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Business Resilience

Practitioners’ lessons learned from Covid-19 and recommendations for the future of doing business

ygap - guiding social impact ventures to push business resilience

ygap - guiding social impact ventures to push business resilience

Interview with Kaitlin Tait (ygap) by Lisa Göllert

Hello Kaitlin, could you tell us about yourself and your work at ygap?  

I am one of the co-founders of ygap and currently oversee our curriculum and content development as well as our yher programme. ygap is an international development organisation that supports early-stage social impact ventures with locally-led solutions to local problems. We believe in the power of entrepreneurship as an effective and sustainable way to provide opportunities for people to lift themselves out of poverty and disadvantage.

We find, accelerate and support the growth of impact ventures led by local entrepreneurs who deeply understand the unique challenges of their communities and are best placed to develop solutions. We currently support ventures across Africa, South Asia, the Pacific Islands and Australia. ygap has offices and local teams that lead our programmes in each area that we work.

Yher is a programme of ygap which has been developed in response to the fact that, while women are pursuing entrepreneurship more than ever, gender inequality is still deeply entrenched across the global start-up space. yher supports women-led impact ventures with local solutions to local problems and currently runs programmes across the Pacific Islands and Africa.

Why is inclusive business particularly relevant when it comes to building resilience in the private sector, especially in this time of Covid-19?

Low-income communities are most vulnerable to risks like Covid-19 so businesses that offer products, services and business opportunities to these communities play an important role in ensuring these communities can withstand these kinds of shocks now and in the future. By adjusting pricing models or adapting products and services during this time to cater for the needs of these communities, businesses can open up new markets while also helping people at the base of the economic pyramid reach essential goods and services. In the long term, this not only supports the resilience of our most vulnerable communities but in turn, is also great for business and the economy more generally. 

From your experience, what does resilience mean in this context?

For me, at the heart of resilience is an ability to adapt. It is a skill that has obviously proven to be crucial for businesses at the moment and I think it will also increasingly be seen as a major competitive advantage. With the pace of change and increased uncertainty in our world, ventures that are agile and prepared to adapt to different scenarios will be those that thrive.

Do you have an example of a company that has proven to be particularly resilient in this time? If yes, what made the company resilient?

Two of our yher Africa ventures have recently shown great resilience in their response to Covid-19. Safe Motherhood Alliance is tackling infant and maternal mortality by providing safe baby delivery kits to women in Zambia. In the last few months they have leveraged their industry knowledge and networks to develop 3D printed face masks for the health sector in Zambia and beyond.

Gender Mobile is combating gender based violence in Nigeria through a dedicated telephone helpline and web-platform to increase reporting and provide support to victims of violence. In response to Covid-19, they developed a contactless hand washing device to help the vulnerable communities they work with access soap and water and prevent the spread of the virus. They also partnered with a local food initiative and re-purposed their call centre to evaluate the needs of the communities they work with and distribute food to vulnerable women and children. 

Both of these ventures were connected to the changing needs of their customers, were able to leverage the strong networks they had in their industry, forged meaningful partnerships and were open to exploring significant pivots. They developed new, innovative products that met the needs of their target community and opened up new markets for them.

People at a ygap workshop
Locally-led solutions help ygap's partners to succesfully adapt to changing conditions and to ensure business resilience. © ygap

Kindly describe the Resiliency Toolkit you developed. How does it benefit entrepreneurs? Also, in your opinion, what is the most important tool out of all?

We developed the Resiliency Toolkit as a resource for our alumni ventures to turn to in the wake of Covid-19 but also as one that would help prepare them for any future unexpected events they may face. We were seeing some good literature and resources being circulated in response to the pandemic, but really wanted to create something super practical that we knew would speak directly to where our early-stage impact ventures are at. 

The toolkit outlines key actions ventures can take to both prepare for and respond to an unexpected event. It guides them through activities like identifying key risks, how to protect key resources, exploring alternative suppliers, understanding their basic financial position, pivoting their business model, making use of available support and more. The tools tend to build on each other but I think the most crucial exercise for many ventures is the development of contingency plans for their key risks. 

This was the foundational toolkit that actually inspired a full series of Resiliency Toolkits that have been used by our team to support our alumni ventures during this tough time. Each toolkit delves deeper into some of the concepts explored in the initial toolkit and have been delivered via webinars to our ventures around the world.

 

You are the director of yher, a programme that aims to support female-led impact ventures. How is your organization especially helping female entrepreneurs to be and stay resilient in and post-Covid-19?

Our yher programmes (and our wider ygap programmes) are running 3-6 month resiliency programmes or ‘Re-Accelerators’ for a number of our alumni ventures. These programmes were designed in response to a needs-assessment we undertook with our alumni and designed to address the key challenges they are facing during this time. 

For our yher Africa Alumni for example, we are providing a tailored programme of strategic support that includes fortnightly strategic calls and fortnightly community calls which explore our Resiliency Toolkits and offer a chance for discussion and shared learning. We are curating regional specific information and resources for our ventures and we also hope to be able to provide some recovery grants to those who need support in responding to Covid-19 or testing new products, services or approaches during this time.

What should entrepreneurs keep in mind for the post-Covid-19 period when thinking about staying resilient?

I think the best thing ventures can be doing right now is observing the key changes that are likely to stick around post-Covid-19 and how those changes will impact their customers. Are there ways they will need to adapt their product/service or perhaps new opportunities they could pursue in response to those changes? Our ‘Preparing for the New Normal’ Toolkit, which will be available here shortly, looks at this in more detail.

Do you think that businesses can benefit from the current crisis, especially those from the Global South?

This has unfortunately been a huge blow to so many businesses, particularly those from the Global South, but I do think that the crisis has forced businesses to take the time and effort to analyse the financial sustainability and overall strategy of their business and make some tough calls. It’s also forced businesses to exercise that adaptability muscle that I think is so crucial to their survival and, as a result, those that do survive will emerge stronger. 

Additionally, from what I’ve seen, it seems to have presented an interesting opportunity for some businesses to forge meaningful partnerships with other key players in their industry/ecosystem and I think those collaborations will only serve them well in the future. 

Kaitlin Tait

Kaitlin is a Co-Founder of ygap, Program Director for yher and oversees ygap’s curriculum and content development. Her nine years of international development and education experience began with her leading a school for street-children in a Tanzanian slum and managing an HIV orphanage in a Kenyan village, before launching and growing the ygap model across Africa and the Asia Pacific. She has accelerated hundreds of impact entrepreneurs and designed and delivered programmes that have helped to create opportunities for over a million people affected by disadvantage to break the poverty cycle. Having led and contributed to various female entrepreneurship initiatives, she is extremely passionate about supporting and championing the next generation of female entrepreneurs and leaders.

Table of contents

graphic summary

GRAPHIC SUMMARY

A visual summary of the most important learnings when it comes to building resilience for crises in the realm of inclusive business. Learn more about these aspects by reading this eleventh edition of the online magazine on inclusive business! The…

editorial

Inclusive Businesses are Inherently Resilient

Nwuneli observed through her work that the companies least affected by Covid-19 have inclusive business models. She suggests two reasons for their resilience. First, inclusive businesses have invested in local sourcing and strong ecosystems. Second, these businesses had developed products and services that meet the needs of the customers at the bottom of the pyramid (BoP) – even in crisis.

Ndidi O. Nwuneli

feature story

Telling a story of resilience: Hands-on insights and resources from practitioners

In this CLUED-iN edition we gathered the inspiring stories and insights of practitioners, who shared the lessons learned from Covid-19 that they found to be particularly relevant for companies to stay resilient and shape the future of doing business. The resulting recommendations range from personal advice to practical toolkits, insightful webinar findings, and concrete advice for entrepreneurs and other stakeholders that shape the private sector in countries around the globe, including government.

Susann Tischendorf

Staying resilient during and post Covid-19 – Research findings and resources for entrepreneurs and governments

“Businesses rely on people,” asserts Professor Jane Nelson, Founding Director of the Corporate Responsibility Initiative at Harvard’s Kennedy School. In this interview, Nelson explains that she sees four key lessons learned for businesses from the current crisis, highlighting a need to focus on technology, leadership, diversity and relationships.

Nathalie's Trade - Perceiving the global need for clearer inclusive businesses models

Nathalie’s Free Trade is a “feel-good-do-good” food brand based in Sweden. In this interview, founder Nathalie Aldana explains how inclusive businesses can help the most vulnerable in times of crisis. She contends that the relationship between the Global North and South needs to be synergetic better than dependent to become resilient.

MIT D-Lab - supporting early stage entrepreneurs in emerging markets to reach Focus, Agility and (then) Resilience

MIT D-Lab is a multidisciplinary programme at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) that fosters the development of appropriate technologies and sustainable solutions to global poverty through education, research and the practice of inclusive innovation. In this interview, Jona Repishti, Social Entrepreneurship Manager at D-Lab MIT, explains why entrepreneurs should use the current crisis for business housekeeping and why Focus and Agility come before Resilience.

From rescuing to reshaping

With the looming thread of Covid-19 spreading to Africa, African development organizations, joined by the international community, came together to discuss plans and actions in virtual meetings. We at iBAN monitored the ongoing debate and provided summaries of insightful webinars on our Covid-19 response page. Now, three months into the crisis, we want to share our impressions of how the crisis evolved from first aid measures to detection of underlying problems and recently to an outlook on future solutions.

Prepare your inclusive business for the next crisis

As a business leader, you could spend countless hours reading through all of the current toolkits and theoretical frameworks on how your business could improve its performance during times of crisis. To help you invest your time effectively, we at iBAN will highlight what we consider the three most important steps out of ygap’s toolkit for your path to increased resilience. The following lessons learned focus on risk preparation, finance tracking and crisis communications.

ygap - guiding social impact ventures to push business resilience

ygap is an international development organization that supports early-stage social impact ventures with locally-led solutions to local problems across Africa, South Asia, the Pacific Islands and Australia. In this interview, Kaitlin Tait, Co-Founder of ygap and Program Director for yher, explains how ygap is focussing on supporting female entrepreneurs during the current crisis and stresses that business resilience soon will be a competitive advantage.