The Livelihoods India Case Study Competition is a pioneering initiative that brings together the collective intellect of the sector and assimilates innovative solutions, breakthroughs, good experiences and best practices that help in learning from diverse sector experience and impact poverty reduction. Instituted in 2009 by ACCESS, the competition is a tool to identify and collate models and practices that have significantly contributed to livelihoods promotion of the poor in India. ACCESS announces the Livelihoods India Case Study Competition 2023.

Theme: Scaling Up Women’s Enterprises – Incubating and Empowering

India continues to lag behind its counterparts across several measures of gender equality, specifically in terms of economic outcomes. In an economy characterized by informality, entrepreneurship has received much attention as an alternative route to not just greater equality, but also growth. There is increasing evidence from both research and practice that women’s entrepreneurship has huge potential and can lead to employment generation. However, currently women owned enterprises form only 20 percent of the all MSMEs in the country. Current policy assumes these enterprises will organically scale up. However, evidence shows that women-owned firms face additional barriers to scale and therefore remain smaller, less profitable than their male counterparts.

For the year 2023, the Livelihoods India Case Study Competition invites case studies of women led SMEs that have successfully managed to overcome gender-specific obstacles and other challenges to build self-sustaining businesses, create employment and contribute meaningfully to the community. The cases should showcase effective and equal participation in markets, access, control and benefit over resources, evidence of decent work, increased agency and meaningful participation in economic decision-making, upskilling and re-skilling in pace with digital transformations to positively impact gains and so on.