Mastercard Strive: Caribou’s Global Impact
With the support of the Mastercard Center for Inclusive Growth, Caribou ran a portfolio of global Mastercard Strive programs between 2021 and 2025.
This global initiative supported micro- and small businesses through digital and data-first approaches in four areas: digital upskilling, financial services, business operations, and market access.
Caribou co-created, funded, and managed the delivery of 35 Mastercard Strive programs in over 30 markets across Latin America, Europe, Africa, Asia, and the Pacific. Underpinned by digital and data-first solutions, these programs have reached over 12 million small businesses, supporting them to build their digital skills, increase efficiency, strengthen market participation, and access digital financial services.
Caribou worked with over 30 grantees and strategic partners worldwide. Through a multimillion-dollar blend of targeted grants, innovation funds, and content distribution partnerships, Caribou supported the development of innovative products and models for small business growth, while laying the groundwork for longer-term sustainability and follow-on funding.
1. Standalone upskilling reached millions but faced a steep conversion challenge.
To meet our ambitious target of reaching 5 million small businesses, initial programs prioritized large-scale digital upskilling. By March 2023, we reached that target, but noticed that businesses weren’t engaging deeply enough to generate real operational impact. And while program evaluations of “power users” showed strong positive outcomes, controlled evaluations of the typical small business engaging in upskilling programs saw only marginal impacts on business performance.
So we shifted focus to bundled support, including access to digital financial services, markets, and operational tools, to better address the complex, context-specific challenges small businesses face.
2. Access alone does not drive adoption. Solutions need to overcome small businesses’ perception challenges.
Program evaluations found that technical skill is rarely the only issue in the solution adoption process. Risk perception and resistance to change are important barriers; for a business with thin margins and limited time, the cost of trying something new can feel too high. That cost may be financial, psychological, or simply the hours required to learn and commit to a new system.
Partners bridged these barriers by reducing perceived risk through human support and using platforms small businesses already trusted. They also overcame inertia through regular follow-ups, reminders, and recognition. Both strategies acknowledged that small business owners have limited attention and competed for it deliberately.
3. The flexible and trust-based nature of fund management was an enabler for success.
In a sector often characterized by rigid logframes, Caribou’s flexible approach to fund management allowed partners to adapt and iterate rather than being locked into obsolete plans. This flexibility was twinned with proactive advisory support, awareness raising, facilitated introductions, and platforming of our partners at appropriate moments.
Our Innovation Fund gave entrepreneurs early-stage capital to pursue the kind of experimental R&D that’s often too risky for commercial funding. This lets them build and test digital-first solutions tailored to small business constraints and, critically, prove the product-market fit well enough to unlock growth partnerships and raise capital.
Collectively, these partners raised over $20 million in follow-on funding after our initial grants.
4. Strategic partnerships play a key role in content distribution and driving downstream business outcomes.
Strategic partnerships were established for many of the Mastercard Strive programs, to distribute content to partners’ networks for small businesses, bring in complementary offerings and expertise, or to embed solutions in existing ecosystems and drive specific user actions. Strategic partnerships often led to deeper engagement with upskilling content through existing networks and trust that partners had established with small businesses.
However, these strategic partnerships could be challenging. Without co-investment and shared commitments about resources or other incentives to ensure partners prioritized engagement, this approach often led to delays and lower levels of outreach.
5. Caribou’s partnership brokering brought together powerful coalitions for impact and partnerships.
The association with Mastercard opened doors, created credibility, and strengthened partners’ networks, while Caribou’s team actively brokered connections and supported fundraising efforts. We made strategic introductions to investors, platformed grantees at major events, wrote letters, secured media exposure, published high-profile blog features, and connected partners to commercial opportunities. Overall, this helped catalyze further investment, with partners attracting over $20 million in follow-on funding during or after their Mastercard Strive program period.
Recommendations
It only translates into positive business outcomes for the most engaged small-business users.
If digital upskilling is funded, it should be embedded in platforms, paired with human support, or bundled with other pillars such as financial services and market access.
The evidence shows that providing small businesses with digital tools or content is typically insufficient.
Most fail to adopt without additional support. Barriers can be technical, but more often, they stem from perceived risk, limited time, or resistance to changing established routines. Programs that introduce human touchpoints, use familiar interfaces, or provide intensive mentoring consistently saw higher adoption and stronger outcomes.
The trade-off is scale: high-touch support brings results but is expensive to deliver. Future programs could consider tiered models that combine the broad reach enabled by digital with targeted human support for businesses most likely to benefit.
Partners affirmed the value of the initiative’s flexible, high-trust model.
By streamlining measurement and reporting requirements over time, Mastercard Strive enabled grantees to focus on development, execution, and adaptation based on learnings.
Deliberately matching funding strategies to local contexts by, for example, using innovation funds for testing new ideas, direct grants for scaling proven solutions, and accelerator partnerships for specific small business segments, can increase the variability and suitability of approaches used.
When partnerships are built on integrated, shared activities, rather than simply distributing content on behalf of other organizations, small businesses benefit meaningfully.
However, partnerships require formal agreements, clearly defined roles, and sustained commitment from all parties. Establish frameworks that specify what each partner will contribute and how decisions will be made jointly. Where financial service providers or commercial partners are involved, consider using different grant capital strategies to reduce risk exposure.
First-loss guarantees, concessional loans, or co-investment structures can bring institutional partners to the table who might otherwise hesitate to serve small businesses without established credit histories.
Mentoring, market access, and analytics solutions offer the fastest path to revenue and growth because their value proposition is immediate.
ShopUp’s e-commerce platform and Connectycs’s booking management system both showed that when small businesses see early revenue gains, retention follows.
Rather than training businesses first and hoping they eventually find customers, these platforms connected users directly to markets. Income from early sales motivated continued investment and provided resources to reinvest. ShopUp’s retained users cited business growth and increased income as primary reasons for staying. Connectycs’s hotel clients reported 10% to 20% revenue growth and reallocated saved time to business intelligence and analytics.
External evidence reinforces this: marketing analytics for Rwandan retailers led to 30% higher revenues, and AI-driven training on a Chinese e-commerce platform raised sales. When designing programs, lead with solutions that deliver immediate returns and bundle capacity-building into continued platform use rather than treating it as a prerequisite.