For over two years, Internews Europe and its Indian partners, Plural India and Mahiti, with Equal Access in Nepal, have innovated business news services in print, radio and mobile phone for recipients of microfinance loans, and for SMEs in the Indian state of West Bengal, and in Nepal.

At the core of My SME News is a series of personalised and customisable news services exploiting the potential of India’s 250 million mobile phones to keep small businesses abreast of their existing and potential future markets. Innovative methods have to be found to market these services to bottom-of-the-pyramid demographics, newly empowered with mobile phones but also traditionally heavily reliant on social networks for their business information. Information needs to be delivered across a variety of media and networks as appropriate for each unique context, seeking a for-profit business model from the start.

Narrowcast, individually targeted services are combined with broadcast programming to reach microentrepreneurs and SME owners with business information and to spread awareness of small business services and the microfinance movement in the broad population. The project actively searches for a franchise model where ’infopreneurs’ from within an urban slum or rural context emerge to run business information services for their own communities in partnership with a higher-level company providing a technical platform, training and the flow of non-local information.