Across the Nation in 11 Days: A Go to to Our Microfinance Companions in India

By William Eisenman, Director, Foundations and Company Partnerships

Final November, I had the good privilege of becoming a member of Ladies’s World Banking’s closest supporters on a visit to India. Our agenda was bold: 4 monetary establishments; 5 cities; eleven days. All through the journey, we met the inspiring girls entrepreneurs who’re on the coronary heart of each product introduction, piece of analysis, and management coaching led by Ladies’s World Banking.

The final night time of Diwali provided a becoming begin to the journey. For a lot of, Diwali facilities on Lakshmi—the goddess of wealth and prosperity. Households place diya lights on their windowsills to welcome her into their dwelling, whereas retailers and shopkeepers start a brand new fiscal yr along with her blessing. Lakshmi is alleged to carry good luck, defending her devotees from money-related sorrows.

In a rustic as colourful and vibrant as India, it got here as no shock that ladies’s entrepreneurship took many alternative varieties. In a rural, tribal space on the base of Mt. Abu in Rajasthan, two younger girls have been busy changing mustard husks into biofuel. One other lady ran a profitable dry cleansing enterprise within the bustling, city middle of Bangalore. And in Ahmedabad, the house of Gandhi’s ashram, a household offered kites constituted of recycled paper and sweet wrappers for supplemental revenue.

Regardless of the good variety in geography and commerce, frequent tales emerged from the journey. Many ladies spoke in regards to the native cash lender—usually a neighbor—who offers money on-the-spot in alternate for gold and wedding ceremony jewellery as collateral. Whereas straightforward and quick, these loans don’t come cheaply. A cash lender, who sits fully exterior the formal banking sector, can cost outrageously excessive rates of interest of 30% or extra, making paying off money owed almost inconceivable. That’s the reason many first-time shoppers of SEWA Financial institution and Ujjivan not solely lack capital; they’ve destructive capital. They’ve pledged their property, mortgaged their land, and had their jewellery tied up with a cash lender for years. SEWA Financial institution and Ujjivan are providing these girls a pathway out of debt within the type of a safe mortgage to repay previous ones.

Curiously, SEWA Financial institution and Ujjivan have realized a factor or two from the shady cash lender—specifically, that comfort issues. Each monetary establishments have constructed robust agent networks to compete with the casual sector and attain girls the place they’re. For example, SEWA Financial institution has 85 area brokers, referred to as saathis (Gujarati for “helpers”), go to girls in the neighborhood. Saathis are chosen by neighborhood members as somebody they belief to deal with their monetary transactions. Like Lakshmi, saathis are welcomed into the house and have come to characterize the great luck—and fortune—that flows from getting into the formal banking sector and having larger management over monetary property.

It was a real honor to witness how Ladies’s World Banking and our monetary establishment companions in India are altering girls’s lives and serving to them construct a greater future for themselves and their communities.