Financial Inclusion Benefits

When an unseasonal frost threatened Saraswati Vishwakarma's potato crop, she had hours to decide. Months of work and her family's income were on the line—and her husband was away. The nearest agricultural advisor served thousands of farmers across the region. She turned to FarmerChat. In India, one extension worker often serves more than 5,000 farmers. When disease hits or rains come late, help can take weeks to arrive. That's a wait most smallholder farmers simply can't afford. FarmerChat, an AI-powered tool developed by Digital Green and supported by The Rockefeller Foundation, delivers hyperlocal agricultural advice in farmers' own languages—in real time, on their phones. More than 1 million installs. More than 10 million queries answered. Seven in ten users report applying the advice within 30 days. The technology matters. What matters more: farmers like Saraswati now have something closer to a personal advisor—available exactly when it counts. Read more about how FarmerChat is bridging the information gap for India's farmers: https://lnkd.in/eNmMb4hT

Saudi 🇸🇦 Women Are the GCC’s Untapped Billion Riyal Deposit Engine - Here’s How Incumbent and Challenger Banks Can Win Them First Everyone is racing to launch wallets, sleek cards, zero-fee FX and trading apps in the Gulf, yet the fastest-growing, least-served customer in Saudi Arabia (and possibly all of GCC) is still paying rent, saving for a first home, and juggling side hustle income without a bank that really speaks to HER 🙋♀️🙋🏽♀️🙋🏻♀️ ⸻ Why this matters now more than ever before: ➖ Female labour-force participation has jumped from 19 % to 36 % in 6 years - that’s a min of 700k new salaried women in the Saudi Workforce ➖ They already manage an estimated SAR 840 billion in investable assets, yet a fifth of them remain unbanked/ underbanked and many more feel ignored and undervalued by existing players ➖ Only 63-65 % of women hold a formal bank account vs ~82 % of men a stubborn 17-20-point inclusion gap. Wallet adoption is materially lower among women, mainly due to trust, relevance, and UX friction. ➖ Entrepreneur boom with >550 000 women-owned businesses registered; Saudi ranks 2nd worldwide for female early-stage entrepreneurship ➖ The Vision 2030 policy tailwind means inclusion KPIs will only intensify; whoever earns women’s trust first wins arguable lifetime of customers Proven playbooks from across the world: 🔆 Jefa (acquired by Tala) built a 115 k-strong wait-list before launching a single card by solving identity-light onboarding and daily cash-in pain points for women. 🔆 First Women's Bank attracted hundreds of millions in “mission deposits” from Nike and Mastercard by framing accounts as impact capital for the women’s economy 🔆 Starling Bank combined female founder credibility with fee-free business accounts and mentorship content, pushing its share of women-owned SMEs above the market average 🔆 SeaBank Indonesia boosted active withdrawals 19 % after UX tweaks co-designed with Women’s World Banking 🔆 Mahila Money bundles micro-loans with a community that turns rejected applicants into future borrowers - converting trust into eventual revenue. What GCC challengers (and incumbents) can lift & shift: ✅ Gender-intentional UX ✅ Utility over yield savings pots ✅ Community + education layers ✅ Impact and Includion themed deposit programmes for corporates ✅ Beyond Banking ecosystem perks & bundled For the digital attackers, this segment offers an opportunity which can help them leapfrog the incumbents rapidly - I for one am convinced that the next breakout digital bank won’t win by out “metal” carding the competition; it will win by being the first to make Saudi women (or another underserved archetype) feel that every rial or dirham saved and every side-hustle income earned has finally found a home built for them #bankingforwomen #wakeupcall #underservedsegments #bankingwithpurpose

Just having more women CEOs is not enough. If they don’t get access to opportunities and funding like their male counterparts. Studies show that men often start businesses with nearly double the capital of their female counterparts and only a fraction of small business loans go to women-led businesses. Challenges like societal expectations, limited access to financial services and restricted financial independence hold back many women from accessing what they need. This is what can be done to bridge this gap: —> Building financial confidence through workshops can help make independent financial decisions. Many loan programs for women come with support through mentorship, helping women not only secure funding but also succeed in their businesses. —> When household responsibilities are shared fairly, women have more flexibility to focus on their careers or businesses. This allows them to try adventures beyond societal expectations, ask for what they need and follow their dreams freely. —> Banks with streamlined processes, financial products and services can become helpful resources for women entrepreneurs. Microfinance and community development programs offer collateral-free loans, making it easier for women to access funding without additional assets. Every business needs capital to grow and nothing should stop women from accessing the funding they deserve. We need to build a space where financial literacy is given enough importance and women have access to funding and support systems to bridge the barriers and build what they want. In what other ways do you think we can support women entrepreneurs? #womenentrepreneurship #financialliteracy

India doesn’t just need more startups. It needs more founders who create jobs, solve real problems, and build with heart. That future isn’t possible without women entrepreneurs, and the momentum is already here. Across the country, women launch food ventures from home kitchens, run retail outlets in small towns, manage wellness brands, build tech-enabled solutions, and transform their communities. But one roadblock keeps surfacing again and again: access. Access to funding. Access to mentorship. Access to the right infrastructure. The good news is that several government-backed initiatives are already in place to bridge this gap, designed specifically for women who want to start or grow their business. ✅ Women Entrepreneurship Platform (WEP) An initiative by NITI Aayog, WEP provides a single platform for mentorship, funding, resources, and collaboration opportunities for women across different stages of entrepreneurship. 🔗 wep.gov.in ✅Stand-Up India Scheme Provides loans between ₹10 lakh to ₹1 crore to women and SC/ST entrepreneurs starting greenfield ventures. Includes handholding support and a loan tracking portal. 🔗 standupmitra.in ✅Mudra Loans (PMMY) Offers collateral-free loans in three categories—Shishu, Kishor, and Tarun—for small businesses like food stalls, beauty parlours, tailoring units, and local retail shops. 🔗 mudra.org.in ✅TREAD Scheme Aims to support women in rural and semi-urban areas by offering a 30% grant for project costs (through NGOs), along with training and credit assistance via MSMES. ✅Mahila Coir Yojana Promotes rural self-employment by providing a 75% subsidy on motorised coir machinery to trained women entrepreneurs. ✅Mahila Samriddhi Yojana Provides easy micro-loans via NGOs and MFIs with simplified procedures. Focuses on small-scale and home-based businesses, along with basic financial literacy support. ✅Annapurna Scheme Designed for food entrepreneurs, it offers up to ₹50,000 in loans to set up kitchen infrastructure, purchase utensils, or operate food trucks. Comes with a flexible 36-month repayment option. These schemes are not just financial tools, they are catalysts for economic empowerment. They are helping women step into entrepreneurship with more confidence and better support. If shared widely, this information can help women take the first step toward building something of their own, with fewer roadblocks and more resources. #womenentrepreneurs #businesswomen #womenempowerment

Generative AI and Inclusive Finance. Do you see them one eighty degree apart or see them walking towards each other with caution, optimism, and expectations? Have you heard of Edge AI? With 45% of rural areas lacking reliable internet and traditional banking infrastructure often inaccessible, how do we bridge this gap? The answer lies in Edge AI—the game-changer for inclusive finance. Edge AI processes data locally on devices (not in the cloud), making it ideal for low-connectivity regions. Pair this with Generative AI, and we unlock solutions that are both smart and adaptive. We can already see some of the success stories of Voice AI and Edge AI in the inclusive finance space, specially in India, South East Asia. See some examples below Indonesia’s Bank BRI uses Edge AI to analyze farmers’ crop yields via satellite data and mobile usage patterns, approving microloans in 48 hours with 92% accuracy. 2.5M+ unbanked reached, 68% being women entrepreneurs. Voice AI-powered apps (like India’s rural banking tools) enable transactions via basic phones in 12+ local languages, slashing costs by 78%. GCash (Philippines) uses Edge AI to flag suspicious transactions offline, cutting fraud by 35%. State Bank of India (SBI) implemented AI-powered fraud analytics, reducing fraudulent transactions by 50% and false positives by 60%. This increased trust in digital banking, especially in rural areas, and enabled SBI’s YONO platform to onboard over 10 million customers from underserved segments Edge AI + Generative AI shows some potential—it’s a lifeline for 250M+ unbanked in SEA. By marrying local data processing with context-aware intelligence, we can turn every village into a node of financial empowerment. Let’s build a future where finance has no borders—digital or geographic. Do share your experiences. #technology #leadership #generativeai

Today, I am sharing new progress on AgiriteChat, an Agentic AI system designed to support farmers by knowing when not to answer. Two weeks ago, I shared the early version of this agentic AI app built to support corn and soybean farmers at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. AgiriteChat helps farmers diagnose field problems, understand possible causes, and receive step-by-step guidance tailored to their crops. This work is part of my Agentic AI for Workflow Automation course in UNL Biological Systems Engineering. Over the past week, I focused on improving one key aspect of the system. Reliability. What does it mean for an AI system to be reliable in agriculture? For me, it meant stepping away from the idea that more answers are always better. Sometimes the most useful thing a system can say is: “I am not sure. Please confirm with your local extension officer.” So I rebuilt the workflow around this principle. The system is built using Python, Streamlit, and LangGraph, with AI models deployed through Groq for both text reasoning and vision analysis. What makes it different is its logic. It is not designed to simply generate answers. It follows a structured, agent-based workflow. Each question moves through clear steps. Classify the problem. Retrieve relevant knowledge using semantic search. Evaluate confidence. Then decide whether to answer, clarify, or refuse. The system now uses confidence thresholds to guide its behavior. High confidence leads to a structured recommendation. Medium confidence triggers clarification. Low confidence leads to refusal. When confidence is low, it does not guess. It steps back. This shift changed how I think about agentic AI. An agent is not defined by how much it can do. It is defined by knowing when not to act. I also worked on accessibility. The system supports #English, #Kiswahili, #French, and #Kinyarwanda. It also supports photo-based analysis. A farmer can upload a field image. The system extracts symptoms before linking them to grounded knowledge. There is still a long way to go. My next step is to expand the system with more local agricultural knowledge and integrate real-time data to better reflect field conditions. The system also needs testing with real farmers and validation with extension officers. This is not about replacing extension systems. It is about supporting them. If you would like to test the system, let me know. I can share the link. 🤖🚜👨🌾 Santosh Kumar Pitla Sai Charith Vaitla PRAIRIE Initiative

When I travel across Assam’s districts and interact with our farmers, two distinct things always come up in the discussions- Getting fertilizer on time and getting a fair price for their paddy. These are not big asks. These are basic things that every farmer deserves but for too long, the system made even these simple things harder until the Double Engine Govt led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi came to office. AgriStack is one of the most important governance reforms we have undertaken in recent years. It is India’s national digital agriculture infrastructure- like Aadhar for farming ecosystem. It creates a Farmer Registry where every cultivator gets a Farmer ID: a digital identity linked to their land records, crop details and entitlements. Prime Minister Shri Narendra Modi ji’s vision for Agri Stack was always about two things simultaneously: 1️⃣Using technology to modernize agriculture 2️⃣Using it to ensure no farmer is ever left behind. That dual promise is what makes this framework a transformative programme. In Assam, we have worked systematically to implement this vision on the ground. Assam has completed the rollout of the Farmer Registry across 31 districts and enrolled 12.8 lakh farmers with Farmer IDs. Now, we are taking the next step. Our Govt has approved the integration of Agri Stack into two critical systems: 1️⃣Fertilizer distribution: Farmers can now pre-book fertilizers using their Farmer ID or Aadhaar. Their land holdings and crop details are auto-verified from the registry. They can collect their allocation using a QR-based token with Aadhaar authentication at the point of sale. No middlemen in the system. 2️⃣MSP paddy procurement : Farmers registering to sell paddy at Minimum Support Price now go through Agri Stack-integrated verification. Their landholding and production details are digitally authenticated before they even reach the procurement centre. That means no wasted trips, no rejection at the gate. I want to particularly highlight the safeguards we have built into this system. We have created a robust exception framework, because we understand the gaps which still exist. ✅Tenant farmers who cultivate land they do not own are covered through landowner authorization pathways. ✅Farmers on government land are verified through e-KYC. ✅Small tea growers, a category unique to our State are specifically included. ✅PM-KISAN beneficiaries from areas that are not yet fully digitized remain eligible through parallel verification routes. Not a single genuine farmer should be excluded because of a technicality- this is the principle we are following. This scheme runs entirely under the Central Scheme framework- a testament to Double Engine Efforts. Through this system we are shifting from burden of proof on the farmer to burden of service on the government. That is the Viksit Assam we are building and the vision of Viksit Bharat that Prime Minister Narendra Modi has laid for us.

With the launch of Bharat VISTAAR (Virtually Integrated System to Access Agricultural Resources), the government is positioning AI as a “digital agriculture expert” accessible even through a basic phone by dialing 155261. Starting in Hindi and English — and expanding to 11 languages within six months — this tool promises real-time advisory on crop planning, pest control, weather forecasts, mandi prices, and access to key schemes like PM-KISAN, Pradhan Mantri Fasal Bima Yojana, and the Soil Health Card Scheme. But the real story isn’t just AI. It’s inclusion. By combining voice + text access in regional languages and building on digital rails like Aadhaar, UPI, and Agristack, India is attempting to solve the last-mile knowledge gap — the biggest bottleneck in farm productivity. The question now is execution... Will farmers trust AI advice? Will data stay accurate and hyperlocal? If done right, this could redefine how 100+ million farmers access intelligence — not as a privilege, but as a public good. #KYA_LAGTA_HAI #Agriculture #DigitalIndia #AIforGood #Farmers #AgriTech #PublicInfrastructure

Bridging Nigeria's Agri-Knowledge Gap: How AI is Making DFS Truly Accessible. Thrilled to see the insights from the latest "Demand Side of Digital Agriculture in Nigeria" report by 60 Decibels, Gates Foundation , and Busara Centre for Behavioral Economics. This deep dive into the farmer's perspective is crucial, and frankly, it underscores exactly why we built Crop2Cash. The report reveals a significant opportunity: while 40% of Nigerian farmers have tried a Digital Farmer Service (DFS), a staggering 60% haven't, with lack of awareness and access being the primary barriers for nearly half of all farmers. This isn't just a statistic; it's a daily reality for millions who could benefit immensely from timely, relevant agricultural knowledge. At Crop2Cash, we're tackling this Global Agricultural Knowledge Crisis head-on. The current 1:10,000 extension agent to farmer ratio is unsustainable, leading to an estimated $60B+ in lost productivity annually in Africa alone. How is Crop2Cash's AI Hotline a game-changer based on these findings? True Accessibility: The report highlights that 78% of surveyed farmers don't use smartphones. Our AI Hotline is toll-free, works on ANY phone (feature or smart), requires NO internet, and speaks the farmer's local language (currently 7, expanding to 10!). This directly addresses the core access, cost, and connectivity barriers identified. Boosting Awareness & Overcoming Discomfort: A simple, memorable toll-free number makes our service inherently more discoverable. Voice interaction is natural, overcoming the "discomfort with digital tools" cited as a barrier for 17-22% of aware non-users. Driving Meaningful Use & Satisfaction: The report found low satisfaction (NPS of -34 to -39) and only 2% "meaningful users" for existing information DFS. Crop2Cash offers 24/7, interactive, real-time Q&A and personalized advice powered by domain-trained AI. Our beta with 1,000 testers showed a 30% productivity increase and an average call time of 20 minutes – a testament to deeper engagement and value. Scalability & Cost-Effectiveness: We're aiming to shift the paradigm from 1:10,000 to a 1:1 advisory model. Our AI-driven approach is designed for this scale, with a single-digit dollar annual cost per farmer while returning triple digit revenue gains for farmers. The data is clear: the demand is there, but current solutions often fall short on accessibility and tangible value for the majority. With 20,000+ active farmers already benefiting in Nigeria and Kenya, Crop2Cash is proving that AI-powered, voice-based advisory can bridge these gaps. The potential to empower 500 million smallholders with knowledge, finance, and prosperity, one phone call at a time, is immense. You can check out the report here: https://lnkd.in/dexNrXDK And learn more about our AI Hotline here: https://lnkd.in/dPjwTfpw #DigitalAgriculture #AgTech #AIforGood #FarmerEmpowerment #SocialImpact #Innovation #Crop2Cash

Working in the agricultural industry, there are two parallel markets we have to build solutions for: top-down markets and bottom of the pyramid (BoP). These challenges the conventional go-to-market strategies in many developed markets. - Top‑down markets - built on trust in large institutions (banks, big brands). Eg. 1) Export buyers demand quality specs, certifications, and traceability. 2) Inputs financed via agri-loans from banks and fintechs. 3) Satellite-based weather and agronomy advice via apps - Bottom‑of‑the‑pyramid (BoP) markets - anchored in community trust between neighbors, local agents, and peer networks. Eg. 1) Local traders buy on trust, at harvest, often at the farm gate. 2) Inputs given on credit by trusted agro-dealers or via barter. 3) Word-of-mouth knowledge from elders, peers, and community radio This dichotomy is highly relevant in African agriculture. Many smallholder farmers, who form the backbone of our food systems, operate predominantly within parallel, trust‑based economies. 1. Credit & Inputs With limited access to formal banking, farmers leverage community credit circles and agro‑dealers they know. 2. Market Access Sales often happen in local markets or directly through trusted networks, not always through formal export channels. 3. Information Flow Knowledge about weather, planting techniques, and crop prices spreads person‑to‑person, not through institutional platforms. What if we bridged these parallel systems? - Tech-enabled agents: Empower trusted local cooperatives with digital tools to connect farmers to finance, market data, and insurance. - Contextual partnerships: Encourage formal support mechanisms (banks, input companies) to collaborate through trusted community channels, not bypass them. - Invest in social capital: Fund training programs that build collective trust, boosting the adoption of quality seeds, fertilizer, and ag‑tech. Why it matters By acknowledging the coexistence of formal and informal trade mechanisms and designing solutions that integrate them, we can: - Improve access to credit and inputs - Increase farmers’ incomes - Strengthen resilience to climate shocks Anyone building solutions in agrifinance, digital agriculture, or rural development, should explore designing products and services that earn trust within parallel market structures, not replace them. Only then can we unlock inclusive growth across Africa’s agricultural landscapes. #Agriculture #Africa #SmallholderFarmers #FinancialInclusion #AgTech #RuralDevelopment