Monthly archives: September 2009

The List of Micro-Finance / Micro-Credit Institutions in India

By | Published September 29, 2009

microfinance

Asmitha – Provides rural poor women access to financial resources in the form of collateral free small loans for income generation and livelihood promotion. This enables them to set-off small start up business, which soon translates into adequate nutrition, medical aid and education. With increased businesses, these low-income women become economic agents intrinsic to development rather than simply homemakers

Bandhan MF- Bandhan was set up to address the dual objective of poverty alleviation and women empowerment.The microfinance activities are carried on by Bandhan Financial Services Pvt. Ltd. (BFSPL), incorporated under the Companies Act, 1956 and also registered as a Non Banking Financial Company (NBFC) with the Reserve Bank of India (RBI).That apart, Bandhan is also engaged in development work through it’s not for profit entity.

Cashpor India – Our mission is to identify and motivate poor women in the rural areas and to deliver financial services to them in an honest, timely and efficient manner so that our Vision is realized and CASHPOR itself becomes a financially sustainable micro finance institution for the poor.

Grameen Foundation – Works in 6 key areas : Connecting microfinance institutions with capital markets, Strengthening organizations by building people practices, Harnessing the power of technology, Helping track people’s movement out of poverty, Sharing knowledge widely for broader impact and Social Business

Grameen Koota – Grameen Koota recognises the future competition and challenge of retaining exclusivity of clients. Instead of targeting a high market share in high competition areas we will focus on increasing the ‘mind share’ amongst client and becoming a preferred microfinance provider. We will leverage our existing goodwill with the community and have a strong focus on orienting our field staff towards this objective.

Hand in Hand – is a development organisation whose objective is to eliminate poverty by creating enterprises and jobs. Focusing on help to self-help, we take a holistic approach that combines microfinance and support for women to start enterprises with work in four other areas that matter most to poor communities: education and child labour elimination, health and sanitation, a sustainable local environment and information technology access.  With currently more than 450,000 members in Tamil Nadu, Karnataka and Madhya Pradesh, who have collectively started more than 250,000 micro-enterprises, our goal is to create 1.3 million jobs by 2013. Supported by international offices in the UK and Sweden, we are now taking our model to South Africa, Afghanistan and Latin America.

Micro Credit India – Microcredit Foundation of India (MFI) is a not-for-profit Section 25 Company in Tamil Nadu dedicated to promoting entrepreneurship and community level action in rural areas as a means to sustainable economic prosperity. Today MFI works primarily with women. Through its field staff, MFI helps them form Self Help Groups (SHGs), trains them in good financial practice, facilitates access to microcredit loans, equips them with business skills and facilitates access to new markets for their products.

MYRADA – MYRADA is a Non Governmental Organisation managing rural development programmes in 3 States of South India and providing on-going support including deputations of staff to programmes in 6 other States. It also promotes the Self Help Affinity strategy in Cambodia, Myanmar and Bangladesh

New Life – New Life designs projects based on survey of the socio,economic problems of the project area and support the poor, abused and abandoned children and  women by executing the projects with a defined goals/objectives. The current projects of New Life includes orphanages for  children of incarcerated parents,Save children from Child Labour,Ensuring primary education for the rural children in India,Early learning centres for children of vulnerable community groups,Read to Lead Project, Taking care of the medical needs of Physically handicapped and Mentally retarded children.

RangDe – Rang De’s mission is to make microcredit accessible to every low income household by lowering loan interest rates through innovative means.Rang De is committed to enabling individuals to become social investors through a transparent platform. While strive to improve Rangde.org as an interface, we work extensively with our field partners to ensure that we do not compromise on our vision – making credit available at affordable rates.

Saadhana – SAADHANA is a non- profit organization established in the year 2001 to reach out to the urban and rural poor women with the specific mandate to catalyze the ‘Endeavor of the Poor for Self-Sufficiency’.

Samrudhi – SAMRUDHI’s mission is to empower the poor and underprivileged to become economically self-reliant by providing cost effective and need based financial services in a financially sustainable manner.

SKS India Launched in 1998, SKS Microfinance is one of the fastest growing microfinance organizations in the world, having provided over US $ 1.8 Billion (9,129 Crore) and has maintained loans outstanding of US $ 605 Million(Rs.2,937 Crore) in loans to 5,013,219 women members in poor regions of India. Borrowers take loans for a range of income-generating activities, including livestock, agriculture, trade (such as vegetable vending), production (from basket weaving to pottery) and new age businesses (Beauty Parlor to photography). SKS also offers interest-free loans for emergencies as well as life insurance to its members. Its NGO wing SKS foundation runs the Ultra Poor Program. SKS currently has microfinance branches in 19 states across India. SKS aims to reach members 15 million by 2012. In the last year alone, SKS Microfinance has achieved nearly 170 % growth, with 99% on-time repayment rate.

Unitus – Unitus, an international nonprofit organization, fights global poverty by accelerating the growth of microfinance—small loans and other financial tools for self-empowerment—where it is needed most.

Whole Planet Foundation – Whole Planet Foundation, a private, nonprofit organization established by Whole Foods Market, provides grants to microfinance institutions in Latin America, Africa and Asia who in turn develop and offer microenterprise loan programs, training and other financial services to the self-employed poor.

 

Research Papers & Case Studies on Microfinance in India

Photo Credit : mckaysavage@flickr

Thanks for inputs : mckaysavage & @adropofwisdom

Last updated: 1st Oct, 2009; Now arranged in alphabetical order

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Jim Rossignol On Imagination In Gamesim

By | Published September 28, 2009

Slashdot | Imagination in Games : In a recent article for Offworld, Jim Rossignol writes about how the experiences offered by games are broadening as they become more familiar and more popular among researchers and educators. He mentions Korsakovia, a Half-Life 2 mod which is an interpretation of Korsakoff’s syndrome, a brain disorder characterized by confusion and severe memory problems, and makes the point that games (and game engines) can provide interesting and evocative experiences without the constraint of being "fun," much as books and movies can be appreciated without "fun" being an appropriate description. Quoting:

"Is this collective imagining of games one of the reasons why they tend to focus on a narrow band of imagination? Do critics decry games because games need, more than any other media, to be something a group of people can all agree on? Isn’t that why diversions from the standard templates are always met with such excitement or surprise? Getting a large number of creative people to head out into the same imaginative realm is a monumental task, and it’s a reason why game directors like to riff off familiar films or activities you can see on TV to define their projects. A familiar movie gets everyone on the same page with great immediacy. ‘Want to know what this game is going to be like? Go watch Aliens, you’ll soon catch up.’ We are pushed into familiar, well-explored areas of imagination. However, there are also teams who are both exploring strange annexes and also creating games that are very much about imaginative exploration. These idiosyncratic few do seem like Alan Moore’s ‘exporters,’ giving us something genuinely new to investigate and explore. Once the team has figured out how to drag the thing back from their imaginations, so we get to examine its exotic experiences — like the kind we can’t get at home."

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Accenture Interactive and The Future of Digital Marketing

By | Published September 26, 2009

Russ Mann on Actionable Insights talks about Accenture Interactive with P&G as the first anchor client. As described on his blog, it is —

“A new business that Accenture has established to help companies develop world-class digital marketing capabilities and optimize online/offline investments. Accenture Interactive will bring together advanced technology platforms with consulting, analytics, Web development and digital managed services capabilities in an integrated model.”

And why this announcement is important. Actually you must check Russ Mann’s blog for that, but here’s anyway my 2cents, without any one asking.

What’s next
Next is companies like Accenture and many more and that too at a global level will getting into digital marketing

Global Contracts
Companies like P&G and many more will work out a global level deal for their digital marketing – to not only save the costs and the logistics but also for a unified coherent messaging and approach. Also means, Chinese and Indians will not only answer your support calls, but they will now also tell you what to buy :)

Business Intelligence & Customer Intelligence
BICI is the language that marketers will talk. The presentations and the decks will compulsorily have graphs & charts pulled from spreadsheets.

SQL is the new HTML
Had read it somewhere long time ago, it comes to digital marketing now. Digital Marketing & Data will marry each other and never be able to live happily ever after.

ART Vs ROI
It will be interesting to see how ART of web designing / marketing will be impacted by process driven and measurement driven organizations. Will it work on a templatized model or will it allow freedom to creative teams to be wild and crazy.

Global Synergey & Rhythm
Efficiency, global strategy, branding clarity, business rhythm and everyone in synch should be positively affected by this. The more global the organization is, the bigger is the challenge to keep things together. To keep things together, will be the KRA of such global digital marketing solution providers.

Impact on other businesses of the eco-system
How will it impact the businesses of analytics provider, software providers, ad-networks for that matter. Look at the Actionable Insights #2 on Russ’s blog where he talks about real-time reporting of the campaigns. Does this mean, in future a Digital Marketing multinationals will pull one campaign from X ad-network / publisher push i to Y ad-network / publisher just like that; almost real-time.

What will happen to the online sales and marketing teams of the publishers. Talking to a brand manager who is also learning through a sales call, is different that talking to a representative from such organizations.

Accountability Vs Creativity & much much more.
Doing a campaign which has 10,000 leads, or doing a crazy viral which passes along 100,000 people – which is more important for the brand and who will decide that. What will happen to the local innovation of global organizations. What will happen to the internal marketing arm of the organization, where they put in their passion, extra time and hardwork to execute something "extra" which is neither quantifiable nor measurable.

Can marketing be as per the specs and SOPs. Both the sides, will have to work on this challenge. But, my thumbs up for accountability in marketing !!!

[Via - @Gauravonomics ]

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Why Indian Non-Profits / Businesses are not using Social Media

By | Published September 24, 2009

Gaurav Mishra, CEO 20:20 Social – points to this interesting story on LiveMint by Saabira Chaudhari, titled The Anti-Social Nonprofit: Looking for Instant Gratification

I have been a very social spammer cum observer from a long time and worked on social products like Rediff Q&A &  Connexions in my previous avataars and now manage media and content programming side of the business. I am slightly nasty person, who spends more time on measurement and tweaking 2pc, 5pc or so, that’s why they call me pucca marwari, yeah :)

Social ROI

No one knows what to get where, because there’s scarcity of actual social media experts. One stop shop for all things digital is very 2000ish dotcomish bubblish. That means we are ready to sale you anything as per your budget.

You can of course have the first customer who is ready to become a bakra for you or suddenly attain social nirvana under mashable bodhi tree on his own but after the first experience it leaves a bad taste with him and that’s why there’s no second attempt.

Understand client’s need & deliver what the business requires

Social Media Enthu Cutlet

In India people haven’t understood the difference between the brochure site & real web-site. You pick up top CEOs / CMOs on this side of the world and show them their logo animation with click here to enter and their chests will swell with pride.

The social media activities on the web that you see for their corporations are run by social media enthu cutlets. They job hop and their social presence is struck by error 404.

Social Media is not championship game, it has to be first social within your organization.

What is social Media

In full agreement with Gaurav Mishra. Social Media is not just facebook or twitter it is harnessing community, it’s your review on Mouthshut, it’s a blog on website, it’s feedback mail that you must answer, it’s a forum for your product/service.

People have love and hate relationship with products and services. WOM is now WOC – word of click on social web properties. Comment | Like | Share and much much more…

Word of click spreads more rapidly than WOM.

Everything is factor of time, resource & returns

Coming back to the article,  a NGO might decide not to get into social spam game on a daily basis and invest 26 hours in a day re-tweeting. Because it makes sense for them to cold call 10,000 organizations, have 1,000 meetings and finally get support form only 100 corporate and get each of their 1,000 employees committed to some contributions. For example Give India which doesn’t even have 100 Facebook fans has contribution in Crores, yes C is capital. What percentage of this contribution will come through online say if they had 100,000 fans or 200,000 followers on Twitter.

Ranks & counters don’t mean anything unless they translate into $s, sorry INRs

The problem is growth

Whatever best practice template that you take for social media initiatives, the challenge is not recruitment or keeping the buzz for a while. The challenge is what to do with these 100,000 users that I have, they are not coming back, there’s no need to come back, I have nothing to offer them now.

First day first show was rocking, how it can become a true blockbuster.

Agitation Vs Involvement

I am not that excited in accepting Pink Chaddhi or Jaago Re as the success model for social media. Pink Chaddi was mass agitation, can’t be used by brands or organization. Jaago Re is a social awareness movement for a good cause of enhancing voter’s awareness and this mighty thing requires mighty involvements. They surely must be having a 10-20 year plan in front of them. But would we like all advertisements and bill-boards turned into a shoutbox – Chain Se Sona Hai To Jaag Jao !!!

Business and NGOs don’t wear pink chuddies :)

Thanks Saabira Chaudhari for posting this topic and letting us know about the views from different angles. Looking forward to you next great post.

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kevin kelly on supply and demand

By | Published September 23, 2009

“Supply and demand are no longer driven by resource scarcity and human desire. Now both are driven by one, single exploding force: technology”. Kevin Kelly – Technology creates an opportunity for a demand……and then fills it.

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Are You A Irresponsible Marketer & How ?

By | Published September 23, 2009

Mitch Joel talks about The Irresponsible Marketer on his blog Six Pixels of Seperation on how the marketers are not putting their heart and wallets for the things which have real ROI.

Think about it this way: traditional advertising is a "hope and a prayer" (must we really trot out the infamous quote from John Wanamaker: "I know that half of my advertising doesn’t work. The problem is, I don’t know which half.") Brands take out ads in hopes that people see them, remember them, and then (either at that moment or at some point later in time) act on them. Some of the best ads have a conversion rate of 5% (meaning 95% of the people who saw it did nothing). On the other hand, if you think about the context of search, we have individuals who are actively raising their hands and looking for something specific. It could be your product or service or they could be creating search queries that have enough keyword relevance that you could be in front of them. On top of that, you don’t pay for that ad, unless they click on it.

The problem is real marketing is not glam and sexy and most of the marketers don’t want to get into numbers crunching and reporting ROI, trends and analysis in excel’s cells and columns. If you are running an ad-campaign or just launched a product, you are happy to note the ‘x’ number of blog mentions on the web. Are bloggers your consumers ? When your consumers search for you online – do you want them to find you through rant and raves or directly through your site.

Few months back it was my wife’s birthday and I was planning to gift her some jewellery. There’s one of the most reputed brand I was looking for, these guys must be spending millions on print advertising, fashion shows, etc. etc. But when you search for their brand name online there’s just one link on first page, rest all is non-sense or some other sites carrying review, listing and so on.

Then on the site it was first Enter, then skip intro and then product description in flash’s cranky fonts and cool background music. The product gallery sucked even on my high-res screen. Cool too you, but not usable to me.

Result, I went to the good old Tanishq because this is what I got on the first results page on any search engine that I tried that day Tanishq Store Locator – South Region for the keyword “Tanishq Bangalore”. Just explore their site and how they have mixed flash and animation with regular HTML – browsable & findable, both.

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