This learning note explores the role of digital and financial inclusion in the economic empowerment of women and female entrepreneurship.
Publications
Business Readiness Scorecard for Women
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 Womenâs Economic Opportunities: Evidence from a Cluster-Randomised Intervention in India
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 womenâs 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
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 â Supply Chains
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.Â
Digitizing Micro-merchant Ecosystems â Roving Service Providers
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 â Fixed Stores
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
This policy note highlights âhigh impactâ 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
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 âLearning And Solving By Doingâ Approach
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.