Digital Didi Changing Mindsets, Practices and Narratives
Access, Information and Facilitation have been the key pillars of DEF which was also highlighted in the joint consultation of stakeholders and RWE’s organised by DEF. The key takeaways from this discussion that will help in strengthening Women Entrepreneurs from Assam are captured here.
A joint consultation of stakeholders and RWE’s (Rural Women Entrepreneurs) was organised on 16th Nov, 2022 at NEDFI House by Digital Empowerment Foundation (DEF), a pan India ICT for development agency and a core coalition partner member of the BBC programme, co-organised by the Council for Social and Digital Development (CSDD), which witnessed the presence and participation of eminent stakeholders from various fields, working on or related to the RWE sphere like NEDFI, KVIC, NERAMAC, AIDC, AGVB, NSIC, SIDBI, NABARD, Food Safety GOA, APART/ARIAS , IIE etc to name a few. There were representatives from grassroot organisations like CML Tata Trusts, SeSTA, Diya Foundation, Dhritti, SELCO, NEWA and also academia which included TISS and AIM.
The consultation mainly centred around discussions for promoting and strengthening the RWEs in Assam and digital enablement requirements for rural entrepreneurs through ICT integration and access. There were open discussions and participation from various stakeholders present which enabled us to draw some key points and finally zeroed down the discussions on some key findings which was mainly about Access, Information and Facilitation.
Consultation Summary
A brief summarisation of the stakeholder consultation focussed on prevalent issues in rural women’s entrepreneurship landscape.
1. At any given time there are several micro enterprises in the state, but very few have been able to scale up.
2. There is scope to study the ways market and finance, two biggest challenges for entrepreneurs in the state, could be designed better to help entrepreneurs in the state succeed.
3. Very few FPOs in the northeast undertake value addition to the crops.
4. Better branding and packaging is a requirement. Of the small section of farmer-producers, entrepreneurs who partake in value addition, many sell their product at the white label stage.
5. Several products by micro and small entrepreneurs are not available round the year, and work needs to be done to even out distribution.
6. There is a need for professionalism from the side of the RWEs to give more of their time towards production, as also quality control.
7. Crossing over an FPO to maturity level takes time and requires hand holding in the process towards capacity building.
8. There is an acute need to build the value chain in the northeast and work on market linkages.
9. There is a need for training of women beyond the stage of product training and onwards to capacity building in how to manage their enterprise.
10. Apart from financial challenges, the entrepreneurs are facing issues in branding, packaging, lack of knowledge on technology, lack of knowledge on finance and bookkeeping.
11. A shift towards allotting greater agency to the RWEs in managing their entrepreneurial activities is fundamental to their enterprise’s sustainability beyond the years of the development actor’s intervention.
12. Micro and small enterprises should focus on formalisation basics like licensing, GST registration, and scaling up their enterprises. The percolation of information is extremely low at the level of villages.
13. Banking and finance have been unwelcoming towards small and micro entrepreneurship.
14. There should be more avenues in Assam to tap into the non-traditional uses of raw materials endemic to the region to consider exporting finished products.
15. There is scope for diversifying in the range of products created for mass consumption.
16. Diversity of the people and intersectional experiences should be kept in consideration while formulating any development interventions.
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