Development Marketplace

The World Bank’s Development Marketplace (DM) is a competitive grant program that surfaces and funds innovative, development projects with high potential for development impact that are scalable and/or replicable. The grant beneficiaries are social enterprises with projects that aim to deliver a range of social and public services to the most underserved low-income groups.

Since the launch of the Development Marketplace, an estimated 20,000 entrants, and 1,000 finalists have been vetted by thousands of expert jurors and assessors, resulting in 220 global DM projects. The program has also held 58 country or region-based competitions and disbursed US $23 million to over 1,200 projects that operate at the grass-roots level. DM has awarded, in aggregate, US $60 million to Social Enterprises identified through country, regional, and global competitions. The last global DM competition organized in 2009, under the theme “Climate Change Adaptation,” received more than 1,800 applications and awarded US $4.78 million to 26 projects. Winning ideas have received up to US $200,000 in seed money, as well as guidance, training, and technical support for implementation. Using World Bank DM funding as a credible launch pad, many projects have gone on to secure additional funding support from other donors, foundations, impact and social investors.

Examples of DM supported projects worldwide include: VisionSpring which provides low-cost reading glasses to the poor suffering from near-sightedness in India, VillageReach which makes better quality health services accessible to remote parts of Mozambique and Grupo EOZ which provides affordable water disinfection systems to rural households in Mexico through its innovative, low cost UV buckets.

Each DM competition focuses on a specific theme or sector and draws applications from a range of development entrepreneurs, innovators and social enterprises. Applications go through rigorous, merit-based evaluation by panels of development experts from inside and outside the World Bank who short-list a group of finalists from a pool of applications. The finalists are then brought together at a Face-to-Face Marketplace event in country locations to present their ideas to the public and participate in networking and knowledge sharing events. At the same time, a jury comprised of development professionals and other experts meets with the finalist teams and collectively decides which projects merit DM funding.

In India, over the last 10 years, the World Bank Development Marketplace has recognized and supported several breakthrough social enterprises working in rural India, such as Goonj (waste resource management), Akash Ganga (potable drinking water), Drishtee (Rural Kiosks for access to public services) and Gram Vikas (Biogas electricity for tribal communities in Odisha).

In 2011, the DM team enhanced its offering by shifting focus from early stage enterprises and innovative ideas to a stronger focus on scalable social enterprise models. As a result the 2011 India DM was designed and implemented with the purpose of surfacing enterprises that were consciously seeking to grow the impact of their programs across regions.

Read more about the 2011 India DM

View the list of all the winners of the 2011 India DM competitive Grant fund and TA support

Case Studies

Rangsutra

Envisaged as a bridge between artisans and consumers, Rangsutra works with small producer groups based in remote villages and towns in around 9 locations across the Indian states of Rajasthan, Uttaranchal and Assam. It strengthens economic security in vulnerable communities by empowering members to create top quality hand made products which are then sourced and marketed to urban consumers through leading retailers.

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    We feel honoured, we are a young enterprise and being recognized by an institution like World Bank is a great feeling. We are pretty enthused to move ahead in a comparatively faster manner...we are looking forward to the coming 24 months when we are going to get various kind of inputs.
    Devendra Shukla, Chief Operating Officer, Educate Girls
    As far as scale is concerned, we have understood that a lot of capacity building is required for that. Resourcing and networking [with] other agencies is also important.
    Prabitra Mishra, Programme Director, Adhikar
    Through DM we have proposed to scale it up to different areas covering another 44,000 households where we can monitor the social security scheme. I am definitely thrilled and excited because this money will [make] us think in a different way, to upgrade our technology, our HR and streamlining our processes from a certain level to a different level. We need to build our capacity through DM.
    Mansingh Durga Prasad Nayak, Programme Director, (WOSCA)
    We are looking at this money more as in investment in infrastructure development as well as human resource development. We believe that the results of this will be seen very soon.
    Sumita Ghose, Managing Director, Rangsutra Crafts India Ltd.
    DM is the beginning...it definitely feels good. It has taken a lot of thought process as to how we take reliable lighting sources to Bihar...Winning DM matters a lot...the financial support will help us to build infrastructure, develop capacity of people to implement the program [of providing quality lighting to the poor] properly in Bihar.
    Prasanta Biswal, Sr. Manager – Mission Projects, Selco Solar Lights (P) Ltd.
    Basically a start-up needs to use the grant for the costs of capacity building of community, mobilization etc. Then there is the technical, research and development cost for doing the innovation part. The third necessity is providing the market linkage to the producer groups. These are the 3 core things that social entrepreneurs [look for] and for these, funds are not available. This will be the greatest benefit of the DM.
    Ravi Chandra, Managing Trustee, Bihar Development Trust
    In the last 3 years we have trained and placed 10,000 people [in jobs]. In this World Bank sponsored project we are trying to train and place 10,000 people in Bihar alone.
    Nishant Saxena, CEO Elements Akademia Pvt. Ltd.

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