Microentrepreneurs in rural India grow with Ovante
Story by Tannaz Daruwalla and Eknoor Kaur
Savitri, Pinky, and Rajantha, outside of Savitri’s store in Nasopur, a village located in the Rajasthan state of northwestern India.
Savitri’s busy cosmetics and grocery store in Nasopur village, located in Rajasthan, India, hasn’t always been as large and well-stocked as it is today. A few years ago, she ran her business from a small room, offering limited items with little opportunity to expand. After losing her husband, Savitri became the sole breadwinner for her family but struggled to grow her business while managing her household. Today, however, Savitri runs a thriving store, fully stocked with a variety of products, and attracts 50 to 70 customers daily.
When asked how she got here, Savitri highlights that her lack of financial, business, and digital capabilities, and her limited knowledge of how to access credit, savings, and insurance products, held her back from seizing business opportunities in the past. With the support of our partner Frontier Markets and training from Ovante, a digital financial capability program supported by FedEx, she gained the resources and skills needed to sustainably grow her business.
Savitri isn’t alone in her struggle to expand her business. Many of India’s microenterprises are constrained by a lack of financial and business development knowledge. Micro, small, and medium enterprises (MSMEs) contribute around 30 percent of India’s GDP, with rural microenterprises providing valuable employment opportunities and financial stability for business owners. However, many enterprises find it difficult to expand. Ovante’s digital tools help these microentrepreneurs gain the confidence and skills they need to grow their businesses with training programs and access to tools for savings, credit, and insurance.
Building rural microentrepreneurs’ opportunities through education and innovation
To bring learning opportunities to India’s rural last mile, Accion Advisory has partnered with Frontier Markets. Frontier Markets provides products, services, and entrepreneurship opportunities to rural India through a network of women entrepreneurs, field agents, and a robust tech stack. Frontier Markets introduced Ovante, Accion’s digital financial capability program designed to strengthen the financial, business, and digital capabilities of microentrepreneurs, to 11 districts in Rajasthan and Uttar Pradesh. Through Ovante, Frontier Markets has reached over 6,400 rural women entrepreneurs, with more than 3,500 rural women actively participating in Ovante’s programs.
Savitri shows a handwoven carpet, which she also sells at her store.
The Ovante training modules are delivered via Frontier Markets’ Meri Saheli app, which also offers solutions for e-commerce, customer data, lead generation, marketing, and order fulfillment to entrepreneurs in rural areas.
To implement Ovante within their network of rural women entrepreneurs, Frontier Markets uses field agents to motivate microentrepreneurs and facilitate training sessions. With education through Ovante, in-person support from field agents, and the digital tools Frontier Markets provides, microentrepreneurs can increase their rural communities’ access to products and services, achieving financial stability for their households and strengthening their communities. To date, the partnership has resulted in over 3,500 active users, with 75 percent of users completing the entire Ovante program, including three core programs: "Make More Money," "Get Access to Credit," and "Buy and Sell Online."
The Ovante modules have had tangible benefits for users. For example, before receiving support from Frontier Markets, Savitri had an average daily footfall of 10 to 20 customers. Frontier Markets enabled her to set up a bigger store with more products. To manage this store, Savitri needed to understand how to manage her sales and purchases, accurately market and price her products, and utilize the profits to invest in her business. With the introduction of Ovante, Savitri learned more about credit, sales tracking, online purchases, and savings, resulting in a thriving business. Her confidence in using digital tools has also increased. For instance, she now uses UPI to accept payments and pay her suppliers. She is an active WhatsApp user, using the platform to communicate with her customers. Savitri is also carefully tracking her sales and profits, giving her insight into her shop’s performance so she can make informed decisions about her business.
More than 3,500 Ovante users like Savitri now have access to the guidance and knowledge to grow their businesses. Of women surveyed, 91 percent reported feeling more confident managing their day-to-day business activities after taking the modules, and two-thirds said the training improved how they manage their money. Notably, 76 percent of respondents from Uttar Pradesh and 51 percent from Rajasthan reported earning additional income directly linked to the skills and behaviors they learned on Ovante. The relevance of the content was particularly strong in Rajasthan, where 95 percent of users said they were able to apply the learnings from the coursework into their business operations.
These insights show that while digital literacy and business confidence remain major barriers for rural entrepreneurs, practical, mobile-friendly education, combined with trusted last-mile support from partners like Frontier Markets, can drive meaningful improvements in income, decision-making, and financial resilience.
Opportunities and the growth of Ovante
Ovante has helped more than 150,000 customers across the globe gain the confidence and necessary skills to grow their businesses, whether through learning modules or an interactive chatbot, as launched earlier this year in Mexico. Our visit to Jaipur highlighted how quickly rural entrepreneurs adopt digital tools and the need for tailored content and better delivery channels for relevant learning experiences. Frontier Markets’ increasing use of digital and AI-enabled tools for data collection, training, and engagement inspired us to think deeply about how Ovante can evolve: becoming more localized, easier to navigate, and accessible, even for first-time smartphone users.
Frontier Markets and Accion Advisory team members visit women entrepreneurs to learn about their business challenges and successes.
In the next phase of Ovante for India, Accion Advisory is building a user-centric interface, informed by the most recent challenges Indian MSMEs face in accessing credit, designed to deliver personalized content as per an entrepreneur’s needs. When rural microentrepreneurs strengthen their financial, digital, and business capabilities, these business owners can become leaders and changemakers within their communities, gaining financial independence and creating opportunities for future success.