Enterprise Facilitation
Ihsaas trust is catalyst in Pakistan which envisions to eradicate poverty through entrepreneurship. With this mission in our sight, we have been exploring and researching on ways to promote entrepreneurship elevate Karachi’s poor. We’ve made extensive efforts to create a blueprint that enables us to create livelihoods for people at the bottom-of-pyramid. We aim to promote social mobility by supporting people in becoming micro-entrepreneurs and create end-to-end business advisory services for this segment. We take the entrepreneur-centric approach to this and help micro-entrepreneurs through capacity development and access to the initial infrastructure needed to start.
Business Vertical
In the past year, we have help individuals in starting their micro-businesses in the following verticals.
- Fruit Cart
- Vegetable Cart
- Fries Stall
- Bun Kabob
- Biryani Stall
Financial Impact
Our help in the form of business training and financial assistance has been a stepping stone towards social mobility. We have seen significant financial impact that has help many improve their quality of life.
Success Story
Saleem, one of our success stories from the last cohort, is a 50 year old sole breadwinner in his house. His father’s body is partially paralyzed, while he has been on dialysis for the past year and a half and goes for treatment twice a week. He has to provide for his parents and his own family’s needs, along with all the medical expenses. Under these circumstances, he attended our mini-MBA cohort, and with the help of our enterprise facilitation program, he rented a cart for Rs. 60/day and began purchasing fresh fruits daily, on cash, through our supply-chain model. Saleem has done amazingly well for himself, earning an average of Rs. 2000 per day, which has allowed him to become financially independent and to better provide for his family. Inspired by his own son’s success, Saleem’s father is now in training to open up his own business. Keeping in mind his physical limitations, we plan in helping him to hire an assistant so he can also become a self-sufficient entrepreneur.
Saleem is a natural problem solver, a skill required to be a successful entrepreneur. During the first few days, he was facing issues in dealing with fruits that are about to expire. To deal with this, he partnered up with another fruit seller who takes all the leftover produce that will expire in the next 24 hours and sells them at various locations like mosques and residential areas. This method has allowed him to capitalize on the fruits that would have been wasted, which would have eaten away from his profits and potentially turned into losses. Due to his exceptional skills and qualities as an entrepreneur, we have selected his business to serve as one of our training facilities for other future entrepreneurs.
