Menu


  1. SocialPedia
  2. SocialWiki
  3. Social Enterprise
  4. Micro Finance
  5. Lending a hand to the urban poor
Share

Lending a hand to the urban poor

Posted on Jun 02, 2015 | Posted by speditor | Tags: Micro-lender, urban poor, microfinance institution | Comments (0)

Micro-lender Ujjivan now has 350 branches in 23 States, serving 1.3 million customers

“My material objectives I had already achieved while I was a banker. I didn’t have any material ambitions for this. My ambition was to build an institution which would serve the working poor in India,” says 64-year-old Samit Ghosh of the venture that he started to finance the urban poor.

After nearly three decades as a banker, in India and abroad, Ghosh decided to turn an entrepreneur and started Ujjivan Financial Services, a microfinance institution, in 2005.

He has been asked what was the toughest part of the journey. “It was raising that rupees 2 crore of the initial capital which is required to get an NBFC (non-banking finance company) licence. That took me about one year.” Since then, Ujjivan has raised rupees 350 crore from a clutch of investors that includes Unitus, Michael and Susan Dell Foundation, Lok Capital, Wolfensohn Fund Management and Sequoia Capital. Ghosh himself owns just a 2 per cent stake now in the enterprise..........Read More

 

Source: Business Line


Comments (0)



Please Login or Register to join groups