Freelancing provides a reliable source of income with flexibility to the self-employed, those who are not part of a large organisation or for a person unable to work full time. This also provide a platform for unemployed youths and married women with small children to make an earning and thereby increasing inclusive growth. Payoneer, a financial services business that provides online money transfer and e-commerce payment services recently conducted a study among freelancers within 180 countries. Objective was to determine the average hourly rates charged by freelancers based on several factors. Payoneer’s Survey results were collected from the responses of 23,006 freelancers worldwide through an online questionnaire during November and December 2014.
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY This report presents the findings of the qualitative research project titled “Communication, Information and Knowledge Needs of Urban Poor Micro-entrepreneurs in Myanmar”. It is an outcome of a research collaboration between CKS Consulting Pvt. Ltd. (hereafter CKS), and LIRNEasia, with the aid of a grant from the International Development Research Centre, Ottawa, Canada (www.idrc.
The past decade has seen unprecedented, rapid growth in electronic connectivity in the form of voice in the developing world. Access to the Internet and to more-than-voice services is quite uneven with those at the BOP being excluded from the benefits of the rich potential of applications and services associated with the Internet. The report is a part of LIRNEasia’s research into the exploration of how to bring about an increase the inclusivity of the currently marginalized BOP by providing more useful services and applications on mobile platforms. In terms of providing useful services, the research will focus on three sectors; telecom, electricity and government services. How can these services be more useful to particularly to the micro-entrepreneurs at the Bottom of the Pyramid?
The survey was conducted among the low-income, urban micro-entrepreneurs (MEs) in three countries, Bangladesh, India and Sri Lanka. The study defined micro-entrepreneurs as those who employed less than ten hired workers, i.e 0-9. The hired workers are paid employees or full-time equivalent, excluding the owner. This is an adaptation of international definition followed by World Bank and European Commission1.
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY The report broadly explores the customer relationship management (CRM) practices in the electricity distribution sector in Bangladesh. It identifies some of the existing challenges and how these can be improved with the use of ICTs and better service design. In a country where less than half the population has access to electricity through 13.5 million connections to the grid, the challenge facing the sector is two-fold. First, those that are privileged to be connected to the grid, need improved services.
ABSTRACT This paper investigates the factors that influence formalization of poor micro-enterprises (MEs) in urban locations in Bangladesh and Sri Lanka. The paper draws from a multi-country survey of information and communication needs of poor MEs in Bangladesh, India and Sri Lanka in the second quarter of 2013. Through logistic regression, it models business registration among such MEs to understand what affects the decision to formalize within these environments. The paper also looks at the barriers to registration and the policy implications from these findings. Using descriptive statistics and models we find that the MEs lack of formalization is explained to a significant level by their level of education, gender, size of the enterprise and awareness levels.