So far, digital access, financial awareness, access and literacy, have been challenges for participants in the initiative. “The REVIVE platform’s primary target groups are individuals and small entrepreneurs who have no access or poor access to formal financial support,” explains Ghosh. In India, many of these entrepreneurs are women who aspire to own and operate their own businesses. “Therefore, the platform’s discovery and operations processes entail substantial communications and awareness campaigns contextualized to behaviors and cultures, regarding the support provided through financial instruments, how they work and what’s required of the recipients,” stated Ghosh. In addition to funding, REVIVE is designed to create access to further capital by commercial or commercial-philanthropy blended instruments. “REVIVE also faced many macro headwinds,” Ghosh adds. “The Alliance had to adapt continuously through the second wave [of COVID-19] and subsequent lockdowns, to ensure that the progress made by our cohorts wouldn’t be reversed and that they weren’t burdened with repayments.” Given the success of the first round of programs, there is much reason for optimism. “Within our farmer cohort, we saw 100 percent repayment rates of the returnable grants, so with the entire fund amount returned, the money is getting redeployed to a second set of farmers,” says Ghosh. “For other cohorts that are still repaying, current ongoing repayment rates stand at 92.33 percent for beauty entrepreneurs and 76 percent for street vendors.” Another area of success has been the diversity of people and businesses REVIVE is impacting. “Due to our strategy of collaboratively selecting cohorts,” Ghosh notes, “we’re providing revival and resilience support to beauty entrepreneurs, street vendors, small retail/kirana store owners, sanitation workers, blue-collar workers, entrepreneurs with disabilities, farmers, garment workers and so on.” For the upcoming year, says Naik, “REVIVE will double down on its mission and extend support to more informal worker and microentrepreneur cohorts; it will add both breadth and depth to its offerings.” Natasa Milas is a freelance writer based in New York City.
Left: The REVIVE Alliance supports self-employed individuals and microenterprises across diverse cohorts such as entrepreneurs, blue-collared workers, street vendors, construction workers, artisans and farmers. It provides accessible and affordable capital in the form of grants, returnable grants and credit.
With informal workers and microentrepreneurs across industries as a focus area, we work with companies, foundations, other funders and social organizations to select cohorts.
REVIVE Alliance
www.revivealliance.com
USAID India
www.usaid.gov/india SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2021 35
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workers and micro-entrepreneurs across industries as a focus area, we work with companies, foundations, other funders and social organizations to select cohorts. Our decisions are based on the needs of vulnerable communities and entrepreneurs, and we place focus on cohorts that lie at the intersection of business ecosystems and social purposes.” Through this process, it’s essential to customize solutions, “including value and repayment time of returnable grants and payfor-performance instruments,” Ghosh emphasizes, along with the “type of skilling interventions, mode of delivering access to social security schemes and so on.” One example of this is the group of entrepreneurs who are part of the Indian conglomerate Godrej’s Salon-i corporate social responsibility program. The program has trained close to 250,000 businesswomen as beauticians and provided business training support. “When COVID-19 and subsequent lockdowns affected the businesses of these entrepreneurs, funds were provided to the women in the cohort through returnable grants,” says Ghosh. Helping small-scale retail stores adapt to ecommerce has also been an essential part of REVIVE’s efforts. “Small grocery stores—or kirana stores as they are called in India—form an integral part of the retail industry and local economy, and are significant livelihoods and income generators, in various pockets of urban and rural India,” explains Priya Naik, founder and CEO of Samhita-CGF. Given their proximity to communities, they were vital during the COVID-19 lockdowns. “However,” Naik continues, “the pandemic also impacted their traditional operational practices and brought increased competition from larger chains and e-commerce.” In response, REVIVE is promoting a digitization drive supported by larger business improvement efforts, and incentivized by finance instruments such as pay-forperformance or returnable grants. “The REVIVE Alliance, with SnapBizz and the Trust for Retailers & Retail Associates of India, or TRRAIN, is driving a philanthropybusiness collective effort to stimulate the adoption for digital tools and practices among kiranas,” says Naik. With “effective digital transactions, better inventory management and efficient customer service, these small kiranas will be able to achieve higher business efficiency,” Naik asserts.
