Girls didn’t really feel comfy transacting with JazzCash’ mostly-male agent community, resulting in decrease product uptake. Girls’s World Banking labored with Jazz to associate with Unilever’s girls entrepreneur coaching program to leverage every corporations core competencies to extend worth for his or her merchandise and drive monetary inclusion for low-income girls 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 totally 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 outlets as a key entry level for rural prospects, and each corporations are excited about increasing and strengthening that channel. Most significantly, each corporations share a deal with higher serving the agricultural girls’s market, recognizing a big untapped market alternative for each digital monetary companies (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 girls, the vast majority of whom do actively save for his or her households by means of casual means. A digital checking account such because the JazzCash cellular pockets may present many of those girls 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 deal with the section, girls’s uptake of the JazzCash account was lagging behind males. Girls’s World Banking quickly discovered 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 girls customers bolstered the workforce’s speculation that girls usually really feel uncomfortable transacting with male DFS brokers. This wasn’t stunning, given Pakistan’s robust cultural gender norms. Notably in rural areas the place gender norms are sometimes extra conservative, analysis indicated {that a} extra women-friendly channel may have a significant affect on girls’s entry to DFS. And what may very well be extra women-friendly than a community of native girls entrepreneurs different girls within the village already belief and interact with?
Creating 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 purpose? To construct a mannequin that successfully leverages every associate’s competencies to allow Unilever and Jazz to collectively embrace extra girls entrepreneurs of their rural distribution chains and attain extra girls prospects. As an finish outcome, low-income girls prospects would additionally acquire simpler entry to DFS.
With a view to create a win-win-win proposition for the three key stakeholders concerned (Jazz, Unilever, and rural girls), 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 social gathering may count on to achieve.
Leveraging Various Capabilities in the direction of a Shared Aim
Jazz introduced experience and area infrastructure to assist the registration, coaching, and administration of a DFS agent community. Unilever, together with its longtime native market activation associate Enterprise Analysis & Assist Channel (BRC), introduced deep expertise in participating and coaching rural girls entrepreneurs. How may these core competencies greatest be mixed to make a profitable proposition?
Girls’s World Banking designed a joint area workforce mannequin with representatives from each corporations. These groups would onboard and practice rural girls store homeowners as JazzCash Guddi Bajis. This included registering every taking part retailer within the distribution techniques of each corporations, equipping her with information of each JazzCash and Unilever merchandise, and supporting her engagement of ladies prospects by means of enhanced gross sales abilities and promotional supplies to enhance store visibility.
Guaranteeing Added Worth for All Stakeholders
This mannequin, nevertheless, is barely 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 may increase its retail footprint in hard-to-reach areas at a lesser price by sharing the prices of onboarding and coaching rural girls entrepreneurs, Since JazzCash and Unilever don’t supply competing merchandise, a community of shared girls retailers held potential to drive elevated buyer visitors and revenues for each corporations, 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 taking part 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 doubtlessly digitize funds all through Unilever’s distribution chain, producing enterprise development for Jazz and important efficiencies for Unilever.
For ladies shop-owners, participation within the JazzCash Guddi Baji program provides a chance for elevated earnings by means of direct connection to Unilever’s distributors and extra income from JazzCash agent commissions. This system’s coaching periods construct information and abilities that might contribute to additional enterprise development. Some contributors really feel that turning into a JazzCash Guddi Baji was additionally a management alternative, given the improved visibility it may afford her inside her household, enterprise, and neighborhood.
Pilot Outcomes & Trying Forward
Girls’s World Banking, Jazz and Unilever piloted the JazzCash Guddi Baji mannequin for 8 months, participating 32 girls 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 per thirty days from JazzCash commissions, and high performers gained greater than thrice that. The pilot additionally confirmed that with the best coaching and assist, rural girls can turn into energetic DFS brokers, constructing confidence and transactions over time. The pilot onboarded 566 new JazzCash prospects, 42% of which had been girls.
Interviews with each JazzCash Guddi Bajis and their prospects additionally indicated that girls brokers maintain robust potential to be an answer to extend rural girls’s uptake of formal monetary companies as a result of they provide a channel for entry and understanding that girls can extra comfortably have interaction.
The pilot additionally recognized how the JazzCash Guddi Baji mannequin may very well be improved to allow efficient scale-up. As an illustration, by means of extra centered choice standards to determine girls 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 area employees.
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 achieve better enterprise affect for these two establishments and drive monetary inclusion for low-income Pakistani girls.
Have one other thought for a partnership to advance girls’s monetary inclusion? We’d love to speak with you! Remark beneath or tweet at us (@womensworldbnkg and @megflhrty).
This mission was funded by the Invoice and Melinda Gates Basis.
