TC-I Tidbits

You daily dose of headlines:

Health, Women and Mortality:The lack of inclusion of midwives within the National Rural Health Mission is highlighted as one of the main reasons for the high maternal mortality rate in India.
Education: Wada Na Todo Abhiyan (WNTA) continued to push the government to pass the Right to Education Bill.
Public Awareness: Swagat Thorat, [...]

TC-I Tidbits

Your daily dose of headlines:

Health: Over 53% children in India under five years - that is, 67 million - live without basic healthcare facilities. This means that India alone accounts for about one-third of all children in the world aged below five who don’t have basic healthcare. [Source: Times of India]
Education: There is a shortage [...]

Maximizing efficiency in Microfinance: Interview with Equitas founder

The Hindu just published a great interview with Mr P.N. Vasudevan of Equitas Micro Finance, a start-up MFI based in Chennai, Tamil Nadu. Vasudevan is an interesting entrepreneur, having spent 20 years in the traditional banking industry working with Cholamandalam Investment and Finance Co Ltd and Development Credit Bank. Reading the interview, its easy to [...]

TC-I Tidbits

CSR: Turns out Government of India is planning to set-up a institute focused on corporate affairs and Corporate Social Responsibility. The proposed think-tank is to be called Indian Institute of Corporate Affairs (IICA) [via iGovernment]

Social Security: According to a report by the People’s Collective for Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (PCESCR), an umbrella organisation [...]

Vikram Akula of SKS Microfinance Touts Mobile Banking as the Future of Microfinance

In a recent interview with IndiaKnowledge@Wharton, Vikram Akula of SKS Microfinance touted mobile banking (conventionally used for “performing balance checks, account transactions, payments etc. via a mobile device such as a mobile phone” as the future of microfinance, but cited India’s regulatory environment as a significant limiting factor in expanding mobile banking networks (click here [...]

TC-I Tidbits

Your daily dose of headlines:

Mobile bank: HDFC plans to unveil its pilot mobile bank branch with an ATM aimed at microfinance clients. While the term mobile bank here differs from what we envision with regard to the use of mobile phones, it is still a step in the right direction.
Women’s reservations: The Congress Party has [...]

Unitus to recieve $9 million support from Omidyar Network

IndiaWest Online reports that Unitus, Seattle and Bangalore based organization providing consulting support to MFIs, just received a $9 million grant from Omidyar Network. The grant is meant to support expansion of Unitus programs beyond India.
The article features one of Unitus partners, MokshaYug Access (MYA). MYA recently received $2 million funding from Unitus Equity [...]

[TC-I Changemaker]: CGAP’s Gautam Ivatury on the linkage between technology and financial empowerment of the poor

The ThinkChange India staff is committed to providing our readers with interviews with people we believe are at the brink of something special but have for the most part been overlooked by the mainstream media. Readers will be able to see other conversations under our TC-I Changemakers tab.
This week, Vinay sat down (over the phone) [...]

Update: Bhandan gets featured in Business Standard

I have written on Bhandan before, with regard to its efforts to incorporate job creation into its larger loans disbursed to micro enterprises looking to grow. Well now the organization is once again pushing new initiatives as the MFI’s CEO Chandra Shekhar Ghosh is trying to both grow Bhandan’s organizational footprint while simultaneously create schools [...]

Measuring the Social Performance of Microfinance Institutions (MFIs)

As part of its InSight Series, ACCION International has published a report entitled, “Guidelines to Evaluate Social Performance,” which aims to develop a structured framework for assessing and reporting the social performance of MFIs. According to the report:
Social goals drive the strategies of many microfinance institutions, yet many of these institutions are judged primarily [...]

Op-Ed: Should SKS Microfinance go Public?

A recent article on www.sramanamitra.com postulates that SKS Microfinance, which offers “several microfinance options to the poor in India for a variety of businesses from agriculture and livestock purchase to basket weaving and photography,” and has to date “provided over $550 million in microcredit,” will most likely follow Compartamos’ model and go public. According [...]

MFIs tend to lose focus as they ‘evolve’

A new report released by the Women’s World Banking (WWB) observes that as many microfinance institutions transform from non-profits to traditional financial intermediaries, they tend to shift away from their original focus on helping poor women and instead focus on making larger loans a la a traditional financial institution. The results were disheartening as the [...]

TC-I Tidbits

Here is your daily dose of headlines about innovative or anti-innovative ideas from around the country:

Microfinance

ACCESS Development Services and Agency for Technical Cooperation and Development will work to build cooperation between Europe and India to assist 20 MFIs in the country.
SKS Microfinance and Bajaj Allianz will form a partnership to provide clients with insurance [...]

Headlines Digest

Microfinance: SKS Microfinance is getting serious about microinsurance, by partnering with Bajaj Allianz to provide coverage to its members. Also, ACCESS Development Services will be providing intensive capacity building support to MFIs in India, and access to loans from European cjompanies. The project is partially funded by the European commission [both stories via Microcapital]

Healthcare: [...]

Wrap it Up: Two Papers reviewed by Microcapital.org

Microcapital.org reviewed two recently released papers this week; here is a summary of those.
1. “Should Access to Credit Be a Right?” by Marek Hudon
This is a very interesting question as fields like microfinance have gained so much popularity and success. The paper takes both practical and normative approaches to this issue and frames the overall [...]