Consultant, Business Development

About Accion

Accion is a global nonprofit committed to creating a financially inclusive world, with a trailblazing legacy in microfinance and fintech impact investing. We catalyze financial service providers to deliver high-quality, affordable solutions at scale for the 1.8 billion people who are left out of, or poorly served by, the financial sector. For more than 60 years, Accion has helped tens of millions of people through our work with more than 200 partners in 63 countries. More at http://www.accion.org.

About Global Advisory Solutions (GLAS)

GLAS is Accion´s Advisory Solutions team. We are a diverse and close-knit global team with one common social purpose: building a financially inclusive world for small businesses and low-income households.  We are passionate about what we do – working with a wide range of financial service providers and other partners across the world to create to build sustainable businesses to achieve financial inclusion.  We enjoy solving problems, being exposed to new ideas, sharing information, and asking, “what if?”.

Ovante

Ovante was created by GLAS as an in-housed web platform built to scale across Latin America. The end users of Ovante are microentrepreneurs who can access the platform directly from their cellphone or desktop. The platform consists of 17different topics around managerial, financial, and digital skill building and guides its users through the different course contents, introducing incentives for them to finish each topic, and providing them with tools to apply concepts learned on Ovante in their day-to-day businesses.

Ovante aims to not only provide business concepts once, but to maintain an ongoing dialogue with entrepreneurs to support the evolution of their businesses and help guide them in accessing financial services from which they could benefit. Ovante help users to have easier access to credit by providing financial services providers with alternative data that can be used to complement a credit assessment and increase the chances of Ovante´s users to get a loan.

Project Summary

Engage 100,000 MSMEs to use Ovante through a partnership and colloboration approach with strategic stakeholders in Mexico.

The Consultant will support Ovante expanding globally, the launch of the platform in Mexico.

Scope of Work and Deliverables

• Conducting Market Research for Ovante on financial institutions, NGO’s, Fintechs, startups and other relevant actors that service MSME populations in México.
  • Deliverable: Market Research: findings, and opportunities.
• Conducting needs assessment of institutional partners to determine their requirements for offering Ovante to their customers. To start with it will include the following:
  • Channels / Tech/ APIs.
  • Joint Marketing Strategy and Material.
  • Workshops with final beneficiaries.
  • Communication with final beneficiaries.
  • Handholding / human touch follow up / Help desk for beneficiaries.
  • Content creation partnerships.
  • PR partnerships.
  • Mutual product/service packaging.
• Partnership prospecting of 100 institutions in México. o Target 20 institutional partners fully engaged, and 100.000 end users logged in within 3-month period. 25,000 completing Program #1: Salud Financiera module.
• Pipeline management for outreach to institutions, offering Ovante for free to their beneficiaries.
• Institutional outreach.
• Assistance in coordination of event in Mexico City, 27th September 2023. Roundtable of FinTech + FSP + Start up + SCF / distribution network partners. (Work with PR agency to plan a successful event).

Methodology

Desk research: gathering information from online sources such as websites, databases and reports.

Phone interviews: conducting structured interviews with relevant stakeholders to gather information on their needs and requirements.

In- person meetings: meeting with key stakeholders to build relationships and gain deeper understanding of their needs.

Data analysis: analyzing the gathered information to engage and onboard institutional partners.

Duration

3 Months

For questions, please contact Tannaz Daruwalla / TDaruwalla@accion.org