Women's Entrepreneurship

SEEDING WOMEN’S ENTREPRENEURSHIP

EMPOWERMENT: LEADERSHIP: LIVELIHOODS: SUSTAINABILITY

Training

Fostering entrepreneurship training & leadership skills to give women the social capital to catapult into business leadership.

Funding

Providing access to seed fund capital and business expanison loans through microfinance institutions.

Distribution

Facilitating rural marketing, distributing by spotting new business opportunities in health, clean energy, water, sanitization.

Networking

Enabling access to a poor network of grassroots entrepreneurs, who act as a support systems.

Women’s Entrepreneurship

Context

Regions that have been hit by disasters, whether droughts, earthquakes, or floods, face the task of rebuilding their communities and lives in a more resilient manner.

Trapped at the intersections of poverty, gender and other forms of marginalization, women are the worst affected in these zones. Socio -cultural norms deny them ownership of land, house, property and other capital assets, and traditional barriers restrict their livelihood options.

With limitations to education or training, and minimal access to resources and skills and entrepreneurship opportunities, women in resource-poor geographies live in continued crises, and are pushed further to the margins.

Women’s Entrepreneurship

SSP’s Approach

SSP’s Approach

SSP’s training and mentorship eco-system provides women business skills, financial literacy, marketing support and links to large companies through a last mile distribution network, and start-up capital. Continuous business handholding and counselling by a local network of mentors further motivates women to expand their businesses and gradually move towards – earning sustainable incomes and further taking on community roles as problem solvers and environment leaders.

SSP’s livelihood to entrepreneurship pathway focuses on:

Empowering ordinary self-employed women to recognize themselves as entrepreneurs.
Facilitating grassroots women to become effective last mile entrepreneurs by partnering with companies entering rural markets such as solar energy, water, sanitation, nutrition etc.
Improving women’s access to resources – micro finance, skills and markets.
Establishing a course on entrepreneurship education to train ordinary self-employed women to recognize themselves as entrepreneurs and set up robust enterprises.
Develop a cadre of women mentors and leaders who act as the backbone of the entrepreneurs learning and exchange network.
Set up women-led Resource Centre that act as the go to centre and platform for local-to-local dialogue and linkages.

Impact (2016-2020)

40,000 women launched as Entrepreneurs
Women have been supported through loan amount of Rs. 23 crores
Additional annual income generated – Rs. 189 crores

Women’s Entrepreneurship

Evolution

Inception: Since inception, SSP has developed a widespread network of Self-Help Group (SHGs) of over 100,000 women, that has gone beyond the first-steps of reconstruction and savings to build social, political, and economic competencies for its women members.

Social enterprise creation: In 2006, the SSP group of social enterprises was created as an ecosystem to nurture various aspects of the programme and to develop and refine the value chains to help the women to succeed in hitherto untapped markets. This consortium of four enterprises currently facilitates formulation and leadership of self-help groups, social enterprises, and community-centred initiatives in impact sectors such as clean energy, water and sanitation, health and nutrition, agriculture, and food security.

Sakhi Federations: SSP and its group of social enterprises has mentored women to lead community level umbrella-network of Sakhi SHGs and Sakhi Federations, launching a dynamic umbrella-network of 5,500 SHGs in the geographical regions of their work. The initiatives are strengthened through women’s leadership, and long- and short-term partnerships with local government bodies, state governments, and corporate houses.

Ecosystem support: SSP has created robust eco-system to support women’s entrepreneurship and leadership with a wide-ranging access to services of financial services, skill-building, and livelihoods generation planks, so women are able to make a meaningful social and economic contribution. This impact goes well beyond the project, and has a multiplier effect. SSP also builds the credit-worthiness of women so that they can avail initial start-up or seed capital.

WELI: The strategic goal of the Women’s Entrepreneurship and Leadership Institute is to build an overarching system for the future, that teaches and nurtures entrepreneurial and leadership spirit among grassroots women. This WELI ecosystem will act as a local and state level platform to facilitate the overall organization vision of facilitating women-led community initiatives for sustainable and inclusive development

Collaboration: A crucial game-changer has been creation of the SSP network of women entrepreneurs to work collaboratively with each other and to scale across and within sectors such as trading, services and production. SSP is currently partnering with the private sector and government for promoting rural businesses, marketing and distribution.

Women’s Entrepreneurship

The Change

The Change

The program has improved awareness, affordability, and accessibility for a range of socially responsible products in the rural villages of Maharshtra and Bihar.

The micro-businesses started by Sakhi’s are contributing as an additional income stream and empowering them to be financially independent.
Sakhis have garnered significant social recognition through last mile business engagements.
Since lockdown in March 2020, SSP quickly adapted to a low physical and high remote mode of program delivery. SSP partnered with Gaavkhoj to launch an online platform that gives Sakhis and Consumers an opportunity to digitally order products. Digital Inclusion has been one of the key unintended impacts emerging out in the last two years of the program, and needs scaling up.

Value Chains?

Women’s Entrepreneurship

The Change

SSP’s efforts in building rural women’s entrepreneurship has ushered in a holistic transformation in the lives of women associated with the network by enhancing their skills and business knowledge helping them establish and scale their existing business and venture into new and innovative businesses.

These powerful tales of transformation have three dimensions –
1) Entrepreneurial, 2) Social and 3) Financial.

Women experience an uplifting of their social status and also at the household level, supporting increased incomes, savings, and an improved credit portfolio.