We live in a time of record global inequity. As per the latest Oxfam report, the top 1% of the population has more wealth than the bottom 6.9 billion people! Such inequality takes many forms: racial, gender, socio-cultural, ethnicity etc.

The root causes of poverty and exclusion is because of - Lack of equal economic opportunity: Small merchants, farmers, and entrepreneurs at the bottom of the pyramid keep the national economic engines running, but have limited access to national or global economic opportunities; Lack of access to fair financing: This requires a combination of different financing models, as well as greater emphasis on financial literacy; and lastly Lack of equal access to emerging technology and productivity tools.

There is also an increasing acknowledgement of the significant economic opportunity at the Bottom of the Pyramid. How can we make it more inclusive to address the needs to the last mile segments? One of these segments are the micro – merchants, the last transaction point for any person irrespective of income, gender, caste, location etc.

As per 2018 study by UNCDF, the micro-merchant segment of the retail sector delivered an annual turnover of $18.42 billion in 2018. These 1.3 million micro merchants have an annual turnover of USD 18.42 Bn, USD 16.71 Bn annual value of inventory and represents USD 778 Mn credit market. 2 million people are directly involved in micro-merchant businesses and almost 50,000 people enter the area each year. The micro-merchant segment of the retail and accounts for millions of transactions with customers daily. As per the study, approximately only 5% are women micro merchants. Around 98% of the micro merchants have mobile phones, out of which 30% have smartphones. Around 61% micro merchants borrowed in one-year timeframe, but less than 1% have insurance. The opportunity is immense to accelerate growth of this segments. A recent study undertaken by Innovision for UNCDF showed that there would be savings of approximately BDT 7.57 Mn per year for Companies with around 100-member sales team, if these companies who have micro merchants in their supply chains go in for supply chain digitisation and digitalisation.

For details, please click: https://spark.adobe.com/page/MN2hW1nKpwFzj/