Grassroots Innovation: Three Hacks from the Frontlines of COVID Recovery

While COVID-19 presents an unprecedented challenge for micro, small, and medium sized enterprises (MSMEs) in India, particularly women-led businesses, crisis often begets innovation and opens the door to digital innovators working on the front lines of the pandemic. Under these circumstances, women entrepreneurs are redefining innovation and offering “hacks” to survive the economic downturn produced by the protracted lockdown and social distancing measures. 

What’s happening? COVID-19 has no doubt disproportionately impacted women-led businesses in India, with 1 in 3 women entrepreneurs reporting they have shut down or temporarily closed their businesses during this period. During the crisis, 23 percent of women lost jobs versus 17 percent of men. In fact, informal women-owned businesses—which represent 90 percent of women-owned businesses—were 1.4x more likely than formalized businesses to face permanent closures. Those that haven’t closed have turned to personal savings and informal loans to bridge cash shortfalls to keep their businesses afloat.

Why it matters: As in previous economic shocks, women entrepreneurs demonstrate a level of resilience and know-how that underscores their role in powering economic recovery in India.

You might be wondering: What can we do to address the gender gap deepened by COVID-19, while tapping into the determination and innovative spirit of women entrepreneurs? Enter Mann Deshi.

Mann Deshi is an organization dedicated to the economic empowerment of rural women. Inspired by their determination and innovation, the Mastercard Center for Inclusive Growth has been a close partner of Mann Deshi since 2018 with an investment in their network of peer entrepreneurs called the Mann Deshi Rural Women Chamber of Commerce. The Chamber of Commerce was launched in 2014 by Mann Deshi to equip women entrepreneurs with the business know-how, networks and digital skills they need for their business to succeed. Last week, we expanded this partnership with the launch of an additional chapter of the Rural Women Chamber of Commerce in Kolhapur, Maharashtra and the introduction of new workshops to equip women entrepreneurs with the digital skills needed to weather crises like COVID-19.

"Women are coming to digital platforms not just for financial transaction but also to market their products. For marketing their products digitally, they have to make it attractive too. The chamber of commerce's digital platform helps them to be digitally savvy and teaches them to create their own digital source of money." - Chetna Sinha, Founder, Mann Deshi Foundation

Our work with Mann Deshi is one of many investments that comprises Mastercard India’s $33MM (250 crores) commitment to helping small business across India to support COVID-19 recovery. 

What does this mean on the ground? Chetna Sinha—the pioneering founder of Mann Deshi—and I sat down last week to discuss how our continued partnership will tap into women entrepreneurs’ determination. She told us a story about Savita and Roopali, two female business owners in Satara, forced to shut down their respective businesses in the face of COVID-19. I took away 3 key “hacks” that made Savita and Roopali exceptionally adaptable in the face of the COVID-19 crisis, giving innovation a whole new meaning:

1. Turn crisis into an opportunity. Business agility and flexibility are paramount for rural women when it comes to operating a business. Roopali took the cloth she would typically use for her school uniform business and started making masks, including a large order for the Maharashtra police. She’s made over 1 million masks to date.
2. Use your networks and be where your customers are. Rural women empathize with their customers, making them excellent digital marketers when equipped with digital tools. Savita saw an opportunity to leverage WhatsApp to tell the villagers returning from Mumbai to wait out lockdowns—future customers—that she was taking online orders for her famous vada-pav (a delicious Indian sandwich). Her business quickly blew up!
3. Quickly adapt to changing consumer preferences. During lockdown, rural customers were no longer able to buy items in person nor make payments with cash. This led to the rapid adoption of online marketplaces and digital payments. Both Savita and Roopali leaned into the fact that COVID-19 forced their customers to quickly adopt digital tools, harnessing this shift in consumer behavior to quickly scale their new businesses far faster than would have been possible pre-lockdown. 

The big picture: Women are resilient and determined, something we can use to steer us out of this crisis. In fact, over 64% of women entrepreneurs are confident their business will recover. This gives me hope that despite facing an uphill battle, with the right partners like Mann Deshi, we can tap into the entrepreneurial spirit of rural women in India and power India’s (and the world’s) economic recovery.

Learn more about the Center's work by visiting www.mastercardcenter.org.