Women Digital Ecosystem

The digital gap, isolation from support and training opportunities, unemployment, the inability to sell in larger markets and the lack of timely finance are some of the reasons why vulnerable women in rural areas in India are pushed to poverty.

To tackle this, Self Help Groups (SHG) have traditionally established themselves as effective programs, but haven’t yet unleashed their potential taking advantage of digitalisation.

Our solution is an inclusive digital platform co-created along with SHGs and NGOs that aims to fill these gaps with the power of technology.

By co-creating an inclusive digital platform and their own crypto-token and governance model, women can create a disruptive digital economy to trade among themselves without intermediaries, loan funds among SHGs or individuals and even define their governance model.

Our aim is to help 75 million women participating in SHGs to participate in the creation of new technologies, new jobs and new industries.

In India, 25% of the population still live below the poverty line. Due to the Covid-19 pandemic, the Indian economy has contracted by 8% and unemployment has risen, being women the most affected. The situation of women continues to be vulnerable: child marriage (27%), domestic violence (28%) or gender gap (66,8%).

To address gender inequality in workforce, self-help groups have established themselves in India as effective programs to improve access to credit and training for vulnerable women to improve their livelihoods, through a methodology based on mutual trust and support. The women participating in SHGs in India (currently 75 million) are mostly poor and more than half illiterate. Predominantly, the livelihood of the women is related to agriculture or small businesses. In most cases in the informal sector, unable to access formal employment opportunities.

However, factors such as the digital gap, isolation in remote areas that stops them from marketing their products in larger markets and lack of timely finance prevent SHGs from reaching their full potential in today's digital age.

Our solution aims to reach 82.612 low-income women in remote communities in India (that currently take part in 6.699 SHGs) and then scale to reach 75M women.

Our target population are all women members of SHGs in India (75 million). 83% of them live below the poverty line and half are illiterate. Most work in the informal sector due to their lack of education and skills (especially in rural areas). Thanks to saving as a group and accessing micro credits many have already started their own small businesses or are engaged in income-generating activities. However, the digital gap and the fact that digital platforms are not sufficiently inclusive for them, it is preventing them from optimising the SHG Indian network, that only by digitalising could achieve great efficiency in terms of financial transactions among groups, product marketing and sharing and supporting each other.

To understand their needs our partner in the project, Bosconet frequently carry out trainings with the SHGs of their network, to recognise the existence of a collective problem from direct life experience of women, and to understand its magnitude. Concrete community initiatives are then co-created along with women of the SHGs and other actors interested and invited to what we call “co-creating Labs”.

SHGs are circular economy groups led by vulnerable women established to provide access to minimum finance and small markets in order to develop their communities. Technology can now help to accelerate access to financing individual and collective initiatives, help market their products in new larger markets and even create their own economy through their token,  and therefore increase competitiveness and wealth for millions of women in India and the world.

Our blockchain-based solution is being developed to make the best of the off-line trusted network already created through the SHG's micro finance and training programs to unleash its potential in the digital world. Apart from equipping vulnerable women from rural and slum areas in India with relevant digital literacy skills, our main objective is to co-create with women, deploy and scale new digital tools that blockchain technology enables, such as digitised virtuous circular financial loops within SHGs, leverage access to new functional and geographical markets for their income-generation activities and tokenise financial services and products supply chain to trace impact and improve reporting to help women and their businesses thrive in the digital workforce.

Arancha Martinez, CEO

She works tackling poverty through technological innovation. She was been awarded by the European Commission as EU Woman Innovator 2020, by Red Cross with Humanitarian Technology Award 2019, by Accenture as Digital Lead 2020, etc

She lived in India 5 years and worked with SHGs

It is remarkable at the level of product innovation: first digital blockchain backed platform to be designed by the women of the SHGs and that will create an entire digital ecosystem with its own governance model and economy thanks to its token. Its functionalities will aim to solve the challenges of SHGs -access to financing, difficulty accessing new markets with their business, digital divide, etc.

Digitising and tokenising the current SHGs system has the potential to increase interactions between women from different groups and regions, generating a much more efficient network than the actual.

It makes possible to maximise the financing possibilities in the ecosystem itself, as well as to attract new forms of financing.  At the product level, it allows increasing the sales to female entrepreneurs, beyond their community. Also, breaking the barrier of access to technology and opening up to the digital world, opens up a huge possibility of access to open knowledge, to training, to mentoring, etc. Built with an APIs First approach, the business model facilitates the delivery of the technology, making it inclusive for the women of the self help groups.

The governance model will also be innovative. SHGs are already innovative in this regard and this project will lead to a digital environment with a similar model, but with greater possibilities thanks to the fact that the new technologies further enhance the possibility of more distributed governance, decentralised, horizontal, democratised. 

Even if the solution incorporates other technologies such as AI or ML (which will be key in the medium term), the core technology currently powering the project is blockchain. The solution is based in The Common Good Chain (ComGo) blockchain backed application for the social good. ComGo is a private permissioned blockchain (built on IBM hyperledger) set of applications created and updated since 2018. Decens of social entities, including United Nations Technology Innovation Labs and IBM SPIG (EU) recognized ComGo as one of the best blockchain developments for social good. ComGo was a finalist at the EU Blockchain4good Award 2020. Blockchain applies perfectly to the project as financial inclusion, digital wallets, tokenized processes, digital ID, project and products traceability and impact measurement can create a unique opportunity to leverage and scale current SHGs offline activities, unleashing its potential in the digital economy and ensuring vulnerable women are not left behind. 

Our solution will have a huge impact as technology allows a multiplier effect on SHGs current impact. Technology will unleash the potential of SHGs programs as it allows online connectivity among all the groups as well as with other private and public stakeholders willing to contribute to ensure vulnerable women in India increase their relevance in the country’s economy.

 1. INPUTS

·       Technological development

·       Talent (ComGo, and external through our partners - IBM, Acumen Foundation, United Nations, Bosconet)

·      Marketing 

2. OUTPUTS

·       The Digital Ecosystem. “One-stop-solution” for SHGs that offers various services (crowdfunding, crowdlending, project management, marketplace for products, real-time auditing for projects, CRM, automated impact measurement, social profile/CV, etc to women)

·       Training services to close the digital gap and ensure women access the digital economy. 

These outputs are delivered to vulnerable women but indirectly impact in their communities thanks to increasing and improving the income generating activities of the women.

3. OUTCOMES

3. 1 Short term

·       Vulnerable women participating in SHGs have access to the digital economy 

·       Women increase their income generation by selling their products online

·       Women from SHGs have quick access to funds

·       New digital economy governed by SHGs that take advantage of blockchain and tokens to create social value

3.2. Long term outcomes

·       Women empowered and included in the digital economy

·       % of women entrepreneurs in India increases

·       % of businesses led by women increases in India

·       Rural communities where SHGs are established are developed.

·       Collaboration with NGOs (provide numbers of current partner Bosconect for the prototypes) but also of Navsarjan, Manvi and other NGOs we are currently collaborating with)

·       Collaboration with public administrations

·       Collaboration with financial institutions

·       Collaboration with international development institutions (The World Bank, UN)

Proposal aligned with government plans and initiatives regarding reducing poverty and improving rural livelihoods –National Rural Livelihoods- and with the aid to women offered from the Ministry of Women and Development Child –Women's Empowerment Schemes-.

This is important for the implementation and success of the proposal. But, in addition, the proposed strategy also focuses on strengthening the initiatives of citizens –such as the Multistate Cooperative Society and the SHGs- that fill the gap by that many of the initiatives launched by the government in the area of social development have not worked. 

Level of satisfaction of the women who have participated.

Level of motivation of women with the possibility of improvement.

Acceptance among women of the proposed innovation initiatives.

Nº of co-creation activities carried-out.

Nº of co-created prototypes.

Nº of women benefited from the prototypes

Nº of jobs created/strengthened through the solution

Nº of active women on the platform

Nº of active SHGs on the platform

Nº of products/services in the marketplace

Nº of entrepreneurships financed through the platform.

Sales produced on the platform. 

Technology adoption happens always when it is properly adapted. ComGo experience offers a very low entry barrier to blockchain technology even for the most unlettered digital users. Minimum training has to be provided to end users and that will be done by Bosconet and other NGOs trainers on the last mile on the field. Access to ComGo services and blockchain technology can be accessible by regular phones and sms technology, so cell normal services are also important to the last mile. In case of non cell service in the last mile BoscoNet delegates and volunteers as well local women committee coordinators can be consolidators of the digital adoption for the Self Help Group.

Even the best technology will not succeed without users willingness to adopt it and our CEO Arancha Martinez has over 5 years experience innovating and deploying technological solutions in isolated complex environments where users and beneficiares have a very low digital skills and most of them are illiterate. The only way of overcoming this huge barrier is to ensure we listen to the needs of the community and we engage them since the beginning so they not only adopt the project, but they own it (for this blockchain capabilities such as decentralised governance can help). Co-design and co-creation is part of our working methodology and we believe it is the only way to ensure impactful projects.  

2 full-time staff, 4 part-time staff and 2 volunteers at ComGo team. However the solution has been co-designed along with Bosconet team (6 full-time staff enrolled in the project, but the NGO counts with teams all over India managing 6699 SHGs among other projects)

Arancha Martínez: EU Women Innovator 2020, Acumen Fellow among others. She has been working to tackle poverty through technological innovation for 13 years. Her most relevant achievement has been the development of a biometrical app to enable NGOs to accurately identify street children an efficiently and securely manage their data, first piloted and implemented in India, where she lived for 5 years.

Manuel Hurtado: Serial Business and Social entrepreneur, team builder, philanthropist. Has collaborated with projects in India for 10 years.

Julius Akinyemi: Former Pepsico and Wells Fargo Global VP of Innovation. Social Entrpreneur. Entrepreneur in residence at MIT MediaLab. ComGo Advisory board lead. 

Rajish Rajan.Marine Engineer, ComGo CSO and Blockchain Solutions Officer

Sanachit Mehra, Software and IT Engineer CTO and Blockchain lead

Mr Louis: MSc Maths and MBA (NGO Management). Bosconet National Project Manager and PhD & Academic Research Guidance Director. Has decades of experience working with SHGs in different states in India.

Mr Thomas Aquinas: Engineer, Youth at Risk and ChildMISS Manager at Bosconet, has been working for the past 6 years in digitalisation and innovative projects to introduce disruptive technology such as AI, big data or blockchain into the humanitarian aid field.

Our diverse team is formed by both women and men from different countries and ethnics (India, Spain, Nigeria), different religions (catholic, hinduists) and cultural background and different age (from 25 to 60 year old members). We all believe that the best ideas always come from diverse teams and when you invite everybody to give their opinions. We have all worked in different contexts, countries and cultures and we are all aware (because we have also failed in the past) that only by co-creating our solution with the beneficiaries it will succeed. So, we can say that apart from our team, we will be strongly partnering with many women and leaders from the communities we serve.

The Common Good Chain has partnered since 2018 with a large number of non for profits and key social agents such as Spanish Association of Foundations, La Caixa Foundation, Fundación Caja Navarra and, the most relevant, United Nations Technology Innovation Labs, with whom we have done a pilot in Malaysia. IBM is also a collaborator, (ie during Covid pandemic in Spain). With all of them we have collaborated in a pro-bono or with partnership agreements with the common objective of tackling social challenges through technological innovation.

Acumen Foundation is also a funder ($50K) and partner of our company.

We are are working with a hybrid structure. For the R+D and development phase we are working with collaborators and we are not charging our users or beneficiaries. 

Our plan after we reach TRL9 (expected in Q2 2022) is to start a B2B model and B2B2C & B2C in the medium term.

Our key partners are currently NGOs & Foundations. Our value to them is to help them scale their social impact though our technology, as well as help their programs be more efficient, traced, measured and reported. Our solution will increase their transparency and improve their fundraising.

Our beneficiaries are vulnerable women participating in SHGs in India, that urgently need to be trained digital skills to be able to participate in their country's economy which is becoming more and more digital. They will benefit from new ways of accessing support, funds, loans, grants, markets for the products, etc.

We are looking for a strong committed partner to help us take our project forward. We are sure our technology can create a huge impact in the world as we have already seen the first results in 2020-21. Our CEO Arancha Martinez was awarded European Woman Innovator 2020 by the European Commission for the impact generated so far. But we need the best companions with us to succeed as we know we can't make it alone and the challenge is huge. We want to access the best talent, social committed people that embrace our mission, talented people that will help us see what we do not see and what we are not doing good. We are a perseverant team that has created huge impact with little resources thanks to our passion. But we are ambitious too and we know our project requires lots of resources, knowledge and support to overcome all the barriers we will face in the scaling period. And we are sure Caterpillar Foundation and MIT Solve teams can be the game changers for our project to succeed.

Human Capital. We want ComGo to be not only a social company built along with the best professional talent, but also with the best people for society and the planet. We want to find new bold ways of growing, both as a team and through extraordinary partnerships

Business Model. Our experience deploying technology in complex environments (ie the CEO Arancha has deployed Digital ID solution in a network of NGOs working to protect street children) has taught us how difficult it to come up since the begining with the ideal business model. We are opened to fail, learn, pivot (that's why we have started funding ourselves with self-funding and grants) until we come up with the right business model. However, we are sure that we would go faster with the right advice from talented committed teams such as MIT or Caterpillar Foundation.

Financial. In 2022 we will start approaching impact investors. Although we are undergoing the process to submit our proposal to the EIC, we are sure MIT and Caterpillar Foundation would provide different and more innovative approaches to financing our project.

Legal. Being blockchain still an immature technology we need the best legal support to ensure we avoid potential risk as well as negative impacts. 

Technology. We count with a great team of developers in Mumbai, but for such an ambitious project, all collective intelligence is more that needed to succeed.