On behalf of Team GAME- a very Happy New Year and I hope that 2020 is filled with all the joy, prosperity and success for you and your loved ones. A time for reflection, 2019 has indeed been an eventful year for GAME.

I look back at 2019 with a lot of gratitude for the immense support we have received from each one of our partners. We have initiated the Bangalore Women Entrepreneur Taskforce and the Meghalaya Taskforce that will help replicate mass entrepreneurship models across the country. 

Through multiple convenings, six research reports, fundraising and our focus on learning and co-creating, we have set the foundation for an effective 2020. The latest convening witnessed the participation of 220 participants, 59 speakers and 130 organisations – the Alliance is gaining momentum.

With a growing Alliance (30 active and enthusiastic partners helping us stay accountable), we aim to make GAME the go to organisation for all mass entrepreneurship, knowledge and collaborations; 3000 mass entrepreneurial journeys are to begin across Bangalore, Meghalaya and Punjab as we make mass entrepreneurship aspirational- a movement.

Thank You again - let’s make 2020 count.

With every good wish,

M. Srinivas Rao,
CEO, GAME

GAME, in collaboration with Facebook, has launched the Futurepreneurs Grand Challenge 2019. Futurepreneurs has been created to inspire college students and young working professionals towards mass entrepreneurship as well as find inspiring stories of entrepreneurs across the country. 

WEBINAR

‘Ease of Doing Busines For Entrepreneurs’

Jan 08, 2020, 05:30 PM

by Bhuvana Anand (Director, Research).
@ Centre for Civil Society.

On the 8th of January, to address the day to day challenges of managing a business, GAME is hosting a webinar on the ‘Ease of Doing Business for entrepreneurs' that will address issues like:

• Regulatory and compliance challenges that an entrepreneur faces in starting, sustaining, and scaling their business
• Impact of pain points (e.g. compliance costs, time investment etc.) on the entrepreneur’s ability to run and manage their business

This webinar will be conducted by Bhuvana Anand (Director, Research) at the Centre for Civil Society, an organisation that has conducted multiple studies on the ‘Ease of Doing Business’. The session will take place at 5:30 PM. 

Please do join us through a Zoom conference

The Bangalore Women Entrepreneurs Taskforce held its first meeting on the 23rd of November 2019. The taskforce was chaired by Akila Krishnakumar (MELA Foundation) and members included Padmashree Balaram (SVP and Wastemaya), Poornima Shenoy (The GAIN), Prof Venkatesh Panchapagesan (NSRCEL) and KL Mukesh (SVP, Unitus) and Manasmita Patra representing as our woman mass entrepreneur. 

Manasmita is the founder of Fresh Phulka, a roti-making business that has grown from making a few rotis at her house to producing and delivering 15000 rotis per day from a commercial kitchen.

The taskforce discussed various entrepreneurial challenges facing women at different stages of entrepreneurship: right from potential entrepreneurs, to small / intermittent entrepreneurs to established solo entrepreneurs. Furthermore, it was decided to focus on vertical sectors like food, education, vocational skilling, beauty, health and wellness, which are rapidly growing markets in urban areas. Finally, the taskforce deliberated on the categories of women entrepreneurs across various income segments, aspirational levels, social constraints and personal skills. To further facilitate decision-making, the taskforce called for a segmentation research to understand the various methods to segment the women entrepreneurs, recommend segments and build real-life personas. GAME will engage partners to conduct this research and will reconvene for the next taskforce meeting in January 2020.

For any queries please reach out to santanu@massentrepreneurship.org

A roundtable conference was organized in collaboration with Azim Premji University (APU) and Global Alliance for Mass Entrepreneurship (GAME), on the 12th of November at the IIC, New Delhi. The conference was an opportunity to explore the report ‘Microenterprises in India: A Multidimensional Analysis’ authored by Amit Basole of APU and Vidya Chandy of Chiratae Ventures. The report offered insights on ‘key trends’ among microenterprises in India and set the context for discussion on policy and programmatic interventions in the near future. The convening was attended by Ram Mohan Mishra (Additional Secretary to the Government of India and Development Commissioner for the Ministry of MSME). Some of the key takeaways were:

According to the report, microenterprises are a major contributor to employment (employment in non- farm microenterprises grew from 108 million to 111.3 million between 2010 and 2015), but factors like low scale and low productivity hamper the growth of such enterprises. This problem becomes more pronounced for women-owned and rural enterprises. The proportion of women-owned enterprises that hire three or more workers is a mere 2.7 % as compared to men which are 6.3%. To enable more women-owned enterprises, home loans championed by SEWA, proved to be a useful solution to reduce asset poverty. This yields time savings (i.e. women can work & perform child/elder care simultaneously) while giving the freedom of a dedicated workspace. The localisation of skilling and market linkages can also promote the growth of women entrepreneurs. District officers should be empowered with clear targets to support local entrepreneurship growth.

After an in-depth study on Women Homepreneurship in Pune. GAME has partnered with deAsra Foundation to pilot a resource portal for women homepreneurs. As part of this pilot we are testing:

- How can we leverage social media and other online tools to recruit women homepreneurs?

- What are the resources that they can access?

Through the learnings, we hope to elevate the support provided to women entrepreneurs. 

If you know of women homepreneurs or are aware of networks that include this segment, do share the link above. Greater participation will mean more robust learnings.  For any queries, you can reach out to ashwin@massentrepreneurship.org

Based on the recently launched report, 'Unlocking Entrepreneurship Opportunities for Women', 2 insightful briefs have been extracted:

There is a huge market opportunity for women in the education sector:

• Sector value is expected to reach Rs. 300K crore by 2025.
• 20% of urban enterprises in this sector are owned by women.
• 48% of employees in the sector are women. So, there is a huge labour base.

The trends driving this demand include:

• Increasing need for pre-school and day care.
• Need of after school supplementary education.
• Demand for vocational training for entrepreneurship.

The market looks very promising for women seeking to be entrepreneurs in the food business

• 22% of women-owned businesses in India are in the food sector. So, therefore, there is a growing acceptance.
• 17% of Indian women are employed in the food sector.

Some of the trends driving this opportunity include:

• Changes in the eating behaviour of the individual. For example, there is a shift towards ready-to-cook options and healthy eating.
• Increase in the trend of ordering food. This can be either for personal consumption (which heightens demand for aggregators like Swiggy) or for public events.