Rangde micro credit investment update

About 6 months ago I had made a small investment in Rangde, a micro credit facilitator. Rangde helps self help groups and individuals with small seed funds to help them set up small businesses and become financially independent.

I was just going though my portfolio and was happy to note that all borrowers have repaid about one third of the loan they’ve taken. At this rate, in another year’s time, these village people will have fully repaid their loans and will be proud owners of their respective business.

Ratnamala from Maharastra who is into printing press business has been most efficient among by borrowers while Kalavathy from Kerala who’s into tailoring has been the least.

Getting some confidence from this, I’m reinvesting the amount repaid by these borrowers. A quick search through the site told me that Rangde has launched a section called Mirco venture, wherein borrowers are given about 15k for a slightly better business ventures (micro credit was of 5k range)

Selected these two individuals- Lokesh and Nagendra from Koramangala, Bangalore and have invested a 1000 rupee each in their “natural fibre crafts” business… That’s just a small percentage of their need of Rs 15000 each, but let us see how this goes.

Financial inclusion is a big topic of debate and consideration among economists. Financial inclusion is about getting more and more individuals involved in banking and other financial activities. While there 600 million mobile users in India, number of people having bank accounts is just a fraction of that. Last week I attended a day long seminar in Mumbai about Financial Inclusions and Digital payments, wherein industry experts discussed various aspects of financial inclusion-barriers and potentials. That warrants a separate post. Organizations like Rangde are doing their bit to make finance accessible to more and more individuals

For the interested, Rangde is conducting a fund raising concert this independence day at Bengaluru