Publications

Business Readiness Scorecard for Women

Rigzom Wangchuk, Ria Dutta, M P Karthick, Kanika Joshi | March 9, 2020

The Business Readiness Scorecard for Women-Handloom and Handicrafts Sector (WBRS-HHS) is a data-driven diagnostic tool, which attempts to identify key constraints and high-performance areas for home-based enterprises in the handloom and handicrafts sectors of India. The WBRS tool was developed … Read More

Access to Affordable Daycare and Women’s Economic Opportunities: Evidence from a Cluster-Randomised Intervention in India

Parul Agarwal, Anoushaka Chandrashekar, Sam Harper | March 8, 2020

In this paper, the authors used data from a cluster-randomized trial in rural Rajasthan, India to evaluate the impact of providing access to a community-based daycare program on women’s economic outcomes two years later. The sample included 2858 mothers with … Read More

Markers of Trust: Recreating Digital Ecosystems for Women in Low-income Clusters

Shilpa Pandit | December 1, 2019

This learning note presents insights on the key aspects for designing a more inclusive and enabling digital ecosystem for women from low-income households, based on immersive qualitative research. The study focused on four different segments of female micro-entrepreneurs and self-employed … Read More

Digitizing Micro-merchant Ecosystems – Supply Chains

Catalyst | December 1, 2019

This report presents insights from a series of experiments that explore the potential of digitizing payments within dairy, pharma and FMCG supply chains. The experiments were conducted as part of Catalyst’s digital payments lab in Jaipur, Rajasthan. 

Digitizing Micro-merchant Ecosystems – Roving Service Providers

Catalyst | December 1, 2019

This report presents insights from Catalyst’s survey of roving service providers in Jaipur. It highlights pain points that this segment of micromerchants faced in adopting and using digital payments, and presents tailored strategies to enable digitisation. 

Digitizing Micro-merchant Ecosystems – Fixed Stores

Catalyst | September 1, 2019

This report presents insights from Catalyst’s survey of fixed-store establishments in Jaipur. It highlights pain points that micromerchants face in digitising their financial and business transactions, and presents strategies to enable digitisation grounded based on human-centred design.

Enabling Dialogue Between Regulators and Innovators for Financial Inclusion: Seven Use Cases to Test the Waters

Catalyst | August 23, 2019

This policy note highlights ‘high impact’ use cases for promoting digital payment adoption in India, and offers templates for stakeholders to test them using a sandbox approach and provides recommendations for creating a more enabling regulatory and policy environment.

Testing IVRS as a Tool to Promote Digital Payment Adoption Among Micro and Small Merchants

Catalyst | August 22, 2019

This field story presents learnings from a study which tested a dedicated Interactive Voice Response System (IVRS) platform to spread awareness about digital payments among small merchants.

Implementing Innovation Through an Ecosystem “Learning And Solving By Doing” Approach

Gaurav Singhal, Sharon Buteau | August 21, 2019

This learning note captures the adaptive process of innovation in real world settings, based on Catalyst’s experience of undertaking rapid, data-driven, test-learn-and-build cycles to validate innovative business models in the digital payments space.

Using Comic Books to Increase Digital Financial Capabilities in Low-income Clusters

Nithya Srinivasan | August 20, 2019

This learning note highlights insights from Catalyst’s initiative to promote digital financial inclusion in a low-income cluster in Jaipur. The intervention included using illustrated comic books to spread awareness and encourage adoption of digital payment solutions among people.