About us

There is a growing industry of business advice-giving in South Asia involving the public and non-governmental sectors. In recent years, there has been a shift toward private sector emphasis on development, towards economic growth-driven initiatives, entrepreneurship, and a focus on SMEs (Small and Medium Enterprises). This change has altered streams of business advice and finance: steering microfinance into business finance, and informal lending towards formal debt. 

Our research project titled "Ethnographic Solutions to Inequalities in South Asian Advice Ecosystems" draws critical attention to this shift, exploring the effects of these changes on existing inequalities, including inequalities of access and widening rural and urban inequity. We aim to better understand these processes to facilitate knowledge exchange from the ground-level of business advice ecosystems and co-produce a resource ‘toolkit’ for recipients and practitioners to address inequalities within advice delivery. By mapping and studying advice ecosystems alongside our partners in Bangladesh and Sri Lanka, we intend to channel the untapped potential of practitioner-academic partnerships into capacity-building actions on the ground, leading to better advices for people who need them the most.