Why Capital Alone Doesn't Build an Enterprise
Two decades of fieldwork with self-help groups in rural West Bengal point to an uncomfortable finding: microfinance without skills training and mentoring often keeps businesses small rather than helping them scale. Access to a loan solves a cash-flow problem for a season. It does not solve for pricing, bookkeeping, market access or the confidence to negotiate — the things that decide whether a business survives its second year.
This is the thinking behind the training model used at Caterfly and in Empowering Women Globally's India programme: pair every rupee of capital with a structured curriculum — costing, digital marketing, value-chain analysis — and a mentor who stays in touch after the workshop ends. Since 2015, that combination has supported more than 200 women-led businesses across the Kolkata region.
Capital and capability have to travel together. Neither one alone builds a business that outlasts its first hard year.