Structuring Informal Businesses: What We Learned from BSEP's First Cohort
Forty-two entrepreneurs entered our Business Structuring & Empowerment Program informally run. Here is what changed, what did not, and what we would do differently.
When we opened applications for the first Business Structuring & Empowerment Program cohort, we expected the hard part to be teaching compliance. It was not. The hard part was convincing founders that structure was not a threat to the thing they had already built.
The starting picture
Of the forty-two entrepreneurs who joined, thirty-one had no formal registration. Twenty-eight kept no separation between personal and business funds. Only nine could produce a record of the previous quarter's revenue.
"I thought registering would mean losing what I built. It meant the opposite — it meant I could finally prove it was mine."
That sentence, from a participant in the third week, reframed how we taught the rest of the programme.
What actually moved
- Registration — 31 businesses formally registered within the programme window.
- Financial separation — 26 opened dedicated business accounts.
- Record-keeping — 34 adopted a simple monthly bookkeeping routine.
- Funding readiness — 11 became eligible for facilities they previously could not access.
What did not move
Pricing discipline barely shifted. Most founders continued to price reactively against the nearest competitor rather than from cost. We had treated pricing as a single session; it needs to be a thread running through the whole programme.
Changes for the next cohort
- Pricing moves from one session to a recurring weekly clinic.
- Registration support starts in week one, not week four.
- Each participant is paired with an alumnus from this cohort.
Applications for the second cohort open later this year. If you run an informal business and recognise yourself in the starting picture above, get in touch.
