This engagement involves the development of an innovative mobile-based platform for enhancing business operations and providing access to finance for the Micro and Small Enterprises in Bangladesh.
Bangladesh has over 6 million MSEs and thus, they are one of the key players in the economy. Inefficiency in their business processes often holds these enterprises back and subsequently, adversely affect the economy of Bangladesh. Another major problem business owners of this segment face is that they can’t get access to necessary financing to grow. It is often a difficult endeavour for a micro and small enterprise (MSE) to seek business loans from formal financial institutions, largely due to the absence of reliable supporting documents for loan applications. Furthermore, there is a significant gap between the business loans an MSE typically seeks and the amount they receive, if any at all. Moreover, the time it takes to process such loans are often too long to meet the needs of the funds for MSEs. These challenges create information asymmetry and time delay problems, ultimately leading to a market failure. This problem has been addressed in this engagement.
From concept development to pilot that undertakes 1,000 MSEs, everything falls within the scope of this engagement with the vision to scale this up to reach MSEs at every corner of Bangladesh. Along with a primary research over three locations in the country, an ethnographic study was done to understand the usability dimensions for the MSEs.
pi STRATEGY 