Vrutti

Vrutti is in the social impact space for more than 23 years as part of the Catalyst Group and made a difference to the lives and livelihoods of over a million poor and marginalized individuals and households. The NGO work through an ecosystem approach integrating and delivering end to end services that empower small producers and marginalized grow their way out of poverty and uncertainty and to be 3 times more profitable. The aim is to enhance people’s wellbeing through Knowledge, Innovations and Transformative Actions.

Major Interventions:

• Vrutti has focused on working with farming communities as agriculture is the primary source of livelihood for over 50% of Indians, and over 70% of farmers are smallholder producers. It is working on Integrated Village Development Models thereby focusing on regions that are largely rainfed, in districts identified by the government for special assistance under the Backward Regions Grant Fund, and communities that are socially and economically marginalised such as scheduled castes and scheduled tribes, and small and marginal farmers.

The NGO has developed Community-led Resource Centres for Integrated and Sustainable Farming in the Coastal Eco-System. The communities are trained in various aspects of organic agriculture and farm management, so as to take over and manage the farm after the project period. The Sustainable Agriculture project aims to increase the income of thousands of small-holder agriculture households through a farmer-led social enterprise model. The livelihoods and lives of Artisanal marine fisherfolks has been improved while balancing the fisheries and coastal resources.

• The NGO also has a financial inclusion division, called Vrutti – Livelihoods Impact Finance Enabler (V-LIFE) which works with banks and financial institutions for enabling financial services and literacy for producer institutions, enterprise groups and communities. Vrutti undertakes studies and research in various areas, with recent being impact evaluation of National Rural Livelihood Mission, literature review of Farmer Producer Organisations (FPOs).

• Platform for Inclusive Entrepreneurship (PIE), its base is an effective impact model – 3Fold – which provides a programmatic framework to align the work towards impact. 3Fold Model focuses on the journey of the farmers and artisans, suggests a portfolio of work to improve their enterprises, links up for a variety of services (6C services- Create, Construct, Capacity, Channel, Capital, Connect) with providers, through hand-holding.

It is a producer-centric digital platform, a transformative systemic solution being built on the Societal Platform approach to improve the incomes (3-10 times) and resilience of small producers; helping them to access all key services in their livelihood journey. PIE is a work in progress with substantial traction on the field, by a collaboration of three passionate partners with complementary skills (farmers, artisans, technology).