Refrigeration Solution for Vulnerable Fish-Industry Women

Strengthening the livelihoods of the vulnerable women of fishing communities through collectivization and technology, financing and market facilitation

Around the world, both the livelihoods and nutrition of small coastal communities are heavily dependent on local fishing industries. The availability of supply is becoming increasingly unreliable due to extreme climate events and persistent overfishing, issues compounded by the volatility of local and global fish markets, which fluctuate according to the season and daily demand. Additionally, more so than with nearly any other commodity, the price for fish is directly correlated with its freshness, making access to refrigeration essential. 

S3IDF’s project in the Uttar Kannada District, on the western coast of India will employ our approach proven successful over the past 15 years to connect poor and marginalized fisher-families with the technological solutions, business management skills, and formal financial access they need to strengthen their livelihoods and increase their incomes. Typically, the men of the region catch the fish for their families, while the women are responsible for selling the catch at the local markets. However, the women currently pay Rs. 300 per day for ice (an exorbitant fee that can eat up as much as 50% of their daily income), and by the afternoon once the ice has melted, the fish left unsold have lost their value. 

A small scale cold storage facility collectively owned by a group of women self-help groups (SHGs) will have an enormous impact on their individual margins and financial security, converting a daily expense into a valuable asset. It would extend the shelf life of the fish by several days, allowing the women to store their families’ unsold catch and recover its value if the demand is lower than their supply, as well as produce ice, eliminating the daily expenditure and physical effort of attaining it. Additionally, this technology can serve to decrease their vulnerability to daily market fluctuations and reduce the amount of wasted fish.

Through hands-on business mentorship and training, S3IDF and our partners will enable these women-led SHGs to collectivize into a larger producer company with greater bargaining power, security, and access to entitlements.

Our market-based solution allows the most vulnerable members of the fishing industry to environmentally and financially sustainably grow their businesses, realize their full economic potential, and create a better life for themselves and their families. This replicable intervention is woven into the fabric of the local, national and global fishing markets, and can be implemented in marginalized fishing communities up and down the Indian coastline, with potential transferability to other such populations globally.

Our solution involves an innovative process, which re-engineers market forces to better connect women from marginalized fishing families with the financing, business skills and refrigeration equipment at the appropriate scale they need to greatly increase their incomes. S3IDF will work closely with a technology provider to design a customized cold storage solution at the right scale that will require only single-phase power, a necessity due to the unreliable electricity supply in the area and improve the livelihoods of the fishing communities. 

The cold storage facility will not only have an immediate impact on the women’s daily incomes by eliminating the cost and physical effort of purchasing ice each day, but it will also cut down on the number of fish wasted by extending the shelf life of the unsold fish up to several days. It will additionally serve as a valuable shared financial asset, which can later be used as collateral that the women can leverage to borrow against beyond the duration of our intervention.  

Over the next year, S3IDF will work with both the SHGs and local technology providers to design and commission a refrigeration solution that will meet the needs of several communities in the Uttar Kannada District of Bangalore. We will work with the initial group of 5-6 SHGs (each with 7 members on average, with each member representing a fishing family) in order to establish a viable business model around the technology and build capacity through hands-on mentorship and business training on cash flow tracking and financial literacy.  

Having established and deployed a pilot refrigeration unit in year 2, by year 3 we will expand the pilot by deploying up to an additional 4 refrigeration units, each to a cluster of 5-6 SHGs to impact the lives of roughly 875 individuals. In years 4-5, once pilot testing is complete, we will further disseminate this technology, beginning with the known 124 SHGs in the region (representing roughly 2,400 fishing family members), and lay the foundation for collectivization of the groups into a producer company, a legal entity with significant rights and entitlements in India, and enable larger market-share capture.

To efficiently reach our beneficiaries, S3IDF will work through groups of women in fishing families collectivized into SHGs. Our local on-the-ground partner, Manuvikasa has been working closely with the population to mobilize and increase SHG membership since 2016. S3IDF will offer financial literacy training workshops and hands-on business mentorship to build the women’s capacity and maximize their ability to capitalize on financial services, as well as continue to work with the community to identify and deploy the appropriate cold storage solution. S3IDF will further provide the facilitated connections and financial de-risking to enable the formal capital flow.

Through initial methodological dissemination, we are serving the first 10 SHGs, comprised of roughly 60 direct members and representing 240 individuals locally. Our meetings, discussions, and engagement with the women are establishing the groundwork and collecting essential data for future financial literacy training, capacity building, and facilitated financial access. Further, through our engagements to date we have been able to compile the measurements necessary to source a technology solution responsive to their unique needs and generate a productive relationship with an interested equipment provider looking to expand their technological applications, effectively initiating a systems change within the regional market.

In year 1 we will deploy the first refrigeration unit to a small collective made up of 5-6 SHGs, representing about 30 female members. Each SHG member comes from a fishing family, thus including family members, around 120 individuals will directly benefit from an increase in income in the first year. The intervention has the potential to reach 124 SHGs in the region with approximately 750 female members and thus will impact roughly 3,000 individuals in the area in year 5. These families have traditionally been entrenched in poverty, which has only worsened since the arrival of deep-sea fishing vessels.

S3IDF as an organization has been implementing projects employing a market systems approach across the agriculture, waste management, and energy sectors in India since 2001. Further, our staff in both Cambridge, MA and Bangalore, India have combined decades of relevant experience in pro-poor infrastructure entrepreneur support, financing facilitation, technology sourcing, and capacity building. Additionally, over the past 2 years, we have established a successful track record with our various grassroots partners, including Manuvikasa, who themselves have been working with this group of fisherwomen since 2016, and with similar marginalized populations for 14 years.   

By incrementally building up the capacity of the women-led SHGs, our intervention will support the community on its journey towards establishing a self-sustaining member-controlled producer company. The program will be sustained by connecting the women to local financial services utilizing innovative risk-mitigation techniques that we have successfully employed in the past, such as loan guarantees and technology-buy back agreements. In conjunction with the immediate increase in income, S3IDF will work with the women to develop relationships with local banks to enable their deepened financial inclusion, a permanent solution that would include access to working capital and other critical services, allowing the women to transition away from predatory informal money lenders and continuous cycles of debt. In the final phase of the project, S3IDF aims to connect the producer company and SHGs to buyers higher up the value chain to further increase their margins.

S3IDF will sustain its operations through grants at the initial stages to subsidize our work in the technology identification phase and to carry out foundational capacity building training. We will also implement a fee-based structure with the local banks, technology provider, and eventually, the producer organizations and SHGs (at a suitable level responsive to their revenue streams).

MIT’s extensive network will help our organization disseminate our methodology and theory of change to a wider audience than we would be able to reach on our own, and we are excited about the possibility of learning and engaging with an entity on the forefront of innovation and sustainable intervention design. Additionally, the initial funding to assist in sourcing the refrigeration solution is essential for the beginning stages of our initiative. 

Identifying a refrigeration solution at the correct scale that is easy to operate, contains the necessary amenities and electricity specifications that our target beneficiaries need to improve their livelihoods, and is at or below price parity with their current ice purchases is our current biggest challenge. Solve could assist S3IDF by facilitating relationships with technology providers to help us evaluate a broader range of potential solutions and fill this market gap.