Digital Didi Changing Mindsets, Practices and Narratives
MeraBills is an innovative and supportive app for small business women. Working with rural women entrepreneurs on this app has left the demand and motivation to launch more apps of this kind that will help in digitization in a more inclusive way.
Book keeping and management of accounts through apps are not limited to only big businesses. They play a vital role in small businesses by providing more clarity on the transactions. This in return adds to the transparency of their business that helps in applying for loans or building trust among other business vendors. But in many rural locations, bookkeeping can be seen as a hurdle that needs to be cleared only with the help of literacy. DEF has helped in busting this myth by training women micro entrepreneurs to use digital tools through Master Trainers under the project Revive so that their functional literacy will help them in better maintenance of records.
Punita Devi is a beneficiary of this program from Idri village of Jharkhand. She resides in a tribal region where the tribes are mostly dependent on forest wealth through farming and selling vegetables or fruits or work as daily wage workers. Her family’s main profession is cultivation and cattle rearing. Usually, the male members work on the fields during the season and travel to urban areas for labour work during the off season. Apart from this, the dairy is also involved in goat farming to support the family financially. Punita Devi spends her time taking care of the goats by feeding them and giving them necessary medicine. She constantly approaches customers to sell her goats, Occasionally retail customers visit her farm on their own during festive season or weddings.
Although she works hard in running her small scale business, she used to struggle with managing her accounts. She was interested in taking part in digital knowledge enhancement which she was not familiar with. She understood the effectiveness of using digital tools. Through regular training to use the MeraBills app, she was able to generate invoices properly for each transaction and review her business report. She could also connect to new customers by circulating messages on WhatsApp and Telegram apps. She doesn’t have to worry about writing properly about her business-related transactions as she can enter an entire transaction in a few seconds.
One way of expanding business to improve living is to invest more in the capital which requires financial resources. Although the government provides loans for women entrepreneurs, proper paperwork is very much necessary. She can apply for loans through exact reports that get generated on the app and be assured that her business gets assessed accurately.
Her journey has not been easy in being able to use digital tools comfortably. Because of regular hand holding by the Master Trainer, she was able to push through. She was also not aware of the different features of the MeraBills app. But through participation in the refresher training sessions, she came to know about better ways of using the app. She makes sure that other women entrepreneurs also develop their business skills and earn better by sharing her knowledge.
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