What Businesses Do Entrepreneurs Start When They Lead the Way?
A look at the real micro-businesses coming out of SBS entrepreneurship training programs in the informal economy
Written by Nicole Powers
In Latin America, Africa, and Asia (the three regions where most SBS partners work), the informal economy isn’t a footnote. It’s the dominant economic reality for the majority of working people. In the absence of formal job markets where most individuals are contracted as employees of businesses and collect salary or hourly wage, people create their own jobs. A young woman selling tomatoes at a market stall is running a supply chain. A grandmother who raises chickens and sells at a local kiosk is managing inventory, cash flow, and customer relationships, perhaps without ever using those words. SBS entrepreneurship training is about giving names and structure to what people are already doing, or have dreamed about doing, and helping them do it better.
One key element of Street Business School is that we don’t prescribe the type of business our entrepreneurs start but rather give them the skills to look at their local markets and assess the viability of their idea. That’s because each community has its own mix of existing businesses and opportunities. What works in one market, might not work in another. Our graduates develop an “entrepreneurship mindset” that leads to quite a variety of businesses. Read on to understand more about these resilient entrepreneurship ventures.
1. Retail & Small Trading
Retail and small trading is the most common business type among SBS graduates, representing roughly 55% of all businesses started. Kiosks, general shops, boutiques, secondhand clothes, vegetable and market stalls, and small resellers make up this category.
In much of Africa, Asia, and Latin America, small retail is the primary commercial infrastructure of entire communities. The grid of market stalls and roadside shops is where most people buy nearly everything they need. These businesses typically start with goods purchased wholesale and daily cash turnover. They’re not small because their owners lack ambition. They’re small because building incrementally is the rational approach in an environment with no safety nets.
2. Agriculture, Food, & Livestock
Businesses rooted in growing, raising, and preparing food including smallholder farming, livestock, and restaurants make up about 27% of SBS graduate businesses. Some graduates operate across more than one of these.
Food businesses could include restaurants, snack stalls, food kiosks, small eateries, and bars. These businesses have a low barrier to entry but can be harder to sustain profitably than they appear. Ingredient costs, waste, competition, and irregular demand all create pressure on margins. This is exactly where training makes a difference: understanding food costing, pricing for profit rather than just for sales, and managing cash flow through slow periods transforms a food stall from a hustle into a business. These enterprises are primarily run by women. In contexts where women face significant barriers to formal employment, a food business operated from home or a neighborhood kiosk can be both economically transformative and practically accessible.
Agriculture and livestock businesses include activities like farming, poultry, piggeries, vegetable growing, and cereal farming. In rural areas, these are often the primary economic focus for graduates. Poultry and piggery can be “first asset” businesses, where the animal represents the first productive asset a graduate has ever owned. The shift from earning wages to owning something that generates income is a significant psychological and economic transition for SBS graduates.
3. Skills-Based Services
Tailoring, hair salons, hairdressing, and other services represent 9% of graduate businesses. These are skill-based businesses that require investment such as specific training, tools, equipment, or licensing.
Tailoring is a significant livelihood across much of West Africa and South Asia. A skilled tailor with even a single sewing machine can build a steady client base and, over time, train apprentices or expand to small-scale production. Salons and hairdressing are similarly common across the globe. In many communities, the local salon is not just a service business but a neighborhood anchor and a gathering place.
What these businesses share is that they tend to develop into stable microenterprises over time. A customer who comes once for a haircut comes back monthly. A tailor who does good work develops a loyal client base. The repeat-customer dynamic that service businesses generate creates a predictable income, which can be hard to come by in the informal economy.
4. Outside of the Box
Many businesses reflect the richness and variety of the informal economy but don’t align neatly into a category. For the SBS dataset, this is about 9% of businesses.
This speaks to the unique skills our graduates develop throughout the program, allowing them to creatively assess their local market for the best opportunities. For example, while a food market might be crowded with people selling rice, an SBS graduate might have discovered a niche in her ability to clean and process that rice. This category also includes jobs such as running a motorcycle or donkey cart for transportation, making bricks, carpentry, or having a laundry business. This group is a reminder that entrepreneurship in these communities is inventive and adaptive in ways that standardized categories can’t fully capture.
Investing in an entrepreneurship training program like SBS means funding the transfer of knowledge to people who already have initiative, ideas, and local connections. All they need are the training and tools to build something that lasts, which is where we come in. The informal economy is already working, already growing, and already changing lives. SBS just helps it go further.
Interested in partnering with us to expand your entrepreneurship training for people living in poverty? Reach out to Nicole at nicolep [at] streetbusinessschool.org.
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