Building with, not for: How Pasio designs digital tools alongside rural entrepreneurs

At Pasio, we don’t believe in building products for rural entrepreneurs. We believe in building with them.

That small shift, from “for” to “with”, shapes everything we do. Because the people we serve are not passive beneficiaries of innovation, they are innovators themselves, running dairies, managing shops, stitching garments, growing crops, building futures with resilience and ambition.

Our job is not to hand over tools. It’s about listening, co-creating, and building solutions that feel familiar, usable, and truly empowering.

‍The Why Behind Co-Creation

Too often, digital solutions for rural India are built in cities, based on assumptions. But we’ve seen firsthand that what works in theory doesn’t always translate into practice. A beautifully designed app is useless if it feels intimidating. A powerful dashboard means little if the user can’t relate to the numbers.

That’s why Pasio’s approach has always been rooted in the field, in the lived experiences, language, and daily realities of the people we work with.

Listening Before Building

Before launching our Pasio mobile app, we spent months meeting with entrepreneurs across villages and conducting surveys. We asked them how they manage money, how they track loan details, and what keeps them up at night.

What we heard shaped everything. Today, our app allows clients to track their loans, manage repayments, access emergency credit, and navigate in their own language- Tamil, Sinhala, Hindi, Gujarati, and Khmer. And every new update starts the same way: by asking, “What are our entrepreneurs saying?”

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Online Shops, Built From the Ground Up

Our online shop feature is another example of co-creation in action.

In the early days, we imagined a standard e-commerce layout. But when we tested it with real users, we noticed hesitation. Many didn’t want to list too many products at once. Some felt nervous sharing their page. Others asked, “Can I use my photo instead of a logo?”

So, we re-designed. We made the shops customizable, minimal, and easy to share on social media. We offered tutorials on taking good photos with basic phones. 

Over 25,000 entrepreneurs now have their own Pasio shops, not because we gave them a tool, but because we built one together.

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Learning, Together

Beyond business tools, Pasio’s learning community space, from short videos to weekly tips, is also co-developed with input from the field. We choose topics that matter: managing small savings, attracting repeat customers, negotiating with vendors, and reducing daily expenses.

Every message, every lesson, is crafted in simple language and shared on platforms they already use like WhatsApp and Facebook. We test it, refine it, and improve it based on their feedback.

When a young shop seller says, “This helped me gain more customers,” we know we’re on the right track.

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Why It Matters

Designing with users takes time. It requires humility, patience, and the willingness to change course. But it’s the only way to build tools that truly stick.

Because when a rural entrepreneur opens the Pasio app, sets up their online shop, or learns something new from a WhatsApp message, we don’t want them to feel like they’re using a tool designed in a distant office.

We want them to feel seen. Heard. Understood. At Pasio, that’s what innovation looks like.

Not sleek. Not loud.

But simple. Human. And always, built together.

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