Digital Ecosystem for women's financial inclusion in India

In India, 25% of the population still live below the poverty line. Due to the Covid-19 pandemic, the Indian economy has contracted by 8% and unemployment has risen, being women the most affected. The situation of women continues to be vulnerable: child marriage (27%), domestic violence (28%) or gender gap (66,8%).

To address gender inequality, especially its financial inclusion , self-help groups have established themselves in India as effective programs to improve access to credit and training for vulnerable women to improve their livelihoods, through a methodology based on mutual trust and support. The women participating in SHGs in India (currently 75 million) are mostly poor and more than half illiterate. Predominantly, the livelihood of the women is related to agriculture or small businesses. In most cases in the informal sector, unable to access formal employment opportunities.

However, factors such as the digital gap, isolation in remote areas that stops them from marketing their products in larger markets and lack of timely finance prevent SHGs from reaching their full potential in today's digital age.

Our solution aims to reach 8.726 low-income women in remote communities in India and then scale to reach 75M women.

Our solution is a blockchain backed inclusive platform (co-designed with users) that allows tokenised access to micro-finance and loans, and market expansion for products and services created by SHGs women in India. Accessible even from non smart cell phones technology entry barriers are minimised as never before and can be optimised and have easy UI adoption with minimum training. Both the API´s and marketplace blockchain backed open applications can easily be adopted by NGOs and other organisations to manage micro-investment funds, micro-loans, trace and report returns and real impact, provided secured digital easy to use digital wallets and scale current circular economy in and great ecosystem that can include all SHGs creating a bigger virtuous market of 75 million women, already culturalised about self supporting,  that already exist but it is not interconnected. On the other hand, the blockchain customised marketplace applications will upload SHG´s individuals and collective products and services to make them available for consumers committed to fair trade worldwide with immutable blockchain SDG´s impact print and reporting. A SHG blockchain backed token will allow to create self control, governance and stimulus for easy financial integration and leverage self-sustainable circular economy to around 75 million women.

Our target population are all women members of SHGs in India (currently 75 million), although in the first phase we are only working with our partner Bosco Seva Kendra network (8.726 women). 83% of them live below the poverty line and more than half are illiterate according to a study carried out by our partner Don Bosco, with a sample of more than 6.000 SHGs. Most work in the informal sector due to their lack of education and skills (especially in rural areas, where the majority live). Thanks to being part of a SHG, women have been empowered in a multifaceted and multidimensional way. They are on the way from a position of invisibility to one of power.  Thanks to saving as a group and accessing micro credits many have already started their own small businesses or are engaged in income-generating activities. However, the digital gap and the fact that digital platforms are not sufficiently inclusive for them, it is preventing them from optimising the SHG Indian network, that only by digitalising could achieve great efficiency in terms of financial transactions among groups, product marketing and sharing and supporting each other in infinite ways.

To understand their needs our partner in the project, Don Bosco (that has been supporting the creation of SHGs for decades in India and that successfully empowered already over 86K women) frequently carry out trainings with the SHGs of their network, to recognise the existence of a collective problem from direct life experience of women, and to understand its magnitude. For the success of moonshot projects such as this one, it is imperative not only to listen and understand the existent collective problem, but to ensure those that need to lead the change truly believe in the possibility of making a change and turn all that listening into concrete community initiatives.  

These concrete community initiatives are then co-created along with women of the SHGs and other actors interested and invited to what we call “co-creating Labs”. In those labs, testing of prototypes help the program to finally create viable products, that we then accelerate engaging empowered participants to take advantage of the digital products to accelerate their own small businesses and income generation activities.

SHGs are circular economy groups led by vulnerable women established to provide access to minimum finance and small markets in order to develop their communities.  The groups represent an enormous opportunity if the model could scale. Technology can now help to accelerate access to financing individual and collective initiatives, help market their products in new larger markets and even create their own economy through their token,  and therefore increase competitiveness and wealth for millions of women in India and the world.

Arancha Martínez: EU Women Innovator 2020, Acumen Fellow among others. She has been working to tackle poverty through technological innovation for 13 years. Her most relevant achievement has been the development of a biometrical app to enable NGOs to accurately identify street children an efficiently and securely manage their data, first piloted and implemented in India, where she lived for 5 years.

Celia Roca: ITWILLBE Director, with 8 years of experience in social an innovation project ,specialized in field social work 

Manuel Hurtado: Serial Business and Social entrepreneur, team builder, philanthropist. Has collaborated with projects in India for 10 years.

Julius Akinyemi: Former Pepsico and Wells Fargo Global VP of Innovation. Social Entrpreneur. Entrepreneur in residence at MIT MediaLab. ComGo Advisory board lead. 

Rajish Rajan.Marine Engineer, ComGo CSO and Blockchain Solutions Officer

Sanachit Mehra, Software and IT Engineer CTO and Blockchain lead

Mr Louis: MSc Maths and MBA (NGO Management). Bosconet National Project Manager and PhD & Academic Research Guidance Director. Has decades of experience working with SHGs in different states in India.

Mr Thomas Aquinas: Engineer, Youth at Risk and ChildMISS Manager at Bosconet, has been working for the past 6 years in digitalisation and innovative projects to introduce disruptive technology such as AI, big data or blockchain into the humanitarian aid field.

Although part of the technology is already developed and tested in other use cases, in order to adapt it to this specific one and/or develop new functionalities, we need to undergo a listening phase along with the women to better adapt the user experience and remove all barriers to ensure 100% inclusiveness before the pilot. 

It´s a new application of an existing technology

Our solution aims to reach 8.726 low-income women in remote communities in India and then scale to reach 75M women.

We are looking for a strong committed partner to help us take our project forward. We are sure our technology can create a huge impact in the world as we have already seen the first results in 2020-21. Our President, Arancha Martinez was awarded European Woman Innovator 2020 by the European Commission for the impact generated so far. But we need the best companions with us to succeed as we know we can't make it alone and the challenge is huge. We want to access the best talent, social committed people that embrace our mission, talented people that will help us see what we do not see and what we are not doing good. We are a perseverant team that has created huge impact with little resources thanks to our passion. But we are ambitious too and we know our project requires lots of resources, knowledge and support to overcome all the barriers we will face in the scaling period. And we are sure Caterpillar Foundation and MIT Solve teams can be the game changers for our project to succeed.

It is remarkable at the level of product innovation: first digital blockchain backed platform to be designed by the women of the SHGs and that will create an entire digital ecosystem with its own governance model and economy thanks to its token. Its functionalities will aim to solve the challenges of SHGs -access to financing, difficulty accessing new markets with their business, digital divide, etc.

Digitising and tokenising the current SHGs system has the potential to increase interactions between women from different groups and regions, generating a much more efficient network than the actual.

It makes possible to maximise the financing possibilities in the ecosystem itself, as well as to attract new forms of financing.  At the product level, it allows increasing the sales to female entrepreneurs, beyond their community. Also, breaking the barrier of access to technology and opening up to the digital world, opens up a huge possibility of access to open knowledge, to training, to mentoring, etc. Built with an APIs First approach, the business model facilitates the delivery of the technology, making it inclusive for the women of the self help groups.

The governance model will also be innovative. SHGs are already innovative in this regard and this project will lead to a digital environment with a similar model, but with greater possibilities thanks to the fact that the new technologies further enhance the possibility of more distributed governance, decentralised, horizontal, democratised. 

• Collaboration with NGOs (provide numbers of current partner Bosconect for the prototypes) but also of Navsarjan, Manvi and other NGOs we are currently collaborating with)
• Collaboration with public administration
• Collaboration with financial institutions
• Collaboration with international development institutions (The World Bank, UN)

Proposal aligned with government plans and initiatives regarding reducing poverty and improving rural livelihoods –National Rural Livelihoods- and with the aid to women offered from the Ministry of Women and Development Child –Women's Empowerment Schemes-.

This is important for the implementation and success of the proposal. But, in addition, the proposed strategy also focuses on strengthening the initiatives of citizens –such as the Multistate Cooperative Society and the SHGs- that fill the gap by that many of the initiatives launched by the government in the area of social development have not worked. 

Level of satisfaction of the women who have participated.

Level of motivation of women with the possibility of improvement.

Acceptance among women of the proposed innovation initiatives.

Nº of co-creation activities carried-out.

Nº of co-created prototypes.

Nº of women benefited from the prototypes

Nº of jobs created/strengthened through the solution

Nº of active women on the platform

Nº of active SHGs on the platform

Nº of products/services in the marketplace

Nº of entrepreneurships financed through the platform.

Sales produced on the platform. 

INPUTS

• Technological development
• Talent (ComGo, and external through our partners - IBM, Acumen Foundation, United Nations, Bosconet)
• Marketing 

OUTPUTS

• The Digital Ecosystem. “One-stop-solution” for SHGs that offers various services (crowdfunding, crowdlending, project management, marketplace for products, real-time auditing for projects, CRM, automated impact measurement, social profile/CV, etc to women)
• Training services to close the digital gap and ensure women access the digital economy. 

These outputs are delivered to vulnerable women but indirectly impact in their communities thanks to increasing and improving the income generating activities of the women.

OUTCOMES

Short term

• Vulnerable women participating in SHGs have access to the digital economy 
• Women increase their income generation by selling their products online
• Women from SHGs have quick access to funds
• New digital economy governed by SHGs that take advantage of blockchain and tokens to create social value

 Long term outcomes

• Women empowered and included in the digital economy
• % of women entrepreneurs in India increases
• % of businesses led by women increases in India
• Rural communities where SHGs are established are developed.

Even if the solution incorporates other technologies such as AI or ML (which will be key in the medium term), the core technology currently powering the project is blockchain. The solution is based in The Common Good Chain (ComGo) blockchain backed application for the social good. ComGo is a private permissioned blockchain (built on IBM hyperledger) set of applications created and updated since 2018. Decens of social entities, including United Nations Technology Innovation Labs and IBM SPIG (EU) recognized ComGo as one of the best blockchain developments for social good. ComGo was a finalist at the EU Blockchain4good Award 2020. Blockchain applies perfectly to the project as financial inclusion, digital wallets, tokenized processes, digital ID, project and products traceability and impact measurement can create a unique opportunity to leverage and scale current SHGs offline activities, unleashing its potential in the digital economy and ensuring vulnerable women are not left behind. 

Our diverse team is formed by both women and men from different countries and ethnics (India, Spain, Nigeria), different religions (catholic, hinduists) and cultural background and different age (from 25 to 60 year old members). We all believe that the best ideas always come from diverse teams and when you invite everybody to give their opinions. We have all worked in different contexts, countries and cultures and we are all aware (because we have also failed in the past) that only by co-creating our solution with the beneficiaries it will succeed. So, we can say that apart from our team, we will be strongly partnering with many women and leaders from the communities we serve.

We are are working with a hybrid structure. For the R+D and development phase we are working with collaborators and we are not charging our users or beneficiaries. 

Our key partners are currently NGOs & Foundations. Our value to them is to help them scale their social impact though our technology, as well as help their programs be more efficient, traced, measured and reported. Our solution will increase their transparency and improve their fundraising.

Our beneficiaries are vulnerable women participating in SHGs in India, that urgently need to be trained digital skills to be able to participate in their country's economy which is becoming more and more digital. They will benefit from new ways of accessing support, funds, loans, grants, markets for the products, etc.