Newsletter

FOREWORD

Three founders, four employees, three advisors, one consultant, two interns- clearly our tribe is growing. Our all-hands meetings are intense marathon affairs, hustling to be agile and in execution mode and yet the need to stop and iterate as we learn along the way. Our network of partners is growing, partners who have been generous in sharing knowledge, time and effort. In the next couple months we are set to launch reports, get a grand challenge going and explore place models focused on our mission of catalyzing Mass Entrepreneurship.

Last month we launched a study on urban women homepreneurs. GAME, in collaboration with ZS Associates India Pvt. Ltd. as the knowledge partner, undertook a targeted study on urban women homepreneurs, in order to get a better understanding of the segment, and to inform collaboration and solutioning to help drive business growth. We probed 3 areas in particular a) What was the Motivation behind starting the business b) What challenges did they face c) What is the support sought. Women in India own and run far fewer businesses than in other countries. In addition, the female labour force participation rate in India is now amongst the lowest in the world, having slipped dramatically in the last 20 years to ~23% in 2018 as per World Bank data, with urban areas being lower that rural. Socio-cultural pressures and home care duties have resulted in a significant proportion of young women being out of the labour force, yet they are well positioned to spend a part of their day on a home-based nano-enterprise. These enterprises can flourish when women have recourse to the right support and interventions. The study findings have been shared below in the “Insights” section in this month’s Newsletter.

We also have an interesting viewpoint from our guest columnist, Uthara Narayanan, Chief Changemaker and Managing Trustee, Buzz India.
Team GAME

GUEST COLUMN

Everyone an entrepreneur

by Uthara Narayan,
Chief Changemaker and Managing Trustee, Buzz India

Geeta had to quit her job at a garment factory when her mother could not manage taking care of her special needs child at home. Her mother took up a job in the garment factory in Geeta’s place to ensure the income comes in. Each time Geeta’s husband, who also worked at the garment factory, took off from work to take their child to the hospital, he lost the day’s wages. It was also not easy to manage the displeasure of his superiors for his absence. After Geeta attended a capacity building programme run by Buzz Women, she gained the courage to start a tailoring businessalong with her husband. She rented the shop next door to her house and started earning enough to make ends meet. She works in the shop early mornings and late nights when her husband and mother take care of her child. And during the day she teaches other women to sew while her child is next to her. She told me, ‘Rather than moping over what happened to my child, I decided it’s time to move on; to take charge and do something with my life.’

Studies show that only 5% of the world’s population 1 are entrepreneurs. The rest of the population prefers working for someone else or be part of the gig economy.

There is research that establishes that many underdeveloped countries have high rates of entrepreneurs due to lack of other opportunities 2. These are mainly necessity entrepreneurs because they have no better or no other choice to avoid unemployment 3.

Read More

GAME UPDATE

Team ANDE and Team GAME meet to cement a growing association. Team ANDE: Randall Kempner, Sucharita Kamath, Saipriya Salla Team GAME: Madan Padaki, Priyadeep Sinha, Santanu Chari, Vidya Chandy and Sandhya Thukaram

Team GAME participated in the Microsoft OneWeek Hackathon, the largest private hackathon in the world held on 22nd and 23rd July in Hyderabad. Hacking to solve real-world challenges through technology.

Team GAME met with a group of young volunteers who are “GAME ambassadors” helping us discover entrepreneurs and tell their stories to make Mass Entrepreneurship Aspirational.

FACEBOOK DIARIES

Tura Local

 Facebook facilitated a two day digital marketing workshop (to help us create our aspirational campaigns) for team GAME and a couple of our partners like Reap Benefit, Udhyam Learning Foundation and 1 Bridge

INSIGHTS

Urban Homepreneurs Primary Research in Pune – presented by GAME and ZS Associates
Motivation, challenges, support needed for urban women homepreneurs.
Read More

IN THE NEWS

NITI Aayog partners with WhatsApp to promote women entrepreneurs

Read more

Small eateries log on to food delivery apps, discover new customer base

Read more

How WhatsApp, Facebook are helping farmers prosper

Read more

New safety vests, gloves designed for women in construction

Read more

Meghalaya planning to replicate parts of AAP government’s education model

Read more

FOREWORD

Impact. We know it when we see it. We know all about how companies like Apple and Facebook have “put a dent in the universe”. Through its aim of creating 10 million Mass Entrepreneurs and 50 million jobs, GAME is working to leave its own impact on an entire generation of India. I began my 6-week internship at GAME a month ago, inspired by their mission and energized by the opportunity to contribute to its success. During my time at GAME, I have primarily been focused on our AntarPrerna initiative, which will shepherd youth through the journey to becoming a mass entrepreneur. It was certainly overwhelming to be thrown into something that those around me had been living and breathing for months. Looking back though, it was being thrown into the deep end that gave me a chance to contribute; in collaboration with the team, I helped crystalize the initiative’s overall vision, develop the specific programs that would enable entrepreneurs, and articulate how best we can implement our vision. Indeed, rare is the organization where a 6-week intern is given the chance to work side by side a director and help shape a major pillar of their work.

Working at GAME has been a true, holistic learning experience; however, perhaps the most valuable lesson has been about how to operationalize a vision. Just like any other world-changing organization, the team at GAME has taken their ambitious goals, broken it down into smaller objectives, and crafted bespoke strategies to target each objective to achieve the larger goal— like stacking Lego bricks to build a larger model. Creating 10 million mass entrepreneurs and 50 million jobs will certainly allow GAME to put its own dent in the universe. Impact. We know it when we see it.

We are delighted to have S Baskar Reddy, Country Director, Syngenta Foundation India and Director, AE Growth Foundation share some compelling insights in this month’s Guest Column.

Suhav Joshi
Intern, GAME

GUEST COLUMN

S Baskar Reddy,
Country Director, Syngenta Foundation India
Director, AE Growth Foundation

SEEDING ENTREPRENEURS TO GROW FARM INCOMES

The Syngenta Foundation turns unemployed youth into service providers.

Akshay Kumar Manjhi is a marginal farmer from Kalahandi, Odisha. He has one acre of land and limited access to water. He grows vegetables on 0.1 acre, and works as a daily wage laborer. Manjhi finds it very difficult to make ends meet.

The Indian agriculture sector has millions of stories like this. The tale is similar in many other countries. So what ails the agriculture sector? Is it lack of innovations, technologies and services? The answer is definitely ‘No’. The challenge lies in their efficient delivery.

In the health sector, ASHA workers play an important role in delivering services. They connect millions of clients to healthcare systems. In the automobile sector, middle-layer mechanics help drivers with essential services and keep the engines running. Without this cadre of service providers, such sectors would collapse. That is the biggest gap in our agriculture: there is no middle layer of “farmer relationship managers”.

Syngenta Foundation India aims to change this. Since 2014, we have been developing a sustainable and efficient delivery model called the Agri-entrepreneurship Program. The idea is simple: we activate the underused potential of rural youth, and create rural enterprises to help thousands of farmers like Manjhi. We select unemployed young villagers, train them on key aspects of agriculture and entrepreneurship, and then anchor them as local agri- entrepreneurs. They become a ‘one-stop solution’ for 150-200 neighboring smallholders. The agri-entrepreneurs provide advice, sell farm inputs, facilitate credit and link farmers to markets. For the first two years, they receive technical guidance from well-trained agri- entrepreneur mentors, who are salaried employees of our Foundation…. Read More

GAME UPDATE

On 24th June and 1st July, GAME conducted 2 sector-focused co-creation design thinking workshops, to identify and detail business opportunities for urban women entrepreneurs in the Food and Education sectors. The workshops were facilitated by McKinsey and the output will feed into a study, the objective of which is to identify market access opportunities and drive growth for women in the Urban Homepreneur segment.

The intent of the workshop was to collaborate with policy makers, sector experts, real entrepreneurs and funding partners to re-imagine possibilities and opportunities. Design thinking was used as a human-centred approach to innovation that integrated the needs of entrepreneurs, the possibilities of technology, and the requirements of business success.

Using this approach, the participants immersed themselves in co-creating user personas and user journeys for lighthouse ideas in food retail, food services, day-care and skilling, and together prioritized opportunities where GAME can play a role to catalyse mass entrepreneurship along with its partners and other enablers.

WORKSHOP 1 

Experts who attended the food sector workshop included Rashmi Daga (Founder, Freshmenu), Rachna Rao (Founder, FoodyBuddy), Seshu Kumar ( Head, Buying & Merchandising, Big Basket), Ajay Macaden (Executive Director, Nielsen), Pradnya Godbole (CEO, deAsra Foundation), Saumya Dubey (Product Manager, Swiggy), Pavandeep Singh (Co-founder, Tasty Tales), Dilraj Kadavithara (Head, Facility management centre, Kudumbashree), Hrishihesk Thakur (Kudumbashree), Swaroopa (Govt of Karnataka, MSME), Idi Srinivas Murthy (Marketer), to name a few.

WORKSHOP 2

Experts who attended the education sector workshop Priya Krishnan (KLAY), Pooja Dubey (Working mother), Vaijayanthi (YLG), Ramya Venkataraman (CENTA), Anju Cherian (The Alchemy Nursery), Bimaljeet Bhasin (NIIT), Anand Sudarshan (Sylvant Advisors), Neelu Kapur (First Steps Pre-Primary School and Day Care) Sunitha Viswanathan (Unitus Ventures), Pavithra K. L. (Dream-a-dream), Saumil Majumdar (Sportzvillage), Shraddha Deo (Sneh Foundation), Brinda Kathrani (Preschool Curriculum Consultant), Priyansha Rawat (NSDC), Prapulla Sandeep (Hippocampus)

FACEBOOK DIARIES

One of our key partners in our journey to catalyze Mass Entrepreneurship, Facebook, has played an important role in enabling entrepreneurial journeys. Stories of entrepreneurs we believe must be told not just to celebrate their spirit and success, but also to inspire so many young men and women that entrepreneurship is a path they too can consider.

Maati

Shashi Bagchi wanted to revive the dying tradition of Terracotta Pottery when she established Maati in 2006. When her husband Anin left his corporate career to help her expand the business enterprise, what began was a journey of hope, freedom and fulfilment.

Watch this video to see how Shashi and Anin revived the traditional terracotta art and used Facebook to make it reach far and wide.

Avanee – Upaj Farms

Avanee Jain, an Architect turned Organic Farmer, established Upaj Farms with the objective to make people aware about the importance of organic food. Not being from a business or marketing background, the biggest challenge that Avanee faced was to take the concept of organic farming to people.

Watch this video to see how Avanee overcame her limitations and used Facebook to reach out to people and expand Upaj not just in her hometown, but all over the country.

Aspiring Young Women to Become  Leaders of Tomorrow

“My parents want me to get married this year. But if I had my way, I’d want to be a nurse first before getting married. However, our financial conditions do not allow me to continue my studies,” laments Rinki. But with the new digital classes as part of Digital Empowerment Foundation’s digital literacy programme, she now aspires to dream big.

Not just a dreamer, young women are getting aspired and further going to be trained in entrepreneurial skills through the DEF-Facebook initiative GOAL (Going Online As Leaders). The initiative that is institutionally supported by the NITI Aayog and their WEP programme, aims at linking urban women leaders, all experts in their respective fields, to five tribal or rural girls each who will be trained in digital literacy by our ground staff and mentored by the women leaders to become village-level women entrepreneurs and agents of change.

During the six-month training, women leaders, with expertise in their respective domains — from business, education and health to politics, arts and entrepreneurship—inspire, guide and encourage at least five tribal girls each to become village-level digital young leaders. The programme is now in its first phase and will be rolled out in five states: West Bengal, Madhya Pradesh, Jharkhand, Odisha and Maharashtra with 50 mentors and 200 mentees.

IN THE NEWS

The Delhi Government’s Entrepreneurship Mindset Curriculum (EMC)

Watch the making of the EMC movie

Delhi CM Kejriwal to add entrepreneurship lessons from Class 9, will give Rs 1,000 as Seed money

Read More

Steamy samosas, endless queues & tax troubles: Kachori-seller Mukesh earns over Rs 60 lakh every year

Read More

Maharashtra flagship scheme for MSME’s to generate 10 Lakh jobs

Read More

Jharkhand’s Livelihood Society Is Empowering Lakhs Of Women In The State

Read More

To spur rural development, India must make agriculture economically viable

Read More

FOREWORD

What does it take to empower every aspiring youth with an opportunity to start and grow an enterprise of their own?

I started my entrepreneurial journey as a 21 year old final year student of mechanical engineering in Manipal, in early 2011. It was an education venture geared towards imbibing important skills such as creativity, critical thinking and problem solving among school-going children. In hindsight, the start of that journey was a scary and lonely period for me. There were many questions I had, about the wisdom of starting up. From being inspired everyday myself , to inspiring the team (largely unpaid interns), to building a real product that people would want to pay for, to finding my mentors, investors and more were all things that kept me up at nights. But, I got support from my parents as well as a small seed funding, a highly driven team and mentors from my vast Manipal network and most especially my first paying customers.

I believe I was lucky to have got far more resources in those early days than the average Indian youth -most of them are perhaps not so fortunate, making entrepreneurship a riskier proposition. How do we change this? How do we make this the norm rather than the exception? This is what I have embarked on to find and implement at GAME through a model called AntarPrerana. You will hear more about this in the near future and if you believe your work could significantly contribute to this goal, I would love to hear from you. I am excited, are you?

Priyadeep Sinha
Director, GAME

PARTNERSHIPS

FACEBOOK DIARIES
One of our key partners in our journey to catalyze Mass Entrepreneurship, Facebook, has played an important role in enabling entrepreneurial journeys. Stories of entrepreneurs we believe must be told not just to celebrate their spirit and success, but also to inspire so many young men and women that entrepreneurship is a path they too can consider.
 
1. Leveraging tools for social media
For long, indigenous and local communities have lived in isolation and information darkness. But with the advent of new-age digital tools and social media platforms like Facebook, alienated communities are finding their voice and creating a global network, irrespective of their traditional literacy levels.

With the intention of strengthening market knowledge and opportunities at the very bottom of the pyramid, Digital Empowerment Foundation entered into a partnership with Facebook in late 2018 to build digital capacities and capabilities of micro and nano entrepreneurs within marginalised and digitally-excluded communities, thereby empowering them and exposing to better livelihood opportunities. The project, called Facebook Dost, was able to reach out to over 50,000 micro and nano entrepreneurs—including artisans and self-help groups—in the tribal states of Bihar, Jharkhand, Chhattisgarh and Odisha.

In our journey spanned over six months, we organised numerous interactive sessions and came across several village-level, Tier II or Tier III city level entrepreneurs who had been able to leverage social media to boost their respective businesses. In the next few issues, we will be sharing stories of digital entrepreneurs from the ground.
 
2.Indha
Women in rural India use a circular band called ‘Indha’ to balance and carry pots on their head. It is symbolic of the diverse roles they perform as mothers, homemakers, and breadwinners. This is the vision behind Indha Crafts, an organization that offers these women the option to balance family life along with a livelihood opportunity. In this short video, one of the artisans shares her story on how Facebook has helped them scale their business, making over 300 women like her financially independent and empowered. Hear them say
 
3. Pabiben
Pabiben Rabari had accepted her fate of living a poverty filled life at the age of ten. It was only when she got married, her husband helped her realize that she could write her own destiny. Watch this video to know how Pabiben used her traditional Rabari embroidery skills and Facebook to build an international enterprise and went from earning Rs. 24,000 a year to 20,00,000 a year. Hear them say
 
4. Ajay Dabral, Uttarakhand

5. Somnath, Maharashtra

GAME UPDATES

1. The Brand Rountable
Making Mass Entrepreneurship Aspirational is one of our five pillars. GAME hosted a Roundtable to discuss the different aspects of creating campaigns- we had a group of experts share their views from identifying the problem statement, to current and traditional mediums of engagement and the cultural nuances of different geographies. The Key Take Away: The Mass Entrepreneur Stories must be told!

Participants: Shyju Varkey, Vice President, India Market at Epsilon, Prateek Srivastava, Co-Founder, ChapterFive Brand Solutions Pvt Ltd, Shreyas Ghuge, Director, Marketing, Unitus Ventures, Dominic Vijay, COO, South United FCI Pvt Ltd., Tina Garg, Founder, Pink Lemonade, Rashmil Dheer, Digital Strategist, Pink Lemonade, Brian Carvalho, Communications Consultant, Nisha Ramchandani Outreach, Axilor

 
2. Workshop on Mainstreaming Entrepreneurial Mindset in Youth
Intent: To discuss and debate towards a common definition of Entrepreneurial Mindset, with the objective to change the focus of discussions on delivering for and assessing outcomes. Takeaways: With sensitivity and incorporating our partner’s requirements, GAME needs to build a simple framework that can be piloted. Even just taking two parameters, Problem-solving and Grit, and measuring them across pilots could be a simple uncomplicated start.
 

Participants:
Wide participation from Entrepreneurship education organizations, corporate HR and assessment companies. Lisa Heydlauff, Founder – Going to School, Raj Gilda, Co-Founder, Lend a Hand India, Kuldeep Dantewadia, Co-Founder – Reap Benefit, Mekin Maheshwari, Founder, Udhyam Learning Foundation, Industry, Seema Vijay Singh, CHRO , Nestaway, Madan Padaki, CEO, 1Bridge, Karan Chatrath, Product Head, Aspiring Minds, Dr Bijan Roy, (Strategy and Marketing)

NEW CORNERS

How to GAME the job crisis: build a legion of small entrepreneurs on a lage scale

At a time when entrepreneurship has come to mean urban, tech-enabled startups with funding running into millions of dollars, GAME aims to change… Read more

From 15,000 to 5 million: How RIL is planning to digitise kirana stores

Richest Indian Mukesh Ambani-led Reliance Industries’ entry into online retailing will help expand the current 15,000 digitised retail stores….Read more

India unInc: Management lessons from streets of India

The power of India #unInc: Management secrets from India’s, By Raghu Raman Captain Raghu speaks about India’s unorganized sector…Read more

How MSMEs can create 1 crore jobs in 5 years

A report by the Nomura Research Institute on the country’s Micro, Small and Medium enterprises says this sector can create an additional 75 lakh to …Read more

10 Lessons on Empowering Women Entrepreneurs: the Case of the Plant-Based Industry in Mexico

Women in Mexico are leading an estimated 75% of companies in the industry and are creating social enterprises that align their values of ethical veganism …Read more

What’s preventing India’s youth from entrepreneurship?

The cost of capital in India is still very high. It ranges from 25% to 35% in the least. At this rates, only business models with assured returns get financed….Read more

FOREWORD

Since the launch of GAME in August 2018, we have been forging a variety of partnerships in the pursuit of our goal of catalysing 10 million Mass Entrepreneurs by 2030. Over the last nine months, apart from having a core team in place, Team GAME has visited over 15 on-ground partners and partner projects including Going To School, DeAsra, Lend A Hand India, Pune City Connect, Meljol among others. We made policy recommendations to both the Congress and BJP and signed MOUs with Transforming Rural India (TRI) and the district administration in Ranchi.

GAME has been involved as Delhi Govt. begins Entrepreneurship Curriculum in 1000 schools; We have set-up a Sec 8 Company (with FCRA) and excitingly have our Advisory Board in place – our first members on-board include Ms. Anjuly Chib Duggal (Former Secretary, Dept. of Financial Services, Govt. of India), Mr. Ajit Rangnekar (Director General at Research and Innovation Circle of Hyderabad) , Mr. Debashish Mitter (Country Director –India, Michael and Susan Dell Foundation) Ms. Bhairavi Jani (Founder and Chairperson, IEF), Mr. Kuldeep Dantedwadia (Co-Founder and CEO, Reap Benefit), Mr. P.G. Raghuraman (Director, Junior Achievement India Services) and Mr. Murali Ramachandran (Director, Junior Achievement India Services). In April, we launched the most in-depth Study on Indian Mass Entrepreneurship to date- this is live on our website with details below. We announced a partnership with Facebook and the collaboration was launched at the Mass Entrepreneurship Roundtable in New Delhi on 16th April 2019. While we are excited by the developments over the last few months, we have already moved into our next phase of action and as defined by our core design principles, we will continue to be agile in both thought and action and look forward to sharing more exciting updates as the months unfold. We thank each one of you for continuing to show support and being an integral part of catalysing Mass Entrepreneurship in India.

We are delighted to have a contribution by Arun Maira (Former Member, Planning Commission) in this month’s newsletter.

Team GAME

GUEST COLUMN

Arun Maira
Former Member, Planning Commission

“The idea of ‘Mass Entrepreneurship’ is an intriguing one. It evokes an image of millions of small enterprises rising up, with their own energies. Like millions of fireflies out of darkness bringing light and hope. Mass implies very many. Enterprise means initiative and energy. The aim of GAME is to encourage and to enable masses of youth to be entrepreneurial—to be ‘job creators’, not ‘job seekers’. As thousands of enterprises form, many thousands more enterprises must follow them—like swarms of bright, energetic fireflies. How does one apply the concept of ’scale’ in this vision? Not to the sizes of the enterprises. Perhaps to the size of the swarm. A prevalent idea in economics is that small enterprises are too weak to compete. That the problem in the Indian economy is that there are too many small enterprises, and too few large ones (the large job-creators who will need large numbers of job seekers!) In this view, there is a ‘missing middle’ in the Indian economy. Indeed, there is a ‘missing middle’. It is another layer of enterprises that enable the small ones to cooperate with each other, and to have greater economic clout even though they may be small individually. Clusters, cooperatives, producer companies can provide the missing middle for small enterprises to access global markets; have greater bargaining power to obtain supplies and finance; to share resources for training and environment services they can afford individually; and to have greater voice in the political economy, which otherwise is dominated by the demands of large enterprises… Read More

PARTNERSHIPS

Global Alliance for Mass Entrepreneurship (GAME) and Facebook announced a partnership that will ignite mass entrepreneurship across India. The objective of this partnership is to ramp up job creation and to further empower entrepreneurs, in line with Facebook’s commitment to train 5 million people with digital and entrepreneurial skills by 2021. GAME and its partners will assist small entrepreneurs build their businesses using digital platforms to aggregate demand, market products and acquire customers. The initiative will promote entrepreneurship among youth and enable entrepreneurs to collaborate, learn and succeed. Some immediate initiatives will include:

1. Project empowering local communities of rural entrepreneurs
2. Landscape review and identification of solutions for Women Entrepreneurs
3. Grand Prize Challenge for innovative models that spur new business creation

GAME and Facebook hosted the “Mass Entrepreneurship Roundtable”. The purpose of the roundtable was to bring together key policy makers & senior civil society/ foundation leaders for a discussion on creating a supportive environment & a strong ecosystem, to re-imagine the potential of job creation through Mass Entrepreneurship. We had over thirty eminent participants who shared both their thoughts and suggestions for moving the needle on Mass Entrepreneurship. Beyond a conversation, the group overwhelmingly indicated interest in collaborating with team GAME through this journey. Below is a clip from the Roundtable.

Team GAME visited the EDII center in Ahmedabad for an interesting workshop around entrepreneurship and explored areas of learning and collaboration.

GAME hosted a Roundtable- on Understanding Movements as we develop a Mass Entrepreneurship movement. The Roundtable participants were Runners for Life, The Ugly Indian, Voice of Sarjapura and Reap Benefit. The discussion offered insights into what makes a movement, what the barriers are and what helps scale.

The Mass Entrepreneurship Roundtable

GAME – FACEBOOK LAUNCH ROUNDTABLE 

The GAME Landscape Resource on Entrepreneurship Development

Game was excited to launch its very first research resource- a study of Entrepreneurship Development in India which looks at non-profits, incubators, accelerators and public institutions that work directly in or close to the space of entrepreneurship. This study is a first of its kind attempt to summarize existing information for the ecosystem: to make data available publicly, highlighting strengths, challenges, and opportunities, which could serve to increase conversations & collaborations, and catalyze further development of this space.

At GAME, we believe in the multiplicative force of an alliance working towards a common goal. The landscape of work related to Mass Entrepreneurship in India has several actors involved, and we asked ourselves questions such as at what scale are organizations operating, which geographies are they largely present in, organizational and ecosystem challenges that need attention and much more. For more on the findings click here: http://massentrepreneurship.org/summary/

NEWS CORNER

Facebook partners with GAME to scale up rural entrepreneurship

Global Alliance for Mass Entrepreneurship (GAME) and Facebook on Tuesday announced a partnership that aims to increase job… Read More

Stuck in Silos, India not yet GAME for Mass Entrepreneurship

Study says most platforms still operate in compartments with little scope to collaborate and learn from each other… Read More

GAME, Facebook partner to scale-up entrepreneurship in India

The objective of this partnership is to ramp up job creation and to further empower entrepreneurs, in line with Facebook’s commitment to … Read More

Facebook and GAME partner to boost entrepreneurship

Global Alliance for Mass Entrepreneurship (GAME) and Facebook have announced a partnership that aims to ignite mass entrepreneurship across India… Read More

FOREWORD

GAME is envisaged as an ecosystem of multi-faceted partners working on a common mission – to catalyze the ecosystem for Mass Entrepreneurship. Therefore, our partners are an integral part of our journey toward creating 10 million Mass Entrepreneurs by 2030.

As we survey the landscape and understand our primary customer (not beneficiary) segmentation, GAME believes that there are multiple segments across socio-economic, gender and geographical parameters. Reaching and impacting our customers will necessitate a coming-together of various partners operating in these customer segments.

GAME intends to work with the following partner categories as a start:

1. Field organizations in Livelihoods, Income uplift, Education, Access to services, Platforms, and processes.
2. Government and Government institutions
3. Multi-lateral organizations (such as UNDP, World Bank, UNICEF)
4. Academic institutions (schools, colleges as well as Higher Education Institutes) and other knowledge partners
5. Investors and Grant-providing organizations
6. Corporates and Industry Bodies

All these partners can individually influence certain outcomes, but working together can be a whole new ballgame!

GAME will follow certain principles to be partner-friendly – work from the ground-up, open-IP all our research and findings, cross-pollinate between partners, promote collaboration feverishly, and support capacity building in all our partners. Working in tandem and in alignment, GAME hopes to build strong Entrepreneurs, sustainable Enterprises and the supportive Environment at all levels.

This month’s newsletter contains a guest contribution from Raj Gilda, co-founder & Director of ‘Lend A Hand India’ (LAHI). LAHI has assiduously nurtured a partnership model that brings State Government, Industry, Schools and Small Entrepreneurs together to help youth in the country to find sustainable livelihoods. LAHI is now present across 23 states and union territories in 8500 schools. For an organization to be able to do this in their timeframes is a remarkable achievement.

Some of the areas that GAME can work with LAHI are a) evaluating its intervention model for different segments b) piloting an innovative model where maybe other interventions can be saturated and c) advocating its success stories and the insights from the pilots to the larger ecosystem.

Happy reading!
Santanu Chari, Director, GAME

GUEST COLUMN

Raj Gilda
Co-founder & Director (Strategy and Development) – Lend A Hand India

Collaborations and Partnerships are like a marriage between two human beings. It cannot work on its own but one has to nurture it for it to sustain and grow.

In this day and age of “Maha Gathbandhan” thanks to elections, collaboration and partnerships are two of the most spoken buzz words in the social sector (of course, one can’t beat “scale”). As many of us know, while these two words make a great theme for conferences and workshops, to make them work on the ground is an entirely different ball game all together. Based on my combination of experience in the social and private sectors, here are some of the factors which can help form successful collaboration and partnerships.:

1. It is all about give and take: collaboration is like a marriage between two human beings. It cannot work on its own but one has to nurture it for it to sustain and grow. In a marriage, two human beings accept each other the way they are, with all the flaws and fascination but they promise to be together till “death do us apart”. Similarly accepting the collaborating organization for what it is, rather than having a judgmental call and trying to change their ways, will help collaboration to be successful.
2. Fulfilling a gap: The collaboration needs to fill a tangible gap in the offerings/capabilities of the collaborating organizations otherwise, it will never get the attention it requires. For e.g. access to market, referral in a community, sharing of tools etc.
3. Coordinating platform: Collaborations are more likely to succeed when there is a coordinating entity whose objectives is to make such collaboration happen. At the very least a single point of contact…. Read More

PARTNERSHIPS

The Mass Entrepreneurship panel discussion at the SVP sustainable livelihoods conclave was a resounding success and threw up some powerful insights. We had nine panelists who shared their learnings and their openness to collaborate. The panelists were:

Ajeeth Jagannath, COO, 1Bridge; Dr. Baskar Reddy, Exec. Director, Syngenta India Foundation; Vinod Nair, National Mission Manager, NRLM, Ministry of Rural Development; G Nagaraj, CEO, SME OneSource; Ravi Krishnan, Chief Administrative Officer & Head – CSR Goldman Sachs; Dr. BR Mamatha, IAS, Mission Director, NRLM – Sanjeevani, Govt. of Karnataka; Pradnya Godbole, CEO, DeAsra; Anubhav Gera, VP, Wadhwani Foundation; Kishor Jagirdar, Vision Karnataka Foundation

Team GAME visited the EDII center in Ahmedabad for an interesting workshop around entrepreneurship and explored areas of learning and collaboration.

GAME hosted a Roundtable- on Understanding Movements as we develop a Mass Entrepreneurship movement. The Roundtable participants were Runners for Life, The Ugly Indian, Voice of Sarjapura and Reap Benefit. The discussion offered insights into what makes a movement, what the barriers are and what helps scale.

Team GAME went on a project visit to understand some of the on groundwork done by Going to School in government schools in Nalanda and Muzzafarpur in Bihar. The Going To School team combines high-quality content, design and a hugely committed team to nurture entrepreneurial mindsets in school children from class IX to class XII.

CONNECTING

Ravi, Madan and Mekin go live with Your Story sharing the GAME story

LAUNCHING SOON IN APRIL

The GAME Landscape Resource is a new public dataset and insights around the landscape of organizations (non-profits, incubators, and accelerators, public institutions) working in the area of mass entrepreneurship development in India. It synthesizes research and data to create a comprehensive learning resource for the ecosystem.

NEWS CORNER

Small biz: How to make it cool for the young.

Everybody has got the lowdown on the unemployment problem. Nobody seems to have figured out how to fix it in real time… Read More

Turning students ‘job-givers’

Come April, students studying in 24 government schools in the capital will be seen developing their “entrepreneurial mindsets”… Read More

Income Before: $18,000. After: $85,000. Does Tiny Nonprofit Hold a Key to the Middle Class?

Jukay Hsu is an enthusiastic Amazon backer. He wanted the company to build a big new campus in New York and participated in wooing it… Read More

Dreams & Incomes of 1000 Rural Women Get Wings, Thanks to This Brilliant Initiative!

Entrepreneurship might not be everyone’s cup of tea, but with the right guidance and mentorship, anyone can become… Read More

It’s never too late to become independent.

Those born to become businessmen will do that at any age. These graphics by Anna Vital show us how important it is to always keep being yourself… Read More

FOREWORD

The sharp drop in the female labour force participation is a matter of concern and has gained a lot of attention. Attempting to tackle it is like peeling the layers of an onion, where the more you unravel, the more emerges.

Why is unpaid work (eg: home care) not considered in the definition of work? Do women themselves support the idea of paid work outside (in a November 2018 ILO study, 26% did not)? Is education serving to bring an increase in job prospects or marriage prospects? Educated women are rejecting farm jobs, but how can they occupy themselves when faced with a dearth of non-farm jobs?  To what extent does a woman even want to earn were she given the opportunity – what holds her back? Does she worry that her economic success may result in her husband relinquishing his own source of income entirely? How can a woman ensure financial control of her enterprise if she is dependent on a man to sell her goods at the market? How can she access markets herself if she has limited mobility due to care duties or other restrictions? These nuances can help us in understanding the tensions at play related to work in a woman’s life.

Socio-cultural pressures and the “child care penalty” have resulted in a significant proportion of young women being restricted to their homes, yet they are well positioned to spend a part of their day on a home-based nano-enterprise. These enterprises can flourish when women have recourse to the right interventions on family sensitization, skills, self-confidence, ability to converse with customers, financial access to well-structured products, sustained markets, the support of a peer and mentor network, etc. Digital literacy plays a key role in unlocking opportunities, access and information through social media, internet and digital payments.

While some SHGs have started micro-enterprises that hire employees, they are essentially communities at their core, and not all can make the transition easily. The opportunity for turning the tide on female labour force participation may well lie in moving focus from the collective to the individual entrepreneur, and specially in women with part-time work availability, who can grow their businesses as and when their home care duties ease over time.

This month, we are delighted to have a guest contribution from Lisa Heydlauff, Founder and CEO, Going To School, whose resources set a benchmark in designing in gender equality. Here’s a quote from their Children’s Skill Report:

“The girls came later. I was the first girl building with boys. They saw me, then they came. Girls can be so funny sometimes about building things. Then there was the boys and girls thing, that people would pass comments that boys would say something, but it’s all just silly. Build I said, use your super power, make something that was not there before, when we build and make together we’re not girls or boys, we’re just young people making something that was not there before. And that’s cool.”

Vidya Chandy
Director, Research and Evaluation, GAME

CONNECTING

Ravi Venkatesan and Mohan Padaki at the annual GAP event at Sabarmati Ashram

Ravi Venkatesan with Bill Gates and the book that inspired the launch of GAME

1Bridge Celebrates successful Entrepreneurs (1Bridge Advisors)

GUEST COLUMN

Can you teach someone to become an entrepreneur?

~ Lisa Heydlauff
Founder and CEO, Going To School

The world is equally split.
Many believe you can’t teach anyone to be an entrepreneur ever. While others, hands on our hearts knowing that we don’t have the answers for what comes next, desperately hope we can. We hope we can because the world is a mess.

Climate change, unemployment, water ~ too much, too little; garbage, plastic, violence. Millions of young people are growing up in the middle of it, they’re in school, they are dropping out, they are going from school to work.

Entrepreneurs across time, in the beginning and now, solve problems. They try new things that don’t make sense to other people.

Why? They’re doing it for the big heroic reason of making things right not just for themselves but for a lot of people. Money is secondary, a by-product. Even if you are from a low-income group, choosing to be an entrepreneur is about righting wrongs, doing new things, proving you can. It’s also about what’s smart, efficiency, where there is a need, ‘a problem to be solved’. It’s much more compelling to sell a garbage recycling company than a truck service. Do you get where we’re going with this?

A garbage recycling company is a good story.

Like all good stories, the hero sets out, upset by something that’s not right (empathy for everyone that lives in a town of smelly garbage). She faces opposition (the way things have always been = smelly). She digs deep (mental health = does the world always have to be smelly?). She sees a streak of light (inspiration, epiphany, magical moment). She starts. Some people come to help, others still try to hold her back explaining ‘young women don’t do that’. Still, against all odds and without an example of someone doing that before (role model), except in that movie (story, emotion, entertainment), she finds a way. She puts together whatever she’s got to make a go of it (prototype). She shows it to people. Some like it (those who need that thing too = live in the smelly town). Others want a formal plan (investors = cities). Read More

SPOTLIGHT

1 BRIDGE SUCCESS STORIES

Arjun is an extremely dedicated and hardworking entrepreneur from Shivamogga District. Being the son of farmer and a night watchman did not deter his ambition of becoming an entrepreneur. Arjun runs his own general provision store while also attending evening college.  He has been an entrepreneur with 1 Bridge for 2.5 years and describes his stint as a “super journey”.  Being a BA with 1 Bridge has opened up a window of opportunities for him personally and earned him immense respect amongst members of the village community. This has led to increased business for him and trust in the products offered through the bridge he provides Arjun believes that patience is the key to success and there is no shortcut.

Ramamurthy comes from a modest family background , and is based out of Hirehalli Village in Tumkuru village.  He has been successfully running  the Common Service Center ( CSC ) which is a hugely popular CSC in his district. This center has been instrumental in providing online digital services for all programs launched and executed both by the State Government and Central Government.  This center is a hub for all online digital services offered by the state and the central governments and has all people in that village and surrounding villages flocking to this CSC to have all their needs met , be it PAN card application, Aadhar card processing, insurance options , to name a few. Apart from the CSC,  Ramamurthy also runs a fancy store cum provision store.  He successfully runs the 1 Bridge business model and is the advisor in the village for all product and services required by the Rural Consumer . In his words,  being an entrepreneur with 1 Bridge enables him to bring brands like Amazon, Facebook to the doorsteps of the rural consumers.  Purchase of mobiles, purchase of automobiles, amongst a host of other products has never been so easy in rural areas. Partnering with Facebook has made digital literacy the buzzword in Tumkuru.  Ramamurthy is very happy to be looked upon  as a ‘ One Stop Shop’ due to the business model set up by 1 Bridge

NEWS CORNER

Better skills for better jobs in India

The IKEA Foundation and Going To School are partnering to help young people in Bihar learn the skills they need to find a job.

Each year in India over 60 million students leave school, more than 70% of whom can’t find work because they don’t have the skills employers are looking for.

What stops rural women from getting involved in entrepreneurship?

Women constitute only 14 per cent of the total entrepreneurs in the country. Women in rural areas face multiple barriers to pursuing income-generating activities, with patriarchal family and societal norms being the primary hurdle.

World Bank, UN Women and SIDBI plan ‘women’s livelihood bond’ to raise ₹300 cr

The World Bank, UN Women (a United Nations entity dedicated to gender equality and empowerment of women), and Small Industries Development Bank of India (SIDBI) have come together to launch a five-year tenor ‘women’s livelihood bond’ to raise ₹300 crore.

INSIGHTS

Evaluating Youth Social Action

Does participating in social action boost the skills young people need to succeed in adult life?

FOREWORD

India is the youngest country: home to the most young people in the world!  It has been a reason to be optimistic and hopeful, as youth bring energy and fresh thinking to help grow the country.

Over the last few years, this optimism is starting to turn into questions and concerns: will our youth have the opportunities to be able to create value? Is our education system preparing youth well for the rapidly changing world? The answers to both these questions are worrying and the progress is currently bleak.

Instead of depending on being given jobs – which don’t seem to exist, the youth of the country need to take their careers and lives in their own hands and pursue entrepreneurial endeavors.

In the last few years that I have worked with youth, I have been repeatedly surprised by their actions, youth’s ability to try new things, adapt to changes and learn is vividly evident in their comfort with newer technologies especially with mobile phones. In a rapidly changing world, this ability is essential for people to thrive.

At GAME, youth form the core part of our focus and we will be able to achieve our goal of enabling 10 million Mass Entrepreneurs, only if a large part of our focus is on working with and learning from youth.

This month, we are delighted to have a contribution from a young, successful entrepreneur, Prukalpa Sankar, Co-Founder, SocialCops, sharing an insight into her entrepreneurial journey.

Mekin Maheshwari
Co-Founder, GAME

PARTNERSHIPS

Team GAME’s Immersion Journey

At GAME we are committed to learning being at the core of defining our strategy. The team are spending the first quarter of 2019, on an immersion journey with some of the organizations doing incredible work on the ground. Some of the organizations we spent time with were Going to School, Udhyam Learning Foundation, SIDBI, LAHI, Meljol, Manndeshi, PCC, Best Practices Foundation and Aptech Learning Centre. The time spent on the field strengthens our insights for a more effective road map toward catalyzing Mass Entrepreneurship in India. Here is a snapshot of just a few of the stories we came away with:

1. Armaan Patel, a 1st-year college student where LAHI conducts vocational training programs, is extremely confident, bubbling with ideas and his eyes peeled for a market opportunity to seize. He has a monthly expense of Rs.50-60k for his recreational needs which he believes can only be met by being an entrepreneur and not a job. Some of his business ideas have included selling ginger barfis (an opportunity he spotted when a batch of barfis by another vendor went bad). Among his other ideas have been selling “nimbu golas”, a watch strapped on a bag etc! His mother supports his agency which propels his entrepreneurial vision. Armaan believes that his internship has been more valuable than the vocational training in driving his entrepreneurial aspirations.
2. Young Nargis was faced with a family tragedy that almost made her give up her dreams. Yet, her own tenacity and the support of Udhyam Learning Foundation interventions have seen her online business of selling scarves grow doubling her capital and fulfilling orders from 22 cities in less than six months. Nargis dreams of expanding her business overseas
3. Pooja, 30 years old came from a family who had a small business selling bangles. She undertook the Desi MBA with Manndeshi (Pune) and a beauty parlour course. This gave her the confidence to set up a larger store with more inventory (beyond bangles) by taking several loans from different sources. Additionally, there is space at the back of her store to set up her beauty parlour business. Currently, she employs a couple people for 3-4 days a week paying them a daily wage of Rs.500. She plans to build her parlour business with a loan from the bank. Pooja has managed to grow her business, increase her savings, provide for her family and most importantly have a better sense of self and purpose.
4. Salma Taj has caught on to the global trend of sustainability and a circular economy in the garment industry. She inherited her mother’s business idea of selling used clothes but with using her intuitive business skills and some intervention, she has improved on the idea by first mending the clothes, washing, ironing and packing them to sell a better product at a better price. Her mother sold used clothes at Rs. 25, Salma with her effort at restoration sells the same outfit at Rs.50. She invested in a washing machine to undertake the cleaning in-house, employs her physically challenged son (18yrs old) to help with the cleaning and outsources the mending. Her future plan includes opening a store to overcome the challenges of mobility.

Vidya Chandy, Director, GAME spending time on the ground with the MANNDESHI team.

Santanu Chari, Director, GAME visits Meljol –time at their Youth centre in Vikhroli Park Site, Mumbai

Going to School: The Children’s Scrappy News Service, in search of women entrepreneur heroes

GUEST COLUMN

Prukalpa Sankar
Co- Founder, SocialCops

I was an average 20-something university student from a middle-class Indian family. In my final year of university, I was bitten by what they call the “startup bug” and I dreamt of being an entrepreneur. Around me, my batchmates were applying for jobs feverishly. On the other hand, my co-founders and I were working on our startup idea without respite. The decision to not apply to jobs came with its fair share of fears and insecurities. I’ve said this a million times over — I think the most difficult part about being an entrepreneur is “deciding” to take the plunge.

This is especially true when you come from the average Indian middle-class background. Most of us have seen our families struggling to make ends meet and understand the importance of money and a regular paycheck. We are scared that we are throwing away the promising future we have created for ourselves in IT companies, consulting firms, and investment banks by the virtue of an undergraduate “engineering” degree from a good college. The risks seem too high, and it seems to be a more prudent decision to do a masters degree and get some experience before starting up. Read More

NEWS CORNER

India in dire need of entrepreneurs with right skill training support: Here’s why

This demographical advantage gives India an unprecedented edge to emerge as a global economic leader. Many experts have presumed that this vast young pool if skilled well, can result in an additional 2 percent GDP growth rate in the coming year.

Nandan Nilekani Says Indian Entrepreneurs Can Beat The Best From The World

Infosys co-founder Nandan Nilekani on Friday said we are the only nation where the local entrepreneurs have to compete with the offerings from the best around the world, particularly those from the US and China.

Gujarat bucks national entrepreneurship trend

Gujarat is known as the land of entrepreneurs for ages. A recent study confirmed this as the state bucked the nation trend in setting up new enterprises in 2017-18.

50% India’s working-age population out of labour force, says report

Half of India’s working-age population (15 years and above), for the first time, is not contributing to any economic activity, according to the National Sample Survey Office’s (NSSO’s) latest jobs survey.

INSIGHTS

Ernesto Sirolli: Want to help someone? Shut up and listen! | TED Talk

How to connect entrepreneurs | Ernesto Sirolli | TEDxCluj