end settlements, I come across a shop run by two men; one of them sitting at a desktop. Finding it highly unusual to find a desktop in a street shop, I approach them and strike up a conversation with the younger-looking one among them. I learn… Continue reading People of Bharat: Ajay Kumar Dey, Kolkata
Ten years ago in The Wall Street Journal(WSJ), Bindu Ananth and Nachiket Mor used noise-cancelling headphones to explain the role of finance. ‘Noise-cancelling headphones,’ they wrote, ‘listen and respond precisely to the noises in the environment of the listener and cancel them out instantaneously, leaving only smooth and high-quality music.’ Financial tools can give a smooth and… Continue reading Disentangling the growth of MSMEs: A study in Tamil Nadu