After running into an old friend who owns a successful clothing business, she began learning how to customize fabrics for blouses and saris. Embellished with intricate embroidery, as well as sequins and faux gemstones, these garments are central to what marks events, such as weddings, holidays and festivals, as special in India. Before long she received a steady enough stream of orders from neighbors to launch her own business, Srideep Fashions — “srideep” meaning “beautiful light” in Hindi.

But Swetha’s neighbors could order only so many saris. So she signed up for a training program called Digital Saksham to learn how to use Facebook and Instagram to reach new clients outside of her community.

Today, she employs four women to run her small store and field orders from customers throughout neighboring states. Swetha earns around $300 a month, enough to contribute meaningfully to her family’s expenses.

“At the beginning, I didn’t know how to market my business, but the Digital Saksham training has really helped and means I can now make sure my daughter and son have a good future,” she says. 

Digital Saksham — saksham translates to “able” in Hindi — is a collaboration between the Confederation of Indian Industry and Mastercard Strive, a global philanthropic initiative to digitalize small businesses. It’s part of a broader effort by the Indian government to unlock the full potential of micro and small enterprises — and part of Mastercard’s efforts to bring 50 million small businesses into the digital economy by 2025, a goal it recently met. 

As Swetha experienced, accessing digital tools can help these mom-and-pop shops scale up, reach new customers and hire more employees. The increased economic activity is expected to help India continue its speedy growth toward becoming the third-largest economy in the world within three years — after being 10th just a decade ago.