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Case Study: Swanari TechSprint

Picture of Ambar Vitelli-Khosla

Ambar Vitelli-Khosla

Strategic Partnerships

The Mission

The Reserve Bank Innovation Hub (RBIH) is a subsidiary of the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) committed to providing an environment that facilitates and accelerates innovation across the financial sector. It has been noted by RBIH that to work towards financial inclusion in India we must be looking at the problem only after recognising the impact of the gender gap between men and women in India. In the context of women’s economic participation, India’s gender gap increased by 3% in 2021. This increase has been attributed to the vulnerability of women in India, underpinned by societies social conventions.

Good progress has been made in India through Government schemes which has increased access to formal financial services, however, in 2017 the Global Findex report by the World Bank concluded that 23% of Women in India still lack access to formal Financial services and 55% do not use their bank accounts actively. RBIH has created the Swanirbhar Nari program, which means ‘Self-reliant lady. This aptly named program is designed to encourage the creation of smart, scalable and sustainable solutions to assist Low and middle income women as well as female owned enterprises. The program has two key objectives.

  1. Pivot the financial ecosystem to design affordable, sustainable, and suitable financial services and products for women;
  2. Enable and encourage more women-led FinTechs to create impact at scale through innovative, technology-led financial services for women users.

Leveraging the growth of Fintech within India, RBIH is using the Swanirbhar Nari program to not only create solutions that will help women, but as an opportunity to engage women in the creation process. The RBIH techsprint, powered by NayaOne was incredibly successful in encouraging female leaders and entrepreneurs to collaborate and innovate. There were 44 projects run during the event: 38 in the Minimal Viable Product track, hosting 60% of participants, and 6 in the Ideation & Design track.

The TechSprint

As stage 2 of the Swanirbhar Nari program RBIH hosted a TechSprint, powered by NayaOne and in collaboration with Alliance for Innovative Regulation (AIR), CIIE.co and MicroSave Consulting to identify solutions that will progress through to the acceleration and incubation stage before they are scaled and deployed. The Platform provided users access to 75 APIs, 2 synthetic datasets, 10 structured datasets, and 24 unstructured datasets and reports as well as a collaborative chat function and access to industry mentors.

Ideation and Design track

The Ideation and Design track saw the collaboration of participants from a diverse range of backgrounds. These 6 teams worked over 4 days using the available data and API’s on the platform to deliver solutions to the following challenges presented by RIBH.
  1. How can we build solutions that improve digital and financial literacy for low literate/oral/vernacular segments of women users using behavior-led designs?
  2. How can we develop tech solutions that help women self-help group (SHG) members to frequently save small amounts digitally with their individual Pradhan Mantri Jan Dhan Yojana (PMJDY)/Basic Savings Bank Deposit (BSBD) accounts?
  3. How can digital solutions enable banks to use alternate data (e.g on social trust, mobile usage, travel) to build safe and consent based alternative credit scoring mechanisms for young single women and micro and small women entrepreneurs without detailed credit histories and an absence of collateral?
  4. How do we leverage technology to get more women recruited as Business Correspondents?
  5. How can digital solutions improve access to institutional and individual investors for women startup founders?
The level of solutions created in such a short space of time demonstrated perfectly the power of collaboration and the importance of diversity and inclusion. The Ideation and design teams featured professionals from the tech and finance industry, students and entrepreneurs who made up 6 teams.

Ideation & Design Awards

1. Fast award — Team Kullstree
The level of solutions created in such a short space of time demonstrated perfectly the power of collaboration and the importance of diversity and inclusion. The Ideation and design teams featured professionals from the tech and finance industry, students and entrepreneurs who made up 6 teams.

This was awarded to the solution that the jury felt was most ready for deployment.

As the opening demo of the I&D track the Kullstree team were able to demo their platform, exceeding expectations of what we all thought possible in such a short space of time. In response to problem statement 4, the female led team, Kullstree’s “dignified women” solution was focused on Financial inclusion for rural women. Kullstree’s platform provides women with a platform to build an online profile highlighting their skills to combat bias and lack of tools available to build credibility. With online training courses, certifications and an integrated job market. Kullstree’s solution facilitates easier access to business correspondence roles for rural women.
2. Eureka Award — Team Synergy
Team Synergy worked to solve problem statement 2, to improve the convenience of depositing money and helping women understand that banks are able to support their saving efforts no matter how small the deposit. Challenged by incumbent habits, team synergy has emphasized the rewards such as cashbacks, lucky draws, and overdrafts. available to those who save. The Bachat Boost Yojna solution ensures all members have saving accounts with Bachat saving cards. These cards can be used in a variety of financial outlets to deposit a small weekly committed savings amount. The beneficiary is not required to type or write and is authenticated by QR code, therefore, increasing accessibility to women who have low levels of literacy.

This was awarded to the team whose solution most excites the jury for creativity and novelty.

3. Jump award — Team Saksham Avaaz
Saksham Avaaz, meaning strong voice, created their voice-activated payment solution in response to problem statement 1. Taking a simple behavioral approach to support women who are able to use smart technology and those who are not. Introduced a voice-based UPI payment capability with biometric security features and easy-to-follow tutorials. Eliminating the need to type ensures that women who are unable to read and therefore unable to type are able to use the app via voice. This would transform the lives of many ensuring easy access to financial independence for those unable to read.

An exciting award given to the team whose solution is thought to have the greatest impact and be the biggest leap forward.

The MVP Track (Minimal Viable Product)

The minimal viable product track was made up of exciting teams from industry working towards incubation and acceleration for their products with access to mentorship throughout the techsprint. Working to improve and build on their solutions to the problem statements, listed below, the 38 MVP teams used on average 3 datasets per project to help test their product in a variety of environments.

  1. How can we build solutions that improve digital and financial literacy for low literate/oral/vernacular segments of women using behavior-led designs?
  2. How can we develop tech solutions that help women self-help group (SHG) members to frequently save small amounts digitally with their individual Pradhan Mantri Jan Dhan Yojana (PMJDY)/Basic Savings Bank Deposit (BSBD) accounts?
  3. How can digital solutions enable banks to use alternate data (e.g on social trust, mobile usage, travel) to build safe and consent-based alternative credit scoring mechanisms for young single women and micro and small women entrepreneurs without detailed credit histories and an absence of collateral?
  4. How can digital solutions increase access to credit products that meet the financial needs of micro and small women-led enterprises?
  5. How can we improve user experience (ease, safety, grievance redressal) for women users of digital financial services?

MVP Track Summary

Sampatti Car
Sampatti card remained focused on Incrementally building an income documentation record for the domestic female worker. This contributes to credibility within the financial landscape and ensures the woman is able to partake in government and private services working towards financial independence.

Manipal Business Solutions
Offers a holistic solution based on technology using a behavioral lead design to motivate women to save. Manipal business solutions also spreads digital financial literacy and generates income for women.

MAKSPay Fintech
MAKSPay Fintech solution PehchanPe offers sachet loans, payments and savings solutions to female micro-entrepreneurs to help accelerate the success of their businesses and support them towards financial independence.

AgriPal
Community learning app leveraging radio and female ambassadors to improve the rates of financial literacy among women engaged in agriculture. The opportunities provided by Agripal ensures women are able to begin to take responsibility for their own financial wellbeing.

Haqdarshak
Amalgamating the provision of social security and financial services among low-income women through a women-led agent network.

Conclusion

It is important to remember that this event was held as the second stage in the roadmap to scaling these solutions to ensure they have a wide impact. It was incredible to see the rapid development of viable solutions on the I&D track in a matter of days from teams created at the start of the event. This track illustrates the possibilities when like-minded individuals collaborate efficiently and effectively. These ideas were taken from the theoretical presentation stage to the demo stage in a matter of days. This innovation was accelerated with specifically generated synthetic data and API’s provided within the NayaOne platform. The MVP track engaged a high number of APIs and datasets to develop and refine their existing offerings, benefitting also from the easy access to industry mentors and readily available tools for collaboration on the platform. All the teams presented incredibly innovative and beneficial solutions designed to close the gender equality gap and ensure women are given opportunities for financial inclusion regardless of their literacy.

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