Publication database

This report presents findings and best practices from idh's innovating partners with regards to empowering farmers through service delivery, while generating sustainable returns to their businesses. Learn more about their models’ drivers of farmer resilience, cost reduction and financial sustainability.  And get inspired, by service models helping millions of smallholder farmers out of poverty, in often remote areas and developing economies around the globe.

P2P business models like Airbnb or Uber provide an organised way to collectively share certain resources. Could similar solutions reduce the barriers to sharing of the limited existing sanitation facilities in low income countries? During 2016 and 2017 Inclusive Business Sweden and Aqua for All, supported by Unilever and funded by Transform, carried out a project named ‘Peer-to-peer Business Models to Meet Sanitation Needs’ to explore this possibility.

Insurance supervisors in emerging markets have developed different approaches to foster markets for inclusive insurance. Several markets have undergone transformative changes as a result, but what has been the impact of these measures? The Access to Insurance Initiative (A2ii) and the Facility have commissioned this study to assess the impact of microinsurance regulatory frameworks on developing inclusive insurance markets by way of a Regulatory Impact Assessment. 

According to the Startup India Action Plan, 2016, one of the major challenges is the failure of most startups during the initial five years due to lack of either funds or management skills. Therefore, developing a conducive environment becomes crucial to support start-ups during their initial years of operations. This handbook is an endeavour to provide insight on several models that could be explored to set up a fund to promote start-ups, contributions to which would qualify as CSR spend under the Section 135 of the Companies Act, 2013.

The paper discusses agricultural insurance subsidy in detail and draws upon available literature and case study experiences to propose good practice guidelines for the design and implementation.

When Pioneer Insurance started offering insurance for low-income households in 2007, it had one distribution partner – CARD MRI. Today, after ten years, Pioneer’s joint-venture with CARD MRI - CARD Pioneer Microinsurance – works with almost 100 institutional partners, has issued more than 18 million policies in 2016, and generated Php 936 million pesos (USD 19 million) of premiums. Pioneer Microinsurance is currently one of the biggest commercial microinsurance provider in the Philippines.

Bundling agriculture insurance with other services like credit and better farm inputs is fast emerging as a possible solution to help agriculture insurance to achieve better social outcomes, make insurance more tangible and enable schemes to scale faster. There is evidence that states that access to agricultural insurance leads to significantly larger agricultural investment and riskier, yet more rewarding, production choices in agriculture. However, insurance as a standalone product may not be sufficient to overcome the binding constraints of farmers. Hence, bundling provides more value for all the players in the value chain. 

This workbook has been conceived as a practical tool for innovators working in the agricultural sector to reach and effectively serve the untapped market of women smallholder farmers in emerging economies. The workbook reviews existing resources and tools for designing and marketing products, services, and technologies, provides a way to assess barriers and opportunities for reaching the missing market of women farmers, and recommends specific tools and processes for the entire business cycle, from product design to market entry, retention, and growth.

This case study traces Evidence Action from origin to the launch and expansion of Dispensers for Safe Water in Uganda. It first describes the Dispensers’ pilot in eastern Uganda and then explore Evidence Action’s process of preparing for and scaling Dispensers across Uganda.