Gabriela Enrigue

Gabriela Enrigue is taking an unprecedented integral approach to vitalizing local economies by helping microentrepeneurs find markets with unmet needs and optimizing their processes across their value chains, while also promoting a culture of local and responsible consumption to grow intra-economy commerce.

Gabriela’s new way of approaching local economic revitalization takes into account all economic stakeholders to change the economic landscape itself, rather than focusing on only one part of the equation, as is the norm. Prospera is the first entity to connect the general focused on local government, and microentrepreneurs to work to generate entire cultures focused on local economic growth. Gabriela’s method shapes market demand and behavior through microeconomic education of the public, while also facilitating market supply by assisting microentrepreneurs to find underserved markets and develop innovative products to meet those markets’ needs.

Since the majority of jobs in Mexico exist within microenterprises, Gabriela realized that the key to economic growth for Mexico lies within small and microenterprises (SMEs) and the local economies to which they pertain. However, because they exist primarily in the informal sector, Gabriela knew that entities like the “hole-in-the-wall” bakery down the street would never grow. This is one of Prospera’s points of intervention. However, unlike traditional business incubators, which use standardized business plans and practices for each industry and develop projects as they come along, Prospera focuses on product innovation, business sustainability, and finding or developing high-demand markets. For the example of a local bakery, Gabriela’s organization will find market needs—such as the demand for gluten-free bread in Mexico—and help the bakery develop, brand, and distribute a product that meets these needs. Gabriela’s unique perspective offers a new way to work with SMEs that goes beyond traditional business planning and focuses on market development, an approach easily replicable to any market.

Gabriela’s organization tackles both sides of the local economic spectrum—supply and demand. In addition to the services Prospera offers to microenterprises, the organization maintains ongoing public education campaigns to educate the public on basic microeconomic knowledge about local economies. This tactic creates a culture of local economic consumption and ensures that the microenterprises Gabriela supports flourish.

Because it is the most active sector of all SMEs in the region and has shown to be resilient during economic crises, Gabriela decided to focus on the food industry, especially considering the market opportunity to provide healthy food products in a country with such high obesity and malnutrition rates.

In Mexico, SMEs make up more than 90 percent of the businesses in operation, and offer almost 70 percent of available jobs, making their success the key to economic growth. Unfortunately, the majority of these enterprises exist in the informal sector and do not report their profits, which creates a barrier to their growth and expansion. In particular, their off-the-grid status produces a lack of understanding in mainstream business practices such as market demand, product placement, and distribution. This results in oversaturating the markets and higher competition, which artificially forces prices down. This is particularly true of the food industry, the sector in which SMEs are most active in the region. The lack of focus on nutrition at a national level has lead Mexico to have high rates of obesity and malnutrition. Yet, many SMEs offer the exact same unhealthy products because they are more focused on breaking even than innovating their products. This results in a market with high demand for healthy, “diet” and allergen-free foods, yet very little competition to meet these needs. Positioning this sector as one for high impact in economic development, social development, and public health.

Moreover, as with many informal businesses, microenterprises in Mexico are rarely connected with each other, suppliers, or investors, culminating in inefficient value chains filled with “middle man” prices that ultimately cost the entrepreneur and can lead to their failure. In fact, on average, SMEs in Mexico pay approximately 60 percent more for the raw materials needed to produce their products than their big businesses competitors, which keeps them from competing in urban markets. In many cases, entrepreneurs have the vision and commitment to offer high-quality products but simply do not have the resources, capital, or large orders necessary to grow their businesses and offer their products at competitive prices.

Beyond their internal practices, the business environment for microentrepreneurs is anything but supportive. Monopolistic practices, institutional barriers to growth, and little government support for small businesses further inhibits their ability to achieve profitability and expand, stifling the growth of the economy’s key sector for development. And while some organizations do offer services for microenterprises, they tend to only offer one aspect of their needed services and often focus on distributing the microenterprise’s product to a high-demand market that already exists, rather than create the market. Moreover, because of the size of microenterprises, pursuing the piecemeal services offered to them from three or four different entities often costs more work than it’s worth.

As a result of their internal practices and the unsupportive environment, SMEs tend to aim for survival. For instance, when they receive a loan, it is common for them to devote themselves to repaying it during the first two years without reporting any profits, and then they go bankrupt. It is this culture surrounding SMEs that perpetuates a cycle of self-defeat and has ensured that a shocking 80 percent of all SMEs in Mexico funded by some form of capital seed investment fail.

Gabriela’s approach to local economy revitalization is truly integral as it focuses on the big picture of economic development. Instead of just focusing on one stakeholder, Gabriela’s organization takes into account four vital actors in the economic landscape: local consumers, SMEs, untapped markets, and the government.

Gabriela uses her website and a search and selection process to attract microentrepreneurs, but her most noticeable source of microentrepreneurs is through her integration within the local government. She has created an alliance with the Ministry of the Economy in which all entrepreneurs who solicit a microcredit loan must first undergo training through Prospera and establish a viable, professional business plan. Gabriela has intervened in the system to assist microentrepreneurs at one of their most vital moments, something no other entity in the region has done. Additionally, the training provided by Prospera is guaranteed by the Secretary of Employment and Social Provision.

Prospera’s holistic approach to business plan design includes three main areas of focus: (i) value chain optimization, (ii) market analysis, and (iii) branding/marketing. First, Gabriela’s team analyzes the current practices of the organization, finding operations that can be made leaner. She also catalogues the raw materials needed by the SMEs and finds other Prospera entrepreneurs with similar supply chain needs, regardless of their corresponding sectors. These supplies are then ordered wholesale and distributed among the microenterprises to cut costs.

Next, Prospera analyzes the products being produced by the entrepreneurs and the demand of current markets. If demand for the product is low, then Prospera helps the entrepreneurs find markets with unmet needs and then assists them to develop their products accordingly, in turn, creating a new market. To help with this, Gabriela has formed relationships with nutritional engineering departments at top U.S. universities to help develop healthy and innovative products. As a key value in their consulting, Prospera also ensures that the product is produced in a sustainable and health-conscious way. For instance, if a microenterprise is making strawberry jam, Gabriela’s analysis will show that strawberry jam is an oversaturated market. She will then discover that there is a high demand for a jam that is healthier among diabetics. Working with nutrition engineers, Gabriela will help the entrepreneur develop and produce environmentally-friendly sugar-free cactus jam. Prospera’s team will create a custom brand for the microenterprise to help them establish themselves in the market.

Once their business plan is created, the entrepreneurs—called Prosperandos (“the prospering people”)—can also connect to the Prospera network, which offers connections to a network of mentors and experts in business development, product placement with potential customers, financial advice, and low-cost brand positioning with the Prospera brand; which allows entrepreneurs to create a lasting relationship with their clients. Entrepreneurs are also able to sell their products through Prospera’s online store.

Prospera then employs information technologies to track each project’s investments and loans, production rate, and profitability. With this technology they can analyze in real-time the generalized behavior of SMEs new market tendencies and the business challenges. This allows Prospera to continually revise their strategies based on sector trends. Using this integral consulting methodology, Prospera has trained more than 2,000 entrepreneurs and linked more than 100 microbusinesses with potential customers, raising their sales by an average of 300 percent.

Gabriela recognized that creating innovative microenterprises would not be sufficient to revive local economies; they would require a completely new culture of commerce. For this reason, Prospera runs to microeconomic public education campaigns to increase awareness about the importance of buying locally. Prospera also participates in an annual small business competition as well as a forum that involves the Chambers of Commerce; in an effort to nurture entrepreneurial culture and the work of the SMEs they support.

Based out of Guadalajara, Mexico, Prospera is composed of 16 staff members and a board of six international consultants dedicated to bettering local economies through supporting microentrepreneurs. Gabriela would soon like to expand her operations in the states of Jalisco, Puebla, the State of Mexico and Mexico City, working particularly with women, the elderly, and youth, as these groups face difficult challenges finding decent paying jobs. In the long-term Prospera wants to position the products of its Prosperandos in international markets like the U.S, China, India, and Brazil.

When Gabriela was six years old, her father died in an airplane accident and her mother was left to care for Gabriela and her two brothers, ages three and four. Through her experiences, Gabriela gained a profound understanding of the difficulties single mothers face in providing and caring for their families. This understanding enables Gabriela to serve Prospera’s largely female entrepreneurs. As a social worker, Gabriela’s mother taught her children the value of service through regular trips to an orphanage in Guadalajara where they played with the children and helped them with their homework.

Despite the close connection with her family, Gabriela left Guadalajara after high school to study economics and political science at a prestigious private university in Mexico City. Although this type of leap is rare for Mexican women, she embraced the challenge and became personally and economically independent. In college, she was actively involved in social activities and created a scholarship fund for foreign students faced with financial difficulties.

After graduation Gabriela worked on the analysis and optimization of economic processes for the inclusion of marginalized sectors. In these organizations, Gabriela witnessed the impact that technology and knowledge can have when incorporated in marginalized sectors of society to generate wealth. She thus made a commitment to directly contribute to the growth of her country, increasing productivity in marginalized sectors and reducing social inequality.

To fulfill this commitment, Gabriela enrolled in a master’s degree in Public Policy at the University of California at Berkeley, where she came up with the idea for Prospera. After finishing her degree, she returned to Guadalajara to start Prospera and has been working on its development ever since. At Prospera, Gabriela focuses on organizational financing, recruiting talented employees, and developing the organization’s international links. Since 2008, to support herself while building Prospera, Gabriela has served as a consultant at the International Financial Corporation, where she works on the analysis of business investment climates of countries including Colombia, Brazil, Indonesia, Kenya, South Africa, and Mexico. This research further supports her work in building the capacity of women in Mexico to become successful small business owners.