Girls didn’t really feel snug transacting with JazzCash’ mostly-male agent community, resulting in decrease product uptake. Girls’s World Banking labored with Jazz to accomplice with Unilever’s ladies entrepreneur coaching program to leverage every firms core competencies to extend worth for his or her merchandise and drive monetary inclusion for low-income ladies in Pakistan.
At first look, a telco and a fast-moving shopper items (FMCG) firm may appear to have little in widespread. They function in very completely different sectors and promote distinct merchandise. However for Jazz, Pakistan’s largest telco, and Unilever Pakistan, the nation’s main FMCG firm, there are additionally a number of key areas of strategic synergy.
Each of their distribution chains depend on small village retailers as a key entry level for rural prospects, and each firms are fascinated by increasing and strengthening that channel. Most significantly, each firms share a give attention to higher serving the agricultural ladies’s market, recognizing a big untapped market alternative for each digital monetary providers (DFS) for Jazz and shopper items for Unilever.
The Alternative to Attain Extra Girls
Solely 7% of ladies in Pakistan have entry to an account at a proper monetary establishment. In recent times, the gender hole in account possession has elevated to twenty-eight proportion factors.[i] This leaves over 50 million unbanked ladies, the vast majority of whom do actively save for his or her households by way of casual means. A digital checking account such because the JazzCash cellular pockets might present many of those ladies the chance to extra securely and conveniently handle their funds.
Girls’s World Banking’s collaboration with Jazz started with understanding why, regardless of Jazz’s give attention to the section, ladies’s uptake of the JazzCash account was lagging behind males. Girls’s World Banking quickly realized a proven fact that we felt strongly contributed to this gender hole: roughly 99.9% of JazzCash’s ~70,000 brokers had been males!
Qualitative analysis with ladies shoppers strengthened the crew’s speculation that ladies usually really feel uncomfortable transacting with male DFS brokers. This wasn’t stunning, given Pakistan’s sturdy cultural gender norms. Significantly in rural areas the place gender norms are sometimes extra conservative, analysis indicated {that a} extra women-friendly channel might have a significant influence on ladies’s entry to DFS. And what may very well be extra women-friendly than a community of native ladies entrepreneurs different ladies within the village already belief and interact with?
Growing a Win-Win-Win Mannequin: JazzCash Guddi Baji
This perception led Girls’s World Banking and Jazz to hunt a partnership with Unilever, which a number of years earlier than began the Guddi Baji (colloquially, “good sister”) coaching program for girls entrepreneurs.
The aim? To construct a mannequin that successfully leverages every accomplice’s competencies to allow Unilever and Jazz to collectively embrace extra ladies entrepreneurs of their rural distribution chains and attain extra ladies prospects. As an finish consequence, low-income ladies prospects would additionally acquire simpler entry to DFS.
In an effort to create a win-win-win proposition for the three key stakeholders concerned (Jazz, Unilever, and rural ladies), Girls’s World Banking wanted to assist outline what sources and commitments every stakeholder would contribute to the mannequin, in addition to the advantages every get together might count on to realize.
Leveraging Various Capabilities in the direction of a Shared Purpose
Jazz introduced experience and subject infrastructure to assist the registration, coaching, and administration of a DFS agent community. Unilever, together with its longtime native market activation accomplice Enterprise Analysis & Assist Channel (BRC), introduced deep expertise in participating and coaching rural ladies entrepreneurs. How might these core competencies greatest be mixed to make a profitable proposition?
Girls’s World Banking designed a joint subject crew mannequin with representatives from each firms. These groups would onboard and practice rural ladies store homeowners as JazzCash Guddi Bajis. This included registering every collaborating retailer within the distribution programs of each firms, equipping her with data of each JazzCash and Unilever merchandise, and supporting her engagement of ladies prospects by way of enhanced gross sales expertise and promotional supplies to enhance store visibility.
Making certain Added Worth for All Stakeholders
This mannequin, nonetheless, is simply as helpful as the worth proposition it delivers to Jazz, Unilever, and the ladies contributors. How does this mannequin profit every stakeholder?
For one, every firm might increase its retail footprint in hard-to-reach areas at a lesser price by sharing the prices of onboarding and coaching rural ladies entrepreneurs, Since JazzCash and Unilever don’t supply competing merchandise, a community of shared ladies retailers held potential to drive elevated buyer site visitors and revenues for each firms, in comparison with a smaller store providing only one or the opposite.
Second, enhanced earnings from knowledgeably promoting each JazzCash and Unilever merchandise would put collaborating retailers on stronger monetary footing. This would scale back the chance of store closure or liquidity constraints, strengthening every firm’s distribution chain.
Within the longer-term, JazzCash Guddi Baji may be step one in a broader Jazz-Unilever partnership to probably digitize funds all through Unilever’s distribution chain, producing enterprise development for Jazz and vital efficiencies for Unilever.
For ladies shop-owners, participation within the JazzCash Guddi Baji program provides a chance for elevated earnings by way of direct connection to Unilever’s distributors and extra income from JazzCash agent commissions. This system’s coaching classes construct data and expertise that might contribute to additional enterprise development. Some contributors really feel that changing into a JazzCash Guddi Baji was additionally a management alternative, given the improved visibility it might afford her inside her household, enterprise, and group.
Pilot Outcomes & Wanting Forward
Girls’s World Banking, Jazz and Unilever piloted the JazzCash Guddi Baji mannequin for 8 months, participating 32 ladies entrepreneurs. The pilot clearly demonstrated that participation in this system can improve enterprise earnings for girls retailers: JazzCash Guddi Bajis within the pilot earned a mean of $9.40 monthly from JazzCash commissions, and prime performers gained greater than 3 times that. The pilot additionally confirmed that with the fitting coaching and assist, rural ladies can turn into lively DFS brokers, constructing confidence and transactions over time. The pilot onboarded 566 new JazzCash prospects, 42% of which had been ladies.
Interviews with each JazzCash Guddi Bajis and their prospects additionally indicated that ladies brokers maintain sturdy potential to be an answer to extend rural ladies’s uptake of formal monetary providers as a result of they provide a channel for entry and understanding that ladies can extra comfortably interact.
The pilot additionally recognized how the JazzCash Guddi Baji mannequin may very well be improved to allow efficient scale-up. As an example, by way of extra centered choice standards to determine ladies entrepreneurs with potential to reach this system; enhanced coaching content material and constant supply; to assist generate buyer demand round newly registered brokers; and improved efficiency administration of subject workers.
The optimistic outcomes of the pilot, along with these operational learnings impressed all three companions to develop a “2.0” model of JazzCash Guddi Baji for broader roll-out. With the foundations of a powerful partnership and a tested-and-refined mannequin for constructing a extra inclusive distribution chain, JazzCash Guddi Baji is poised to succeed in better enterprise influence for these two establishments and drive monetary inclusion for low-income Pakistani ladies.
Have one other thought for a partnership to advance ladies’s monetary inclusion? We’d love to speak with you! Remark beneath or tweet at us (@womensworldbnkg and @megflhrty).
This venture was funded by the Invoice and Melinda Gates Basis.
