LIVELIHOOD & SUSTAINABILITY
WGF’s Livelihood & Sustainability Council’s (LSC) mission is to enhance rural economy through co-creating and advancing rural enterprises, using technology innovations and scientific processes, sharing best practices and developing techniques to foster trade and employment for rural populations.
WHEELS Sustainability Initiative: “Swavalamban” - Empowering Rural Women Entrepreneurs through Local Market Structures
Problem Description & Solution Approach:
Problem/Challenge:
Across India’s rural agrarian communities, the main issue that farmer households face is a lack of adequate income. Indian farmers depend on agriculture and certain crops that grow at various times during the year. However, crop failure and unfavorable weather conditions harm a farmer’s income. Typically, these farms across India have men as the primary crop growers, while women manage the home. With only 13.9% of India’s rural women owning land and 64% of the population residing in rural areas, there is an urgent need to provide women with access to meaningful income-generation opportunities so families can rise above the poverty line.
Solution:
Drishtee, a partner of WHEELS, is leveraging its expertise to empower women to become entrepreneurs and contribute to their family income through an innovative model: “Swavalamban”, a 4-step process that consists of Seeding, Development, Growth, and Sustainability.
In the Seeding phase, Drishtee leverages its local and regional ecosystem to identify stakeholders, trainers, and local resources, allowing for wide-scale production. Drishtee also designs training sessions and utilizes virtual lessons when trainers are unavailable. Drishtee conducts research before entering villages to find “influencers” (professors, teachers, etc.) and create an executive board, the foundation for the next phases. The next phase, Development, consists of providing training in specific skills to women. Subsequently, it includes the process of identifying value chains and forming micro-enterprises. Throughout this entire process, women are encouraged to barter their goods through a mobile application.
This innovative aspect allows local villages living in a cluster of 5 to 10 households to exchange goods – carpets, accessories, and cleaning products – on a cashless basis. Women then learn from feedback and improve their design, marketing, or packaging. This enhances their chances of success and provides access to online marketplaces like Flipkart or Amazon India. More importantly, the application solves a huge problem that many ventures have when starting a business – obtaining an early network of customers. The application solves this problem by connecting women with bartering locations, providing them with a base of customers. The Growth phase consists of scaling product lines, providing debt financing to micro-enterprises, and forming partnerships with machinery providers.
Lastly, there is the Sustainability phase where women reach self-sustaining volumes and revenues. More importantly, they create a collaborative work environment and even become trainers to create job opportunities for more women, enabling a circular economy and a scalable model.
Technology/Innovation:
Drishtee has integrated a panoply of innovative elements into its model, enabling effectiveness and scalability. As mobile phone penetration increases across India, more individuals are gaining access to smartphones. As a result, digital payments are becoming more widespread, and Drishtee’s innovative solution capitalizes on this ubiquity of technology. The application allows women entrepreneurs to connect to bartering stations and retail shops, facilitating the cashless exchange of equal-value goods. Furthermore, the application establishes connections with supply chain vendors, allowing women to scale their production and broaden their business networks. This strategic blend of digital tools creates a scalable model that is capable of reaching a plethora of villages.
Achievements to-date
By utilizing a far-reaching ecosystem of partners as well as an innovative and scalable solution, Drishtee has been able to train 68,722 women across 6,244 villages. In addition, they have allowed 109,070 families to barter 1,500 goods worth Rs. 26,047,489. 3,160 customer service points have been established as well, and over 11,431 women producers have been connected to local markets. Lastly, over 500 supply chain facilitators have been utilized and over 60 micro-enterprises have been contributing to a low-emission circular economy and scalable solution.
Scale of Opportunity
Drishtee’s goal to expand their scalable model is achievable through its plans to integrate technology within its process. Drishtee plans to implement various artificial intelligence (AI) technologies, such as voice and image recognition, within their application to streamline the bartering process. WHEELS encourages IIT Alumni to help Drishtee expand their scalable model across all Indian villages by leveraging their connections with micro-finance and supply-chain partners and using their technology expertise to integrate AI throughout the process. As a result, Drishtee’s cost-effective, scalable, and innovative model can change the lives of millions of households across rural India.
WGF leaders providing oversight:
Ratan Agarwal, Amb. Pradeep Kapur
Call To Action
- * Here is an opportunity for the affluent IIT alumni to come together to help scale the mission and create a lasting impact in the country we live.
- * Active evangelizing with your employer/network to open doors for more corporate commitments for quality IT Services and community transformations therefrom.
