AVPN Limited (2024)

AI Opportunity Fund

GAME_JAIS Fund
Application to enable AI EjoPWZXX

capacity for grassroot

women entrepreneurs
Application details

Full registered name of your Junior Achievement India Services (JAIS) referred to by the brand name- Global
organisation Alliance for Mass Entrepreneurship. GAME is a non-profit operating as a project
under Junior Achievement India Services (JAIS) which is registered as a Sec-8
company.

Description of Organisation

GAME (Global alliance for Mass Entrepreneurship) works to unlock the potential of Mass Entrepreneurship (ME) in India.
Please note:
GAME is a non-profit operating as a project under Junior Achievement India Services (JAIS) which is registered as a Sec-8
company. Junior Achievement India Services has been reviewed and granted the Equivalency Determination certification
provided by NGO source.(GAME)
Further ahead, throughout the application process we will be referring to the entity as GAME.

Three prolific entrepreneurs, Ravi Venkatesan, Madan Padaki, and Mekin Maheshwari, started GAME in August 2018 as a
backbone organization that aligns the ecosystem and mobilizes action to address systemic challenges to job creation in
India.
GAME amplifies entrepreneurship in the mode of Seed, Soil and Climate, where through Seed, we invest in nurturing
entrepreneurial mindset, through soil, we enable and amplify entrepreneurship through connect with markets, credit and
capacity and through Climate, we work with policy makers enabling conducive environment.
Women Entrepreneurship amplification is one of the key objectives and a flagship program for GAME.
As a backbone organization, GAME intends to bring together a cross-section of alliances, partners, funders, and other players
in the ecosystem who can help inspire an entrepreneurial movement across the country.
Till date GAME has engaged with 200K grassroot women entrepreneurs through collectivized organizations and individual
amplification programs.

Where is your organisation India

headquartered?

In which market(s) does your  India

organisation operate in?

What is your organisation’s current 20

number of employees?

Please provide a breakdown of your Management Team’s diversity.

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 GAME has a diverse team and focused towards positive/higher women representation in leadership/management.
a) Gender- 4 out of 7 in the leadership team (Vice Presidents) are women
b) Overall Gender representation- female:male- 7:3

Please provide your organisation website and/or social media presence (provide links below).

Website  https://massentrepreneurship.org/

YouTube  https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCZi_M9BjPrjSxhW9T2-iZGA

Instagram  https://www.instagram.com/gameindiaofficial/

How is your organisation legally Non-profit

registered?

Please provide your FCRA number. 94421461

Year of Establishment 06/21/2007

Have you received funding from No

Google.org in the past?

Please indicate your organisation’s point of contact for this application.

Full name of Representative Poulomi Pal

Designation/Job Title of Vice President

Representative

Email Address of Representative [email protected]

By checking this box, I confirm that my 

organisation can receive foreign grant
funding.

By checking this box, I confirm that my 

organisation is NOT on the US or EU
sanctions list, nor blacklisted by any
UN or international agency.

Describe your organisation’s operating model.

GAME works as a backbone organization building a consortium with alliance partners. GAME forms its core team across
three verticals of Women Entrepreneurship and access to Market, Access to Credit and State Entrepreneurship Mission
(aggregating both) through action and policy. In this, GAME provides handholding, design, content, competence and
resources to grassroots consortium partners bringing about change and impact in the larger ecosystem.
GAME is headed by three stalwart founders Ravi Venkatesan, Madan Padaki and Mekin Maheshwari and has a central
President for managing overall operations.

Each vertical is led by a Vice President along with Vice Presidents for three support functions of Finance, Human Resource
and Communications and a project team for MEL (Monitoring, Evaluation and Learning)
We have field as well as central teams and every project is executed in partnership with community partner. The exit strategy
for every project happens through transfer of agency and acumen to the community.

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Describe your organisation’s capacity to measure the impact across all aspects of your organisation’s work.

GAME has an internal MEL (monitoring, evaluation and learning) team for MEL structure for every project. Every project is
mapped to impact indicators. For shorter projects we get data from field and evaluate against targets. For any project having
a timeline exceeding 1.5 year, we partner with a third party impact evaluation agency post consultation with the grant
partner and this is supervised by an independent MEL team.

Describe your organisation’s revenue model.

Organization is driven by grants. It is a registered non-profit

Please indicate the grant amount (in $250,000.00

USD) you are applying for.

Please indicate the percentage (%) of 8

your grant ask compared to your total
annual operating expenditure of
either of the last two years.

In the table below, please provide financial details for the last two (2) financial years.

Fiscal Year Annual Business Revenue Annual Operating Expenses

1 2023-24 $1,797,671.00 $1,797,671.00

2 2022-23 $1,355,366.00 $1,355,366.00

Describe your organisation’s track record in providing skills training and development.

GAME (Global Alliance for Mass Entrepreneurship) is in the space of training, capacity building towards accelerating new,
grassroots and mass entrepreneurs for growth and retention.
Under the WEE (Women Economic Empowerment) program, GAME has reached out to 200K women through 25 aggregated
groups and 4 community organizations to impart on-ground training and be the continued support hub for the same.
Following the backbone alliance model- GAME has alliance with CBOs (Community based organizations)/grassroots NGOs
with whom all innovative collaborations are executed. GAME imparts capacity building, training and hand-holding for all
these organizations.
As a part of WEE (Women Economic Empowerment Program), GAME has worked with the alliances and the grassroots
women in the below mentioned manner:

1. training, content hand over and capacity building with 6 core nodal organizations
2. Training of the leadership to be cascaded down to individual women for the 25 aggregated groups impacting 200K
women

What is the typical duration of your The training programs lasts for short term (3 months- wrt digital platform market
training programs? access, legal compliance) to 1.5 years for accelerated handholding and growth,
ensuring revenue change (increase)

What is the typcial cohort size of your Training will be imparted in cohort sizes of 25-30 women (maximum)
programs?

How have you financed previous training programs?

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 We have been funded by philanthropic organizations or supported in kind through the pvt platform players.
Our WEE (Women Economic Empowerment) initiative have been supported by Gates Foundation
Amazon and other platform players supporting in kind through capacity building of women entrepreneurs

What is your market(s) of  India

implementation?

What challenges and barriers towards AI skills development do you want to address in your market of intervention?

Rural women solopreneurs comprise of 38% of the total women entrepreneurship in India.
These are self-employed women forming the backbone of rural livelihoods but do not have the recognition, and often the
informality of their work and services disable us to understand the aggregated depth of their work, thereby speaking of the
necessity of “collectivization” as enabler. In the current scenario of growth and access to digital platforms (like Amazon,
Flipkart etc.) being critical to entrepreneurial sustenance, this segment of self-employed women might find the navigation
through platform economy difficult without concerted and collective efforts. These collectivized groups as aggregators need
the right access to digital marketing, ecommerce understanding, supply chain and customer experience for growth and
sustainability.

GAME is working with grassroot women entrepreneurs/producers handholding them and imparting skills wrt digital market
access and platform economy. Skills wrt to creating brand narratives, digital marketing, accessing better communication,
integrating supply chain, invoicing, looping in customer feedback and helping in marketing, building visual narratives.

Currently the target audience of small women producers are completely oblivious of AI and the aggregated entities have
been dealing with offline markets. Our recent need analysis clearly states the two requirements for the entities:

1. better brand building through visual and text narratives

2. accessing platform economies.

To achieve this, we understand AI enablement, skills and knowledge play a big role. The program envisages to engage with
WE (women entrepreneurship collectives) to create cohort based training cascading and impacting more women in the
collectivized entity.

GAME hand-holding 25+ aggregated enterprises to access and grow on platforms reaching out to 100K women.
This grant will enable us to deepen the exercise through creating enhanced handholding, imparting AI usage skills and
content for all for access and further growth.

Describe your plan to conduct AI skills training and development to address the challenges identified.

Activity Activity Details Expected Outcome

25 aggregated enterprise
Mobilization of Aggregated
Consortium of 25 aggregated mobilized and shortlisted
Enterprises comprising of
enterprises pan-india checking their business
1 Women Prodcuers part of
comprising/cascading down to requireent and need for
community based
100K women digital skills upgradation for
organizations
business growth

2 Creating a cohort led by a Women lead the cohort, 1. 25 women leaders get
women entrepreneur leader cascade down training to the trained in AIL skills and lead
for each aggregator women producers for the marketing and business
enterprise decisions for the enterprise 2.
25 aggregator enterprise
understand AI tools for

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 business growth and digital
marketing 3. Outreach 1L
women "

Enhanced participation
Business Skills imporvment Ensuring adaptation and
(accessing platform listing)
3 tracking through feedback and practice to improve business
and Increase in revenue (by
surveys skills and metrics
5%)

Do you need any training support Yes

from AVPN to deliver the AI training
programme?

If Yes, please select which areas of  Overall AI Fundamentals

training your organisation needs.
 Generative AI Fundamentals

 Responsible AI (AI and Society, AI Ethics)

 Gemini and other AI tools

 AI use cases (AI for Business, AI for Good, etc.)

Does your AI skills training and development programme employ participatory approaches? If so, please explain how.

Yes, GAME works in a participatory approach with community groups and women. We do extensive workshops and
participatory dialogues assessing the need. E.g.-A baseline study has been conducted to understand the need and relevance
of the collectivized women’s groups for market access. During the exercise, in-depth interviews were conducted with 30
aggregated enterprises cascaded and outreaching to 1L+ women and a database has been created for 100+ aggregated
enterprises in the country outreaching to 2200K+ women.
We understand and estimate the need wrt business expectation and growth led by women and work /co-create the content.
The idea is to develop the content and get the same delivered through the community women as trainers enabling
relevance, adaptability and equitable access.

What is the stage of development of Pilot

your AI skilling and development
training programmes?

If your application is successful, your While my Organisation possesses some in-house training capacity, we will require
Organisation will receive support for AI additional support from external trainers to effectively reach the breadth of end
training for the group of beneficiaries beneficiaries we intend to serve.
you have selected. However, the
specifics of the support may vary.
Please choose the option that best
reflects your Organization’s situation:

In what language(s) would the training need to be deployed?

Hindi, Gujarati, Kannada, English, Tamil, Kannada, Telegu

I agree that any material or content 

created during the program will be
made accessible and released as open-
source for use by anyone.

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The AI Opportunity Fund seeks to provide AI Skills Training for underserved communities, including underserved employees
and MSMEs.
Please describe the key beneficiary groups/communities your organisation seeks to reach, their needs in detail and how your
training programme addresses their needs.

The target audience for the program is- Rural Women MSMEs (solopreneurs) who aggregate as producers under a
collectivized entity.
These are self-employed women forming the backbone of rural livelihoods but do not have the recognition, and often the
informality of their work and services disable us to understand the aggregated depth of their work, thereby speaking of the
necessity of “collectivization” as enabler. In the current scenario of growth and access to digital platforms (like Amazon,
Flipkart etc.) being critical to entrepreneurial sustenance, this segment of self-employed women might find the navigation
through platform economy difficult without digital skills and access.
AI is critical for navigation, growth and success in the platform economy. This has been established by GAME's current work
with a large number of aggregator enterprises comprising of women, where not having skills to have digital marketing, brand
text and narrative, impedes growth and performance.
The training initiative will focus on leveraging AI to learn integrated business skills.

In which industry or industries do the Nonprofit/Social Services

beneficiaries you aim to support
primarily operate?

What is your organisation’s relationship with the group of beneficiaries you have selected above? How do you usually engage
with them to understand and assess their needs and challenges?

GAME- Global Alliance for Mass Entrepreneurship has been amplifying mass entrepreneurship. For women entrepreneurship
and digital empowerment GAME is outreaching out to 2.5L women across the country through 6 pvt economy partners as
well as a number of on-ground community partners through model creation and having a consortium approach.
Wrt. to digital participation and growth of women entrepreneurs GAME has been doing work on ground supported by
research and policy advocacy, to understand gaps on ground and building tools and designs to bridge the same.
GAME operates as a backbone organization works with alliance partners strengthening them with skills and resources
thereby outreaching deeper geographies and is hand-holding 25+ aggregated enterprises to access and grow on platforms.
GAME directly works with aggregated enterprises and women entrepreneurs being the nodal organization to impart skills,
knowledge, leading intervention.

Please specify the number of key beneficiaries your training programme aims to reach per year for 2025 and 2026.

25 aggregated women led enterprises impacting 100K women livelihoods (women producers) in two years.

Briefly describe how you intend to reach your target end beneficiaries.

GAME is currently executing programs with collectivized women producers and solopreneurs and have a pipeline (database)
of interested women groups from across the country keen to access platform economy and learn digital skills and
knowledge (100+ aggregator enterprises collectivizing 2200K women).
For the program we will do the following steps:

1. Roll out a participation call online and through offline channels

2. Gather expression of interest and assess intent, readiness and commitment
3. Understand commitment to and from grassroot women leadership in the enterprise unit
4. Create a selection rubrics and a panel
5. Select 25 (aggregated enterprises collectivizing women producers/solopreneurs)

What is the impact you intend to achieve through your training programme other than the number of beneficiaries?

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 1. Women unfamiliar to AI learn tools and become community trainer and leaders
2. Women form decision and ideation panel in their enterprises through acquired skills
3. Improved business by the enterprises-Enhanced participation (accessing platform listing) and Increase in revenue (by
5%)

What resources, expertise and/or partnerships do you have (or plan to have) in place to ensure a successful implementation?

GAME has been amplifying mass entrepreneurship. For women entrepreneurship and digital empowerment GAME is
outreaching out to 200K women across the country through 6 pvt economy partners (Amazon, ONDC, Biz-up, Air Black etc.)
as well as a number of on-ground grassroots implementation, content partners like Youthnet (Nagaland), SAATH, through
model creation and having a consortium approach.
Wrt. to digital participation and growth of women entrepreneurs GAME has been doing work on ground supported by
research and policy advocacy, to understand gaps on ground and building tools and designs to bridge the same.
GAME works in partnership with Government as well as with Community to amplify entrepreneurship efforts at ecosystem
level. Eg., GAME has signed an MOU with Maharashtra Govt. as a partner for the State Entrepreneurship Mission to impact
the state through model seeding in select districts. In addition GAME has also pioneered a state-level policy scorecard for
Women Entrepreneurship with Maharashtra State Innovation Society. In addition, as a backbone organization, GAME works
in alliance with multiple on ground partners e.g. for WEE GAME is working with 10+ on ground alliances.

Hence resources with GAME:

1. mobilization capacity and agility

2. Deep community connect
3. Content need and understanding
What we would be adding:
4. Trainers to customize and deliver on-ground
5. Impact delivery partners
6. Gender Intentional platform partners

What are the risks involved in your implementation?

What steps are you taking to mitigate these risks?

The risks involved can be divided into three categories:

1. Human Resource Related

2. Financial

3. Program and Project Design and Management.

Below we will enumerate the risks under each category and also explain how we will be mitigating the same.

4. Human Resource Related- This will refer to attrition challenges wrt to the trained capacity as well as from project
management team.
To mitigate the same we will be embedding the training within a community/aggregated enterprise, which will have a
leadership pool ready (in case of exigency). Also our selection criteria will ensure participation by organization having
deep rooted women leadership commitment (as the motivation for collectivization), which will ensure long term
commitment

5. Financial- Lack of adequate funds can limit the scope, quality, and reach of the training program. We have estimated
the costing bearing in mind the scope and our target and envisage that we will be able to deliver accordingly.

6. Program Design and Delivery Risks:

a. Ineffective Curriculum: A poorly designed curriculum may not meet the needs of participants or achieve desired
outcomes.
To mitigate this, as stated we will start with a needs assessment done through a participatory approach.
b. Limited Participant Engagement: Participants may become disengaged due to factors such as lack of relevance,

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 poor facilitation, or excessive workload. To mitigate this, we have an in-house training and facilitation hand-holding
and evaluation team to build on feedback and ensure continuous monitoring.

Describe the sustainability plan for your training programme.

This may include any existing partnerships your organisation has/is pursuing.

This initiative will be integrated with one of the flagship programs of GAME in which we have a medium term plan of having
place based interventions through state government partnerships, impacting larger cohorts and value chains.
The long term sustainability plan involves creating a solution accelerator in the form of a Central Business Hub (CBH),
providing continued training and support for AI enabled digital business acumen, access and growth, in a tailored manner to
pan India collectives working with women producers.
This will be in partnership with on ground community solution partners enabled by the women leaders, hoping to build the
CBH as an ongoing revenue-generating resource offering services at subsidized costs and creating content as public good
enabling on-boarding and transaction on e-commerce platforms such as ONDC, Amazon for digital business growth.
The step by step process for this:

1. Internal PMU (secretariat) at GAME holding the content

2. Access for the ecosystem to approach with EOI to leverage the content and skilling
3. Basis geographical location and access, direct to existing collectivized entity/CBO which will have the women trainer
leaders
4. CBOs established a CBH- Central Business Hub providing training and handholding (as per need) to the needed entity
at a subsidized cost (if needed)
5. Establish content accessible to all and Train the Trainer (TTT) model available through CBH
6. GAME will hold the access and facilitation support to the pvt. platform economy partners for further growth (as
aspired)

What is the scale-up plan for your training programme?

Please provide a project timeline/roadmap for the next 5 years.

By 2026, the program will impact 100K women producers and their entrepreneurial livelihoods through the 25 collective
enterprises.
However in the coming 5 years GAME envisages to reach out through content and training to 1million Women Producer
Groups.
A. Year 2025 (January) - Year 2026 (December) -100K women producers
B. Year 2027 (January- December)

1. Content as public good

2. Online/Offline Campaign reaching out to ecosystem
3. PMU established and directing organizations to the trained entities
4. Establish a database of 200+ entities requiring training and support
C. Year 2028 (January- December)
5. Roll out EOI and receive applications to receive training
6. Help establish CBH (community business hub) in trained CBOs
7. Enable CBOs to train cohorts
D. Year 2029 and Year 2030
8. Replicate
9. Final outreach 1 million women, 100+ Aggregated enterprises

Please include any other information you think we should be aware of in reviewing your application.

GAME is a non-profit operating as a project under Junior Achievement India Services (JAIS) which is registered as a Sec-8
company. Junior Achievement India Services has been reviewed and granted the Equivalency Determination certification
provided by NGO source.
All legal documents will be pertaining to JAIS.

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 GAME is implementing WEE on ground bringing gender intentionality with pvt sector to see on-ground inclusion and
participation for women in digital platform economies. Through this GAME has been successful in getting partnerships to run
experimental models with Amazon, Biz-Up, Air Black, Her Key and pvt platform players across categories as well as impacting
2.5L women on ground through implementation partners like AFH, Saath etc. The key of this project funded by Gates
Foundation is to build consortium and focused MLE for sustained growth through evidence building of the model.

Legal Registration Documents:

Please upload a copy of your organisation’s legal registration documents for confirmation that you are a registered
organisation/entity.

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FCRA-Renewal-Certificate-... (43 KiB download)

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organisation’s legal registration
documents for confirmation.

Audited Financial Statements:

Please provide audited financial statements for the last two (2) financial years.

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JAIS_Signed Audit report_... (795 KiB download)

I have uploaded a copy of our 

organisation’s audited financial
statements for the last two (2) years.

Organisational Chart:
Please provide an organisational chart that highlights the structure of your organisation.
If applicable, this should highlight the relationship between HQ and the local office where the solution is being carried out.

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ORG CHART_GAME_JAIS.pptx.... (115 KiB download)

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organisation chart.

I confirm that: Yes

My team members and I have no
conflicts of interest with AVPN which
could affect the objectivity in
evaluating your application.

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introductions to relevant stakeholders to increase the flow of financial, human and intellectual capital towards my
organisation.
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