PayNearby’s Jayatri Dasgupta wants to have one million rural women banking correspondents in five years

According to a UN report, economies grow when more women join the workforce. Therefore, if India wants to grow faster, the country’s women, who make up about 50% of the population, must be provided with employment opportunities, it says. Jayatri DasguptaProgram Director, Naari Digital, Pay nearby.

It is critical for the country to ensure that there are influential women in small towns and villages to bring awareness, technology, financial access and gender equality to the grassroots. This is necessary to achieve true inclusion, says Dasgupta.

In February, digital financial services provider PayNearby launched a training and livelihood programme for women, Digital Naari, to provide them with a self-sustaining income opportunity. “In line with the government’s Lakhpati Didi programme, we want to provide livelihood to at least one million women and turn them into ‘Lakhpati Didis’ in the next 5 years, making them the preferred banking and digital access point in their areas,” says Dasgupta.

She notes that surveys have shown that 90% of women prefer to receive life and financial advice from other women close to them; therefore, the Digital Naari initiative aims to turn women into community influencers to ensure that 100 million women in Bharat Get access to banking, financial and other critical services.

The goal is twofold: to help women self-help groups, local business owners, community influencers and aspirational last-mile women cohorts adopt sustainable livelihood programs, and to enable essential financial and digital access to millions of other women through these community influencers.

The initiative empowers women in banking and digital services. Its app enables these Digital Naaris to offer a range of products – Sehat (medical advice and telemedicine, affordable healthcare, hygiene and sanitary products), banking (ATMs, savings account opening, fixed deposits), insurance (insurance, credit, mutual funds), SheCommerce (beauty, home appliances, kitchenware), counselling (government schemes and benefits) and more. “We aim to empower women in a wide range of services, so that they can become a one-stop-shop for other women in the region,” she says.

To train business correspondents, online and offline training is offered through the organization of workshops and boot camps. Information about products and services is provided to participants at their doorsteps. Ongoing mentoring and support modules are put in place to ensure that dropouts are minimized.

Dasgupta understands that there is no one-size-fits-all solution, which is why the platform provides flexibility for Digital Naaris to offer services as per their convenience in terms of time, location (from home/store) and product preferences.

So far, the initiative has empowered 1.5 lakh women and has an active network of 57,000 active women who collectively direct over Rs 10,000 crore worth of transactions annually.

However, Dasgupta notes that in the early days of the program, the income may not be significant enough to keep them motivated.

The Digital Naari team is leveraging the experience, resources and skills of PayNearby’s retail livelihood programme to scale up the initiative. It has also partnered with multiple government agencies at the central and state levels, and is also working with consultancy firms, funding organisations, non-governmental organisations and non-banking financial institutions engaged in developing self-help groups for women.