"We initiated this study to identify demand-led macro unlocks that can drive growth for urban women (primarily the homepreneur segment), taking the lens of mass entrepreneurship. The intent was to present opportunities to ecosystem stakeholders, such that innovation, interventions, policies and business models can emerge that can lead to a conducive environment creating a path to bringing more women into the labour force in India."

"Syngenta Foundation India (SFI), established in 2005, is an independent not-for-profit organisation. SFI’s mission is to have small and marginal farmers participate in agriculture development by improving their access to better seeds and other inputs, technology, information, credit and market access. In this context, SFI launched its Agri-Entrepreneur (AE) Program in 2014. Under the program a rural youth is trained as an entrepreneur who provides last mile services to a group of 150-200 farmers. Currently there are 1763 AEs under the program who are supporting over 2, 00,000 farmers across India.

Of the total AEs, 265 are women AEs who are currently active across 5 project locations, i.e; Bihar, Jharkhand, Maharashtra, Odisha and Andhra Pradesh. The objective of the study was to understand the performance of women AEs and create an enabling environment to improve income and increase participation. The study methodology is based on the integration of quantitative and qualitative research methods."

"This short guide outlines tips for how to apply a gender and inclusion lens while developing and reviewing communications materials. The intention is to provide basic guidance to a group of impact investors working as part of the “Investing in Women” initiative supported by Australian Aid’s DFAT program. It aims to serve as a starting point for thinking more deeply and critically about how gender inclusion and gender equality can be embedded into communications products and processes and coupled with gender-lens investing actions and processes that cut across entire operations of investment firms. Far from exhaustive, this guide is intentionally brief and designed to spur further research and inquiry."

"Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit GmbH (GIZ) is implementing the project ‘Economic Empowerment of Women Entrepreneurs and Start-ups by Women’ on behalf of the German Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ) and in partnership with the Indian Ministry of Skill Development and Entrepreneurship (MoSDE), to promote aspiring and existing women entrepreneurs in India. Under the name of ‘Her&Now’, the project also implements a media campaign to tell the stories of successful women entrepreneurs and to foster a positive mindset change in society. In this framework, GIZ has conducted this study to: establish the current profile of and barriers facing women entrepreneurs; analyse promising sectors and regions across India for women-owned/led businesses; ascertain potential sectors that would generate income and employment for for women entrepreneurs; and provide recommendations for policymakers and implementing partner interventions on women entrepreneurship."

"This document is a strategic guidebook developed by Argidius Foundation and Dalberg Advisors to support business development services (BDS) providers to successfully adopt digital practices and tools. It explores current practices and opportunities across the landscape to guide BDS providers in using digital technologies to provide services to entrepreneurs in an effective and inclusive way."

"As investors with experience in gender lens investing (GLI), our peers often ask us for information on how to kickstart their GLI journey. Many useful resources are available to do this. However, this brief addresses a gap in information on the tools and approaches used to design and implement gender-smart technical assistance for small and medium enterprises (SMEs) to improve their social and financial performance. We also share our reflections from our collective experience to date."

"The Gender Equality Scorecard© (GES©) Manual is the collective effort built upon SEAF’s work on the GES©, a tool SEAF developed to assess women’s economic empowerment and gender equality within growth-orientated small and medium-sized enterprises (“SMEs”). The GES© Manual provides clear guidance on how to utilize the tool and objectively score a company when assessing it’s demonstrated commitment to gender equality through six gender equality performance vectors."

"By investing in gender inclusion, businesses can generate opportunities for women while also furthering their business objectives. In recognition of the opportunities outlined above, the Shell Foundation and Value for Women embark on a partnership in 2016 designed to pilot a holistic framework for gender inclusion in enterprise operations, using a "bottom-up", business-first approach, aimed at testing the impact of gender inclusion on business performance. The approach first hones in on business challenges, and then designs practical, measurable solutions with a gender lens."

"This paper is aimed to support DCED member projects to integrate gender considerations more fully into private sector development (PSD) measurement systems. It takes a first step at bridging the knowledge gap by: 1. Reviewing definitions of women’s economic empowerment, 2. Identifying current measures for women’s economic empowerment in WED, and 3. Offering practical ways forward for measuring household level change in women’s economic empowerment."

"Aid agencies and governments spend more than a billion US$ on entrepreneurship training annually. What have we learned about the effectiveness of training? We review research on entrepreneurship training. Classroom-based training remains the most popular method of training owners and managers of small firms. A meta-analysis shows that the standard training model has modestly positive effects, on average, though the effects imply reasonably high returns on investments in training, given low costs per participant. Innovation on this basic training model has increased in recent years, particularly with regard to content. Both personal initiative and rule-of-thumb training show promise for subsistencelevel enterprises. Individual consulting has shown significant positive effects for larger enterprises, but the model is expensive and markets for consulting do not appear to work well. Selection is important, particularly in matching the type of training with the type of enterprise. There are several seemingly promising approaches to training where definitive evidence is lacking. For example, Kaizen approaches and Incubators and accelerators both appear to have positive effects, though the evidence is limited and, in the case of accelerators, it is unclear as yet whether the effects come primarily from selection or from the content of the programmes themselves."