Business Training: Impact and Experiment on Product Design

This paper examines the impact of a training course that SEWA bank developed for self-employed women in Ahmedabad, India. Microfinance clients often lack entrepreneurial and financial skills, and as a result find it difficult to run their businesses efficiently and repay loans. Investing in basic business or financial skills training may greatly increase the impact of taking a loan. It may also result in improved repayment and benefit to the organization. SEWA trained a small group of its members, who owned a small business or were engaged in home-based work, over a period of two days. The training included basic concepts such as tracking business income, expenses and options as well as identifying long-term goals and developing short-term plans to achieve them.SEWA Bank found that its training helped participants not only in terms of skills development, but also in developing confidence that they can run a business and are capable of having a long-term view.