Last year around this time if you would have asked any VC investor about the alternative protein sector or vegan meat products, it would have been a reflex movement to brag all about the success of Beyond Meat, the poster boy of vegan meat. But we have come a long way since then, and this is… Continue reading The Booming Alternative Protein Sector
Eko India Financial Services Pvt. Ltd. started in 2007 as a business correspondent (BC) for banks, providing account-opening and cash-in/cash-out (CICO) services for non/underbanked Indian customers. Brothers Abhishek and Abhinav Sinha co-founded Eko. Over the years, responding to multiple opportunities that presented themselves and changing regulations, Eko developed a domestic money transfer solution through its… Continue reading Eko: Scaling up a fintech start-up in volatile market and regulatory environments
Image by Uplift Mutuals In India setting up an insurance company is not easy with a blanket minimum capital requirement of INR 100 crores irrespective of risks or geographical coverage. We seem to have an undeclared policy of having a large number of insurance distributors and a small number of insurance manufacturers — India… Continue reading Let a thousand flowers bloom
The artisanal and micro-entrepreneurial industry in rural India are primarily home-based cottage industries and their workforce includes the members of the family, who often use existing indigenous skills which have been passed down the generations. Largely unorganised and fragmented in character — they often exist in areas where unemployment and under-employment are widespread. Conventional,… Continue reading Sectoral Challenges and ICT Solutions
At first Roshni appears to be shy and reticent but as the interview progresses, she opens up about herself. I met her one afternoon at the company she currently works for. Owing to the Covid-19 pandemic there was hardly anyone at the workplace with most of them choosing to work from home. Roshni comes… Continue reading People of Bharat: Roshni, Bengaluru
Photo by NEERAZ CHATURVEDI on Shutterstock Like any other research team, we started by understanding and unwrapping the research hypothesis word by word — ‘whether FPO’s can be an effective vehicle for financial inclusion for small and marginal farmers’. Having shared our insight about FPO’s in our previous articles, we thought it was time we… Continue reading FPOs and Financial Inclusion: Theory & Reality
Photo by Roop_Dey on Shutterstock Enterprises start out of dreams and are nurtured through insights of the founders. Due to lack of trained resources, many enterprises do not last long: as it is limited to the founder and the few concerned. Even among fortune 500 companies, many slip positions or some even fade away due to… Continue reading Sailing Past Financial Products to Build Enterprise Efficiency
In discussing modern workplaces, we can come to the agreement that the ‘gig economy’ may be the future. However, neither its definition nor metrics for measuring a gig worker has been formalised globally, yet. The definition of a gig worker in India according to the Lok Sabha is ‘a person who performs work or… Continue reading Modelling the Well-Being of a Gig Worker
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
Salim Ashraf, who is now 49, was born and raised in Bengaluru. He lives in a small but comfortable two bed-room house in Bamboo Bazaar, Bengaluru. His house is surrounded with shops selling bamboo furniture and ladders. He lives here with his wife who is a home maker, and his two sons aged 14… Continue reading People of Bharat: Salim Ashraf, Bengaluru
Photo by Rhiannon from Pixabay ‘If we want to know what a business is we have to start with its purpose. And its purpose must lie outside of the business itself. In fact, it must lie in society since a business enterprise is an organ of society.’ ~ Peter Drucker, The Practice of Management In… Continue reading MSME Growth: Five Questions to Ask
Image by Uplift Mutuals 1. Insurance market — a fast growth, but for Bharat a long road ahead The Indian insurance market is growing faster than the global market. During 2018–19, the total insurance premium in India increased by 9.3 % whereas global total insurance premium increased by 1.5 %. However, we still… Continue reading Insuring Bharat: Incremental Growth & The Long Road Ahead