Bridging the Digital Divide among Rural Women and Migrant Workers in India

Mission
Reduced Costs
Greater Inclusivity
Migrant workers, who often relocate to urban areas for employment, encounter significant obstacles in remitting money back home.
An RBIH survey revealed that although 90% of these workers own smartphones, less than 50% utilise these for remittances. Instead, they prefer traditional methods involving agents, despite incurring extra fees.
Similarly, multiple field visits to Chikballapur district, Karnataka, explored the challenges faced by rural women and micro-entrepreneurs in embracing digital payment platforms like UPI for daily financial transactions although they receive remittances via their household smartphones. The study also revealed that they did not trust these platforms, on account of various factors including limited knowledge. This resistance in adoption hampers their financial inclusion and restricts their economic opportunities and potential.
Solution
Understanding the underlying factors contributing to this hesitancy is vital to develop tailored solutions that address their specific needs. As part of our vision to empower women with access to finance, we are working on a pilot project focussing on enhancing uptake of digital financial services – namely UPI – among rural and migrant women. We are collaborating with behavioural science experts from the Centre for Social and Behaviour Change (CSBC) – a unit of Ashoka University – to gather data points on the digital divide.
As part of a pilot, we collaborated with Arvind Mills – where we acquainted female garment workers with making digital payments via UPI – based on our understanding of their needs and concerns.
Project Phases
