Business School for Rural Women
This entry has been selected as a finalist in the
Cultivating Innovation: Solutions for Rural Communities competition.
Project Street Address
Near Mahavir Jain Mandir
Project City
Mhaswad, Tal. Mann, Dist. Satara
Project Province/State
Maharashtra
Project Postal/Zip Code
415509
Project Country
India
Country your work focuses on:
Maharashtra, India
Website URL
YouTube Upload
What stage is your project in?
Operating for 1-5 years
What is the average monthly household income in your target community, in US Dollars?
<$50
Name Your Project
Business School for Rural Women
Describe Your Idea
Describe your idea in fewer than 50 words.
Mann Deshi develops female day laborers and farmers into successful businesswomen through a business school for rural women, which provides technical and general business training. The business school is an effective solution that integrates rural women into the agricultural value chain.
What makes your idea unique?
The business school consists of both stationary business school locations and a mobile business school that cater to women from backwards castes. A group that is often marginalized by society, female day laborers and farmers are often illiterate or semi-literate. The business school brings practical training and life skills to this rural population, allowing them to become a part of and benefit fully from the agricultural value chain.
To cater to a population that has received limited education, Mann Deshi has designed a unique curriculum using pictures and stories. Training includes financial, business, and marketing skills, as well as confidence building to put these newly developed skills into use. Mann Deshi’s dynamic approach to catering to poor rural women led to the establishment of a mobile business school. After successfully establishing a stationary business school, Mann Deshi learned that some women who wanted to take advantage of business training couldn’t because they were unable to travel due to financial, cultural, and geographical barriers. The mobile business school was born as an innovative response to this unmet demand.
Those who have enrolled are vastly different from typical “business” students elsewhere. Mann Deshi has worked with sheep and goat herders, tea sellers, daily wage laborers, and homemakers. Mann Deshi is especially committed to bring these women into the banking sector by providing financial literacy and vocational training in unconventional ways.
What is your area of work? (Please check as many as apply.)
Children & Youth , Education , Girls' development , Business , Communications , Community development , Consumer protection , Economic development , Financial services and markets , Fundraising , Globalization , Income generation , Information technology , Marketing , Mentorship , Microfinance , Poverty alleviation , Rural development , Social Enterprise , Sustainable development , Technology , Urban development , Rural , Sustainable agriculture , Urban , Land rights , Women's issues .
What impact have you had?
The business school has trained 9,900 women in business development; sixty percent of the women who have been trained have subsequently set up and successfully run their own enterprises.
In terms of financial impact, the income of business school graduates has increased from INR 25-35 to INR 65-75 per day. The graduates’ stories are glowing testimonies to the quality and effectiveness of the business school and the practicability of sustainable economic impact.
In terms of social impact, the business school has contributed to creating an extremely well-informed segment of rural women who have emerged as community leaders of significant stature and respect. Government and banking regulatory authorities have recognized this movement as a model for bringing about measurable change.
Describe the primary problem(s) that your project is addressing.
In India, it is a major challenge to develop micro-enterprises into small businesses; this is due to a variety of problems, including infrastructure difficiencies such as irregular power supply, the difficulties of scaling up businesses, etc. For example, Mann Deshi contacted local restaurants to which women could sell their home-made yogurt. The restaurants were happy to sell the yogurt, but they needed the product in bulk. Unfortunately, this has proven to be a difficulty since bulk production of yogurt requires refrigeration, which requires constant electricity – practically unheard of in rural villages.
As the first enterprise of its kind, the business school uses a trial-and-error method in designing courses and developing new programs. This is due to the fact that there are no similar models which Mann Deshi can follow.
Describe the steps that your organization is taking to make your project successful.
Mann Deshi is working extensively with its target demographic to gauge its needs and wants. As a program driven by rural woman, the business school is using its experience in prior years to focus on the most effective and beneficial courses and programs to achieve financial inclusion. Recent demand has led to the planning of additional business school branches. In order to maximize business training, the business school partners with the Mann Deshi Bank to offer students loans for micro-enterprises. This ensures that clients receive both the technical training and the financial support needed to make financial inclusion a reality.
What will it take for your project to be successful over the next three years? Success in Year 1:
Establishing a non-banking finance company (NBFC) and mobile business schools will allow Mann Deshi to realize its goal of service expansion and financial inclusion of rural women in the next year. Mann Deshi is currently registering a NBFC to rapidly expand both its business school and banking services within the confines of the Indian banking system. Additionally, Mann Deshi will pursue the launch of mobile business schools in remote areas to reach clients who have never before had such comprehensive services. Mann Deshi will launch the second mobile business school in summer 2009.
Success in Year 2:
The business school is focused on expanding women’s micro-businesses into small businesses in 2010. Mann Deshi’s plan includes an entrepreneur training program, advanced vocational training, and advanced financial literacy courses. The entrepreneur training program will be in collaboration with the Entrepreneurship Development Institute of India (EDI). The EDI has pioneered activities in entrepreneurship development training on the premise that individuals from all walks of life can become business owners.
Success in Year 3:
Mann Deshi estimates that in five years there will be fourteen new Business School locations, including ten new Business School locations and four new Mobile Business School locations. Graduates will grow at a rate of 30 percent each year.
Do you have a business plan or strategic plan? (yes/no)
To teach women vocational skills that they can turn into micro-businesses and provide financial support to make their businesses successful for short and long-term financial inclusion.
What are the three most important actions needed to grow your initiative or organization? STEP 1:
Expansion: Mann Deshi plans to scale up its business school to include more women in Maharashtra and Karnataka. This includes the development and offering of additional courses as well as the availability of advanced courses for students to refine their skills. In order to expand its demographic reach, the business school will launch additional mobile business schools.
What are the three most important actions needed to grow your initiative or organization? STEP 2:
Training entrepreneurs: In order to fully integrate rural women into the financial system, their micro-enterprises need to develop into small businesses. This requires further training as entrepreneurs. Mann Deshi will be collaborating with the Entrepreneurship Development Institute of India to provide a training program to select women each year. The sessions will focus on helping small business entrepreneurs expand their businesses through exposure visits, marketing strategies, and business planning. The business school plans to hold four of these programs in 2010.
What are the three most important actions needed to grow your initiative or organization? STEP 3:
Standardization: As our business school grows, administrative processes and functions need to be standardized across all business school locations to promote efficiency. This will entail replicating beneficial practices and eliminating wasteful or redundant programs. While the response to the business school has led to tremendous growth over the past few years, careful administration is needed to allow controlled growth in future years.
Describe the expected results of these actions.
Through expansion of the business school, the training of entrepreneurs, and the standardization of the business school branches, Mann Deshi plans to make financial inclusion a reality to over 30,000 women in 2010. Within five years, Mann Deshi expects that number to more than double to over 70,000 women. Empowering women to control family finances proves beneficial to their families; more money goes towards children, education, household expenses, and healthcare. These differently allocated expenses are an investment in India’s future. Additionally, new businesses stimulate local economies, ultimately contributing to the development not only of their villages but also India as a whole.
What was the defining moment that led you to this innovation?
Jaibai is a successful entrepreneur and land owner. Married at eleven, she never completed her education yet understood early on that land ownership provided a secure investment. She therefore made it her goal to acquire as much land as she could. Her land ownership is the result of her diversified business strategy: growing vegetables and plants, selling vegetables, and working in the field and on construction sites. She plans her crops based on the fickleness of agricultural seasons.
Jaibai’s personal philosophy is that land investment is worth more than savings in a bank; she acknowledges that she would spend the interest she would earn on her savings. However, her land will not lose value and will also produce future income through agriculture. She points out that in emergencies, she can always mortgage her land.
Jaibai’s business acumen has been supplemented by knowledge she has received from the Business School Financial Literacy course after which she was able to establish a pension scheme, securing her financial future. Jaibai dreams of higher education for her granddaughters, something she couldn’t give her own children. In terms of financial growth, Jaibai’s income has increased from Rs. 2,000 per month to Rs. 10,000 per month. But her true return is her pride in her grandchildren as everything she does is for their educations and futures.
Tell us about the social innovator behind this idea.
Economist and activist Chetna Gala Sinha works for social change in the poor and drought-stricken areas of rural India. She founded and is currently president of Mann Deshi Mahila Sahakari Bank, a cooperative bank that provides savings, lending, pension, and insurance programs to low-income women.
Chetna also founded the Mann Deshi Foundation, an NGO that strives to enhance the economic empowerment of rural women through education, property rights, and social security initiatives. Most recently, Chetna started Mann Deshi Udyogini Business School for Rural Women. This micro-business school seeks to provide women with formal training in practical, income-generating areas.
Chetna was honored with the 2005 Jankidevi Bajaj Puraskar award for rural entrepreneurship. Recently, Mann Deshi Udyogini received worldwide attention when the Economist covered its activities in a “News from the schools” report.
Born in Gujarat and educated in Mumbai, India, Sinha was selected as an Ashoka Fellow in 1996 and a Yale World Fellow in 2002. Chetna was a leader in the Jayprakash Narayan student activist movement at the end of the 1970s, which fought for the democratic and basic human rights of the rural and marginalized communities during the Indira Gandhi Emergency. She was also actively involved in the landless labor movement carried out by the Chhatra Yuva Sangharsh Vahini in Bihar. Since 1996, she has been organizing women in rural areas of Maharashtra in the fight for their property rights.
How did you first hear about Changemakers?
Chetna Gala Sinha is an Ashoka Fellow and received an e-mail about this award.
This Entry is about (Issues)
What would prevent your project from being a success?
Mann Deshi Udyogini has been running and growing successfully for nearly three years. The stationary and mobile bus locations provide much needed services in underserved rural areas. As Mann Deshi Mahila Sahakari Bank grows, Mann Deshi Udyogini will be growing as well. Since much of this growth is intended to extend into urban and peri-urban areas, Man Deshi Udyogini’s competition will increase. Other non-profit organizations and for-profit companies have well-established vocational training programs.
However, Mann Deshi will be able to compete with these programs. What it offers in addition to its vocational and financial training is a solid connection with a microfinance institution whose services are catered towards their needs. Women will be able to learn practical skills that can be translated into an income-generating business with the help of financial services from Mann Deshi Mahila Sahakari Bank.
Mann Deshi’s second barrier is that each location currently operates as its own distinct program. To foster growth and expansion, Mann Deshi would like to bring Mann Deshi Udyogini under one conceptual umbrella and standardize all of its processes. The Managing Director of Deutsche Bank will be volunteering with Mann Deshi to facilitate this process.
Mann Deshi Udyogini is connected to the following:
Mann Deshi Mahila Sahakari Bank
HSBC: funder
The Bonita Trust: funder
The Deshpande Foundation: funder
If yes, provide organization name.
How long has this organization been operating? (i.e. less than a year; 1-5 years; more than 5 years)
More than 5 years.
Does your organization have a Board of Directors or an Advisory Board?
Yes. Mann Deshi has 19 board members that meet once monthly.
Does your organization have any non-monetary partnerships with NGOs? (yes/no)
no
Does your organization have any non-monetary partnerships with businesses? (yes/no)
yes
Does your organization have any non-monetary partnerships with government? (yes/no)
no
Please tell us more about how these partnerships are critical to the success of your innovation.
Mann Deshi has a close partnership with Deutsche Bank’s Corporate Social Responsibility program. Under this partnership, Deutsche Bank sends volunteers to Mhaswad to work with previously discussed projects. This partnership is vital to Mann Deshi’s success as it provides the opportunity for Mann Deshi to gain the expertise of professionals who have been working in a slightly different sector of the financial industry.
This year, Mann Deshi will have the opportunity to host Deutsche Bank’s Managing Director. Mann Deshi will be leveraging her years of experience in the financial industry to benefit Mann Deshi Udyogini. Deutsche Bank’s Managing Director will bring Mann Deshi Udyogini’s locations under one conceptually similar umbrella and assist in standardizing its operations so that it will be able to grow more quickly and efficiently.
How many people will your project serve annually?
1001-10,000
What is the total number of employees and total number of volunteers at your organization?
Employees: 23
Volunteers: 5
What is your organization's business classification?
Non-profit/NGO/citizen sector organization
Have you received funding from any of the following groups? (Please check as many as apply.)
 | sandeep T added this idea to their favorites. - 4 days ago. |
| Julie M added this idea to their favorites. - 181 days ago. |
 | Fran Holuba said: On July 10, 2009 the judges reviewed the entries for the Changemakers “Cultivating Innovations: Solutions for Rural ... about this idea. - 181 days ago read more > |
| Gabriela morales added this idea to their favorites. - 212 days ago. |
| Kirsty Gortzak added this idea to their favorites. - 217 days ago. |
 | Amelia Forrest Kaye updated this idea. - 230 days ago. |
 | Business School for Rural Women has been chosen as a finalist in Cultivating Innovation: Solutions for Rural Communities. - 231 days ago |
 | Patricia Breuer Moreno submitted this idea. - 249 days ago |
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