Author Archives: admin

Why I Tried Digital – A Dairy Distributor’s Story

Catalyst

In this field story, a dairy distributor talks about the challenges and pain points in operating in a cash-intensive ecosystem and shares his experience in transacting using a UPI platform as part of Catalyst’s pilot in Jaipur. 

Paybee: Let’s Buzz Payments

Catalyst

PayBee is a UPI-based payments platform that digitizes B2B payments across all verticals in the market, with a focus on the dairy, FMCG, and pharma sectors. This field story captures operational insights and challenges from Paybee’s experience in digitizing payments … Read More

Digitizing Dairy B2B Supply Chain: Experience from the Field

Tunisha Kapoor, Preethi Rao

This note presents learnings from Catalyst’s pilot to digitise the B2B supply chain of Saras Dairy in Jaipur. The pilot project was identified as a potential use case with a strong business value proposition for all stakeholders and an opportunity … Read More

Digitising Khatta System – Journey of MeraPaper

Catalyst

The field story illustrates how the founders of Merapaper, an innovative mobile application, conceived the idea for the application and took it from ideation to implementation. The application aims to revolutionise the time-intensive, cash dependent and high frequency payment collection … Read More

Service-level Agreements for Inclusive Urban Sanitation Services – Lessons from a Global Review

Sujatha Srinivasan

In 2017, BMGF/DFID commissioned a rapid cross-regional review of the outcomes of this partnership portfolio and identified lessons that can be applied to future projects and in cities’ future investments in sanitation services. This report documents key lessons from this … Read More

Modelling Credit and Savings Behaviour of Chit Fund Participants

Preethi Rao, Sharon Buteau

This article presents findings from a pilot study that sought to analyse how information about chit fund clients, their retrospective transaction data, and their track records in the bidding process can be optimally used to develop credit scoring algorithms for … Read More

Developing a Framework to Assess Socio-economic Value of Open Data in India

Sharon Buteau, Preethi Rao, Anshuman Kr Mehta, Vigneshraja Kadirvell

This paper attempts to develop a framework to assess the socioeconomic value of Open Data in India. The paper discusses the various actors, their roles vis-a-vis usage of Open Data to generate intended output, and the net results of expected … Read More

Engaging the Private Sector in Urban Sanitation Services – A Review of South Asian Cities

Sujatha Srinivasan

In 2017, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation commissioned a rapid review of the South Asia regional portfolio of BMGF/DFID comprising of city projects on public-private partnerships in urban sanitation delivery. This report presents a synthesis of findings and lessons … Read More

Building Hooks and Ladders: A Case for Integrating Digital Payments and Lending to Small Merchants

John Arun, Ankur Gautam

This report presents insights from a study conducted for informing the credit operations of the Catalyst initiative at IFMR. The scoping study was commissioned for assessing the credit needs of micromerchants and understanding whether credit products can be used as … Read More

Mapping the Merchant’s Mind: An Analysis of Digital Payment Behaviors by Fixed Store Merchants in Jaipur

Badal Malick, Rajesh Shukla, Megha Shree, Vaisnavi Gnanasekaran, Pratibha Joshi, Harsh Nisar

This report by Catalyst and People Research on India’s Consumer Economy (PRICE) provides a deeper context on small business profiles, infrastructure, needs, behaviors, and perceptions based on a large sample survey. The study focuses on small merchants with fixed establishments, … Read More