Inclusive business in practice

Inclusive business has been recognised as an opportunity to deliver development impacts through innovative approaches to business. IDS has been working on case studies of what this actually means in practice with the Business Innovation Facility (BIF).

The Business Innovation Facility (BIF) was created to support businesses in developing or scaling up inclusive business models.The facility has provided technical assistance to nearly 100 businesses at various stages of their ventures in Bangladesh, India, Malawi, Nigeria and Zambia over the past three years.

As a pilot project, a core focus has been to share lessons and insights with the wider development and business communities:

• What are some of the obstacles that businesses face?
• What has worked to enable business models to take off?
• What has been the nature of the development impacts (with a small ‘i’) and how can they be assessed?

Inclusive business case studies (‘deep dives’)

To go beyond what is captured in BIF’s monitoring and evaluation system, a series of case studies (‘deep dives’) have been conducted to capture some of the rich lessons coming out of the pilot. initiative. Specifically, these case studies provide useful insights into (a) commercial viability of the business models, (b) additionality of the facility’s technical support, and (c) development impacts.

View all the inclusive business case studies or see below for individual case studies.

Agriculture and smallholder farming

• ACI Agribusiness: designing and testing an integrated contract farming model in Bangladesh (PDF)
• Collaborating for smallholder finance [in Nigeria]: how is Stanbic closing the loop? (PDF)
• Commercialising cassava: new opportunities for Universal Industries and Malawian smallholders (PDF)
• Evolution of mKRISHI ® : a technology platform for Indian farmers (PDF)

Affordable energy

• MEGA: a commercial approach to off-grid power in rural Malawi (PDF)

Educational transformation

• iSchool: transformative learning in the Zambian classroom (PDF)

Social enterprise

• The JITA sales network [in Bangladesh]: an inclusive business on the rise (PDF)

The case studies were conducted through a joint partnership between the Business Innovation Facility, Said Business School, University of Oxford and IDS.