Reserve Bank Innovation Hub: Mapping Credit Access for Street Vendors
Designed and ran end-to-end primary research with street vendors to identify credit access gaps and match findings to a fintech partnership
Akhil Narang
Consultant - Valuations at Kaytes Business Consultants LLP
From their time as
Summer Intern
Reserve Bank Innovation Hub (RBIH) • 2023 - 2023
Overview
Akhil joined the Reserve Bank Innovation Hub as a summer intern with a mandate to understand how street vendors in Bengaluru accessed credit. The starting point was genuinely open: the team knew informal lending was prevalent, but the shape of the problem, the barriers, and the preferences of vendors were unmapped.
The Story
Akhil joined the Reserve Bank Innovation Hub as a summer intern with a mandate to understand how street vendors in Bengaluru accessed credit. The starting point was genuinely open: the team knew informal lending was prevalent, but the shape of the problem, the barriers, and the preferences of vendors were unmapped.
He and the team designed a questionnaire of around 20 questions and went into the field. After the first day, they found that vendors struggled with questions framed around percentages and abstract financial concepts. Akhil iterated the questionnaire, simplifying compound questions into single, concrete prompts. For example, instead of asking what percentage of payments came through UPI, he asked whether vendors received the majority of their payments through UPI or cash. The revised version ran for the next three days.
Across 500+ street vendors surveyed, a clear pattern emerged. 80% preferred UPI for receiving payments, a finding that surprised RBIH leadership. Vendors were not just tolerating digital payments; they were actively choosing them, and some were offering discounts to customers who paid online. Age was not a differentiating factor.
Akhil presented the findings to RBIH CEO Rajesh Bansal, who was struck by the UPI adoption rate. The research directly informed the fintech partnership selection process. RBIH partnered with MaskPay, a startup focused on underserved segments, to deploy working capital loans for street vendors. MaskPay's model encouraged vendors to transact on QR codes to build a credit history, enabling them to access loans at 12-14% interest, compared to the 10-20% weekly rates they had been paying to informal moneylenders. MaskPay subsequently partnered with ICICI Bank and Kotak Bank and expanded to Bengaluru and Mumbai, with plans to reach Delhi, Chennai, and tier-two cities.