Platform for Economic Opportunity (PEO)

Building sustainable livelihoods for artisanal and farmer communities through micro-entrepreneurship and platform thinking

Consider that today in India, there are over 118 million marginalised farm and off-farm producers at the grassroots, who earn less than USD 29/month. Over the years, these producers have been reduced to mere labour with close to negligible ownership in the value chain. Even after almost a decade of government skilling programs, there is only 6% retention in jobs. Due to disorganized nature of business, the producers very often have to face problems that violate human rights. A majority of the micro-enterprise producers work outside of the formal sector and have to depend on middlemen to help them access raw material, capital, markets, making them highly vulnerable to exploitation.

Now, consider catering to fast expanding food and fashion markets, where the potential for job creation is high. Today organized retail is just 3-6% of the Indian economy, and with it being the fastest growing economy globally, organized retail will see exponential growth. Technology is changing the way in which the contemporary consumer consumes. With almost 60% of the global market moving towards conscious consumption, things like traceability, transparency and compliance are the new mantra for brand building. These have become a huge boon for micro-enterprise development and are paving new ways of production and consumption, moving from large manufacturers catering to large volumes to small disaggregated manufacturing that can cater to a wide variety and authenticity of products and engagement experiences.

The Platform for Economic Opportunity (PEO) is a digital societal platform that looks to create economic opportunity through  entrepreneurship for 100 million marginalized producers in rural India with a special focus on women over the next 10 years. The PEO is focused at artisan and farming communities and looks to build a technology enabled ecosystem to support and sustain entrepreneurship at the grassroots

The PEO will provide interventions that:

1. Enable institution building and producer ownership.

2. Connect to modern markets and effective inter mediation ( Market linkages, Portfolio management, value addition, design development, value chain based skilling, access to capital).

3. Access to professional management and hand holding ( Production, Supply Chain Management, Quality & Compliance Management )

4. Wealth creation through savings and investments

These interventions will enable producers reach incomes of about USD 73/ month in the first 3 years moving beyond to about USD 145/ month in the subsequent years.

PEO is supported by digital infrastructure that is developed with open APIs, enabling existing platform to easily integrate with it and technology-based solutions could be built on to the base infrastructure by those who wish to do so.

The PEO brings  disruptive innovation at the grassroots through a suite of applications, online tools, sub platforms and e-portals built on traceable systems, to track producers’ profile; facilitate access to resources like raw material, capital, designs and skilling modules; bring transparency in payments ;provide multi-channel access for buyers, suppliers and customers and continued access to future innovations like Artificial Intelligence, Social Commerce, Collaborative Economies, and Prescriptive Analytics, thereby, increasing efficiency to create an impact at scale.

Platform thinking in micro-entrepreneurship is a process for resolving various operational and ecosystemic challenges for farm and non-farm communities. What makes it innovative is the fact that it looks at these challenges from a wholesome ecosystem perspective. The 6C model is one of its core component, the 6Cs being- construct (institutional building through producer owned enterprises), capital (working capital), and capacity (upskilling), create (design development), channel (market linkages) and connect (technology). Also, the digital infrastructure supporting PEO is developed with open APIs, thus, enabling easy integration of other technology based solutions working towards these problems in future.

Technology becomes one of the key enablers through the digital infrastructure that is built for the PEO comprises of a multitude of applications, online tools, platforms and e-portals built on traceable systems, to track producers’ profile; facilitate access to resources like raw material, capital, designs and skilling modules; bring transparency in payments ;provide multi-channel access for buyers, suppliers and customers and continued access to future innovations like Artificial Intelligence, Social Commerce, Collaborative Economies, and Prescriptive Analytics, thereby, increasing efficiency to create an impact at scale. PEO’s digital infrastructure is transformative, authenticated, open API based and facilitates connections building for future.

The solution is in pilot stage and we look forward to develop the technology further, based on the field observations. Context based technology development is one of the important goals to be achieved in the next 12 months. We will also work towards seeking partnerships with key stakeholders in government, corporates and non-government agencies like skill development sector and organizations working with farm and non-farm producers. These partnerships will help us in reaching out the beneficiaries. Further, we will also be holding co-creation workshops with other relevant tech-based solutions to integrate with our digital infrastructure.

We aim to impact 30,000 farm and non-farm value chain producers in the next 3 years and then scale upwards. We look to reach out to 20,000 farmers (farm sector) and 10,000 creative producers (fashion/non-farm value chain). The PEO will create economic opportunities through entrepreneurship for marginalized producers in rural India. The platform will enable the producers to digitally manage end to end operations and shall provide other value added services like skilling, design development, market linkages, etc. The interventions will enable the producers to increase their incomes by 3 to 10 times for a better quality of life.

The organisations working on the solution have more than 40 years of experience in creative manufacturing, farm and information technology and they will utilize their key strengths and channelize their resources to collaborate with farmers and artisans at the grassroots. With the help of on-ground partners, the producers will be mobilized to form producer owned enterprises. All member producers will be registered on the platform for accessing the services. The producers along with Micro-enterprise leaders (MELs) will be trained on the platform and a Business Excellence Centre will be established in each region to help producers access the platform services.

We have impacted about 0.12 million farmers and weavers who have been aggregated into 160 producer companies across 7 states in India. The platform has enabled them to digitally manage end to end operations across value chain.  The targeted interventions include formalizing value chains through institutional building, portfolio building, business planning and execution, handholding, input supply management, product management, value addition, sales, value chain based upskilling and transparent market linkages. The impact of these platform based interventions is that the marginalized farmers and artisans communities have been able to increase their income by 3 to 10 times.

In the next 12 months we aim to reach 4000 producers in farm value chain and 2000 producers in off-farm, that is, creative manufacturing like tailoring, embroidery, handloom, natural fibre. Starting at a smaller scale in first year, we aim to reach 30,000 farmers and artisans in the next 3 years. We expect evident change at three levels at the end of first year, gradually increasing as the project progresses – economic impact in terms of increased producers’ earnings by 3-10 times; social impact through sustained economic growth and social equity; a larger impact at family and community level. 

The consortium has more than 400 person years of extensive collective experience in grassroots livelihoods, technology, micro businesses and brand creation. Industree has set up two of the India’s largest globally compliant and profitable artisan producer that jointly earn revenues of over USD 1.5 million. With the IGX platform, Mindtree has developed technology based solutions to empower and enable a million plus grassroots entrepreneurs with digital tools to create networked multidimensional flows within and across ecosystems, to optimize and achieve scale. Vrutti had impacted over 120,000 small hold farmers, established 90 producer companies and supports over 5000 MSMEs.

For the first three years, the funding shall be obtained from grants and debts. From the 4th year onwards, we expect the platform and the solution to become self-sufficient. The consortium shall be charging small fees from the micro-entrepreneurs to utilize the 6C services, that is, construct (while onboarding, registration and group formation); capacity (training modules, classrooms, field training); create (design services); capital (access to capital services); channel (market access) and connect (community connect’ networking, digital services). Further, these grassroots producers will have to contribute towards the funding of professional management layer (business lead and other para-professionals like HR, accounts, design, supply chain, production managers, etc.) who will handhold and support the micro-enterprises to sustainability. Eventually, at scale, this fees will become minimal. Thus, the platform will become sustainable once it starts funding itself.

The consortium believes that Solve is also working towards a common goal of tackling global challenges through unique ideas. Solve supports community of practice, provides expertise, access to potential partners and networks and funding necessary for the solution. Solve will be an excellent forum to showcase our solution and present it before experts to seek inputs and share knowledge. Further, the funding provided will be useful for making advances in the technology development.

One of the important barrier that we visualise is the adoption of the solution amongst the stakeholders including producers, government, civil societies and markets. Further, as the solution is looking forward to impact stakeholders globally, the challenge is to build solutions for all regions that is make the solution context agnostic. Lastly, availability of funding may also hinder the development of solution. Solve can help us build networks, seek expertise and solutions to overcome these barriers. Also, as Solve will provide some amount of funding, it will be useful for technology development.