Extension of Deadline: 10 September

The United Nations Capital Development Fund (UNCDF) makes public and private finance work for the poor in the world’s 47 least developed countries. With its capital mandate and instruments, UNCDF offers “last mile” finance models that unlock public and private resources, especially at the domestic level, to reduce poverty and support local economic development.

Financial health programme (FH) hosted by UNCDF has partnered with the Government of Odisha to further strengthen the financial lives of women entrepreneurs under the aegis of Mission Shakti Programme -- an initiative to empower women through credit and market linkages by organizing them in self-help groups (SHGs). Nearly 7 million women, organized into 0.6 million SHGs throughout Odisha, benefit socially and economically through affordable financing, income-generating opportunities, and skill development.

Under the partnership, FH has set up the Mission Shakti Living Lab in the state, which aims to understand and improve the financial health of women entrepreneurs and individuals by designing and rolling out a suite of financial health-centric (digital) products and tools. As part of this roll-out two critical infrastructures are being put in place that are enabled by digital this includes, E-commerce Marketplace to drive market linkages for Self Help Groups/Producer Groups/Micro-enterprises and Financial Service Marketplace to streamline delivery of financial and digitally enabled services for SHG women part of Mission Shakti programme/ low and moderate income households in the state. Through the establishment of these digital platform, project aims to achieve wider access to economic and financial opportunities for SHG women and improved marketing outreach of SHG products and improved access to financial services and financial for SHG women and low-moderate income households.

The purpose of this Expression of Interest (EOI) is to invite organizations or a consortium of organizations to participate in setting-up the infrastructure for delivering financial and other digitally enabled services. India over the past years have seen a strong infrastructure push at last mile with agents/business correspondents, India stack enabled with UPI, Jandhan accounts, etc. All of this cumulative push has already laid out various foundational elements necessary for enabling better access to different services. This proposed engagement with Mission Shakti aims to create a structured channel that can allow for delivering different financial products and services under a one-stop shop. The proposed structure aims to create a robust mechanism for engaging with customers, understand their financial pain points, assist with creating better customer engagement through use of customer induced information, drive nudges for action and track indicators that can contribute towards improved financial health. Given the nature of this intervention, it is expected to bring together the financial, technology and payment play to create this one-stop infrastructure.

In particular, the applicant(s) for establishing the Financial Service Marketplace can propose the engagements considering the following below:

• Undertake the set-up of a white label Financial Service Marketplace digital platform through which different financial services can be drawn by SHG women/ low- and moderate-income households. The marketplace be enabled for both aided and un-aided transactions/interface
• Have a dedicated payment play that integrates with the existing payment instruments (eg, through UPI, etc) for creating better value and experience for end-customer.
• Foster partnership will financial institutions/banks for integration of their products within the marketplace, co-created with focus on women of Mission Shakti, general financial products and other govt specific schemes/ services offered to improve financial lives of low and moderate income population in state. The rules of these partnerships like level of integration, revenue sharing model, etc would have to be considered in the proposed design. The principle to follow would be to ensure where possible that customer has to have a seamless experience when it comes to accessing and consuming services, the overall proposition is built in a way that it can run sustainably as an independent unit.
• Ensure field readiness for the deployment of the Financial Service Marketplace by undertaking strengthening a field cadre. This cadre could leverage existing Banking Correspondents or any other existing field resources. The applicant can also suggest ways in which they shall take product delivery on ground. The human infrastructure set on the ground for this purpose is to be done building on the lessons from the past on how incentives work for agents/BCs working at last mile. We aim to not create a thin layer but one where one point can handle multiple form of transactions thus increasing the scope of revenue generation and successfully investing in long term presence. The focus would be to on-board the women in this role and the project would ease the process by creating access and identifying these potential human infrastructure. The cadre capacitated for the marketplace should be housed at a producer company based in Odisha (FH Programme and Mission Shakti would facilitate the same)
• Development of SOPs and training material rollout and usage of the platform
• Scale the Financial Service Marketplace throughout the state of Odisha
• Ensure at-least 3.5 million SHG women or low/ moderate income households have access and awareness about the products and services on the financial services marketplace in the state of Odisha and are actively participating

The applicant/ lead applicant must be a registered entity with a local presence in India either through a registered entity or a branch office. The ideal firm will have demonstrated experience in working with in development of financial products/ technology marketplace/ shaping last mile experience in India. These firms could include Payment platforms, card based platforms, tech marketplace, banking agent/ cadre management agencies, account Aggregators among others. Applicants may apply independently or in a consortium, with one of the applicants being a lead applicant. The EOI stage would also be used to foster some of these partnerships to achieve the desired objective.

The applicants are required to propose the financial cost for taking forward the roll-out and it is encouraged that this be developed in a manner that a sustainable model could be created. For initial roll-out all attempts be made to bring in a social investor/funder/self-funded by applicant as part of the consortium. The budget template is provided.

The selected applicant/ lead applicant will sign a commercial agreement with a producer company identified by Mission Shakti and UNCDF based in Bhubaneswar. The applicant would be provided with a dedicated Project Management Unit (PMU) set-up to drive the initiative which would be based at PC level in Bhubaneshwar and with field support in the initial testing geographies of Ganjam and Sambalpur.

The PMU will provide support to the applicant on liaising with Mission Shakti, facilitate exchange of data, documents, clarifications, share insights from other interventions on-going in the state and support on execution of project activities. The PMU will work closely with all the programme partners and support the applicant in coordination and engagements under the project. The PMU established by FH will support and work along with the applicant’s team in the districts of Ganjam and Sambalpur only. Once the model is stabilized, the applicant is expected to scale up the interventions in a phase wise manner to all other districts of the state. The PMU will provide support limited to facilitation of data, documents, clarifications with Mission Shakti in the scale-up in other 28 districts.

The applicant/ consortium will work together with UNCDF in a joint effort to establish financial Service Marketplace for the SHG women in Odisha.

Inquiries to this request for applications may be submitted by email to financial.health@uncdf.org and uncdf.rfa@uncdf.org by 15^th July 2022

All applications must be submitted by 23:59 hours (IST) by 10 September 2022 using the UNCDF e-investment platform: https://apply.uncdf.org/prog/eoi_financial_service_marketplace_under_the_mission_shakti_living_labs_programme