Nationwide landscaping of public procurement opportunities leveraged by the Women-Led Enterprises (WLEs) promoted by SRLMs in India

Project Concern International (PCI) India through the project ‘Leveraging Public Procurement for Women’s Economic Empowerment’ aimed to connect women and Women-Led Enterprises (WLEs) with the marketplace and provide them with work opportunities. The need to landscape the nationwide public procurement opportunities was noted which were leveraged by the State Rural Livelihood Mission (SRLM) promoted WLEs since the public procurement of goods and services in India have largely remained untapped. A major challenge in demonstrating the success stories of community-based institutions that successfully catered to the State’s requirements was a lack of evidence to bring forth scalable public procurement enterprise models. Furthermore, segmentation and shortlisting of enterprise models needs were also felt based on developed frameworks along with creating a repository consisting of public procurements engaging women enterprises supported by NRLM/SRLMs.

The key objective of the project was to undertake landscaping of nationwide public procurement opportunities being leveraged by the SRLM-promoted WLEs. 

In sync with this objective, key goals of this project were to:

• Conduct analysis of the enterprise models of WLEs (SHG institutions) having undertaken business activities through public procurement.
• To identify the high impact models that exhibit potential for scalability and replicability.

A mixed research methodology was employed to inform the enterprise/intervention analysis. To develop a comprehensive framework, secondary research was conducted, drawing from key reference materials. These included reports by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) titled “Job creation through the social economy and social entrepreneurship” and enterprise surveys by Swissnex India and the World Bank.

Additionally, a preliminary repository was established to track ongoing orders procured through public tenders by Women-Led Enterprises supported by the National Rural Livelihoods Mission (NRLM) and State Rural Livelihoods Missions (SRLMs). This repository served as a critical resource for understanding the landscape of women-led enterprises in rural areas.

Samavit team documented high impact and scalable SRLM-promoted WLEs having undertaken business activities through public procurement. A first level repository of ongoing public procurement through women-led enterprises supported by NRLM/SRLMs was also prepared.