It has been a year of transitions for workforces around the world. We have firstly gone remote, essentials only and socially distant. As the nature of work evolves, so do the skills required to adapt and survive in the new ecosystem.These transitions are not the result of Covid-19 alone. They have been in the… Continue reading Data Ownership & Gig Economy Knowledge Workers’ Perspectives
Photo by Matyas Rehak on Shutterstock Insurance has an important role to play in agricultural risk management borne out of the ever-increasing instances of extreme weather events globally. However, its contribution to risk reduction and resilience depends upon the quality of the insurance tool; and whether it has been designed to respond efficiently to the needs… Continue reading Meso-level Index Insurance in Practice
‘Did you have lunch?’ I ask Narayan. ‘No madam and no breakfast either.’ I arrange a South-Indian meal for him and encourage him to settle down while we wait for his lunch to arrive. At first he is restless and walks around the office looking at the posters on the walls. As lunch arrives,… Continue reading People of Bharat: Narayan, Bengaluru
Photo by Héctor J. Rivas on Unsplash One among the many, that the coronavirus pandemic highlighted, amplified — is the complicated relationship Tirupur, a textile cluster in Tamil Nadu has with China. Tirupur exports about Rs 26,000 crore worth of textile products primarily to Europe and US. It also has a domestic sales of about Rs 24,000… Continue reading Tirupur’s complicated relationship with China
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