On a recent visit to Bangalore, India, CGAP worked with Janalakshmi Financial Services to deepen their understanding of microentrepreneurs through research and qualitative discussions. They found that the conventional measures used to assess larger businesses, such as formal credit history, the enterprise’s size and the number of years it has been in business, often incompletely assess the business acumen of microentrepreneurs. These traits cast them as a volatile, transitory and hard-to-reach group.

The story of Janaki, one of the customers CGAP met, illustrates why looking at this segment through a different lens can help financial providers to better understand microentrepreneurs and develop services that meet their needs.