Training with Technology - Lessons from a Field Experiment with Kenyan MSMEs

Trainings encouraging adoption of best business practices are vital for strengthening small businesses in low-income countries. However, conventional in-person classroom-style business trainings are expensive, not easily scalable, and can exclude entrepreneurs that are harder to reach or are unable to take out time to attend in-person sessions - which can disproportionately affect female business owners. Moreover, these trainings are usually provided to entrepreneurs free of cost, which requires external funding and creates sustainability concerns. With extensive proliferation of mobile phones in low-income countries, there is now a growing focus on SMS-based trainings. These trainings are cheap, scalable and could be crucial for targeting support to female entrepreneurs. Yet little evidence exists on (i) the effectiveness of SMS-based business trainings, (ii) entrepreneurs' willingness to pay for such trainings, and (iii) their interactions with gender. This study addresses these gaps by evaluating the effectiveness of an SMS-based business training program for small business owners in Kenya. Access to an SMS-based training module was randomized across approximately 5000 small business owners. Treatment individuals were further offered the opportunity to purchase a second training module at a randomly selected price, in order to estimate demand for business trainings. Short and medium-run effects will be estimated using data collected via phone-based surveys.