Microfinance consists of financial services targeting individuals and small businesses who lack access to conventional banking and related services. Microfinance includes microcredit, the provision of small loans to poor clients; savings and checking accounts; microinsurance; and payment systems, among other services. Microfinance services are designed to reach excluded customers, usually poorer population segments, possibly socially marginalized, or geographically more isolated, and to help them become self-sufficient. ID Ghana is an example of a microfinance institution.
Vijay Mahajan is the chief executive officer (CEO) of the Rajiv Gandhi Foundation and the director of the Rajiv Gandhi Institute of Contemporary Studies.
Financial inclusion is the availability and equality of opportunities to access financial services. It refers to processes by which individuals and businesses can access appropriate, affordable, and timely financial products and services - which include banking, loan, equity, and insurance products. It provides paths to enhance inclusiveness in economic growth by enabling the unbanked population to access the means for savings, investment, and insurance towards improving household income and reducing income inequality
Anand Gopal Mahindra is an Indian billionaire businessman, and the chairman of Mahindra Group, a Mumbai-based business conglomerate. The group operates in aerospace, agribusiness, aftermarket, automotive, components, construction equipment, defence, energy, farm equipment, finance and insurance, industrial equipment, information technology, leisure and hospitality, logistics, real estate and retail. Mahindra is the grandson of Jagdish Chandra Mahindra, co-founder of Mahindra & Mahindra.
Non-Banking Financial Company (NBFC) is a company registered under the Companies Act, 1956 of India, engaged in the business of loans and advances, acquisition of shares, stock, bonds, hire-purchase insurance business or chit-fund business, but does not include any institution whose principal business is that of agriculture, industrial activity, purchase or sale of any goods or providing any services and sale/purchase/construction of immovable property.
Chetna Gala Sinha is an Indian social entrepreneur working to empower women in areas of rural India by teaching entrepreneurial skills, access to land and means of production.
Shikha Sharma is an Indian economist and banker. She was the managing director and CEO of Axis Bank from 2009 to 2018. She also worked for nearly thirty years at the ICICI Group, across its bank and insurance companies.
Aditya Puri is a senior advisor at The Carlyle Group. He was the managing director of HDFC Bank, India's largest private sector bank. He assumed this position in September 1994. Puri was the longest-serving head of any private bank in the country. India Today ranked him at #24 in India's 50 Most Powerful People of 2017 list.
Tamal Bandyopadhyay is an Indian business journalist, known for his weekly column on banking and finance Banker's Trust published in Business Standard, a leading Indian business daily. He had started this column in Mint, an Indian business daily by HT Media Ltd.
Bandhan Bank Ltd. is a banking and financial services company, headquartered in Kolkata.
Ashish Dhawan is an Indian philanthropist and former private equity investor who co-founded and ran one of India's leading private equity funds, Chrysalis Capital (ChrysCapital). He is the founder-CEO of the Convergence Foundation, founder-chairperson of the Central Square Foundation, and a founder-trustee of Ashoka University.
Vijay Shekhar Sharma is an Indian technology entrepreneur, multimillionaire and business magnate. He is the founder and chief executive officer of One97 Communications founded in 1997 and its consumer brand Paytm which he started in 2010.
Roshaneh Zafar is a Pakistani development activist, working in the field of women's economic empowerment. She created the first specialised microfinance organisation in Pakistan, the Kashf Foundation, in 1996 which has served over 5 million women entrepreneurs across Pakistan and continues to pave the path for women's economic empowerment through its holistic financial services program.
ESAF Small Finance Bank is an Indian small finance bank headquartered in Thrissur, Kerala, providing banking services and small loans to the underbanked. Having started its operations as an NGO in 1992 under the name of Evangelical Social Action Forum, ESAF Microfinance was a non-banking finance company and microfinance institution (NBFC-MFI), licensed by the Reserve Bank of India (RBI). It became a small finance bank in March 2017 and started operating in January 2018.
Ujjivan Small Finance Bank Limited is an Indian small finance bank based in Bangalore, which commenced operations on 1 February 2017. Ujjivan Financial Services holds an 80 percent stake in the bank.
Samit Ghosh is the founder of Ujjivan Financial Services Limited, and served as its managing director and chief executive officer until 31 January 2017, when he accepted an equivalent role with subsidiary Ujjivan Small Finance Bank. Prior to 2004, he held positions at Citibank, Standard Chartered, and HDFC Bank. He served as CEO of Ujjivan Financial Services till 2017. Ghosh is currently the non-executive Chairman of Ujjivan Financial Services.
VFS Capital Limited formerly known as Village Financial Services Ltd (VFS), is headquartered in Kolkata, was incorporated on 28 June 1994, as a private limited company before it got its present name.
Rang De is India's first peer-to-peer online micro-lending platform founded in 2008. It is based in Bengaluru, India.
Sudhin Choksey is the executive director (designate) of Bandhan Bank and former managing director & CEO of Gruh Finance Limited. He is considered one of the foremost authorities in affordable housing, finance, and mortgage insurance in India.
