Unitus Microfinance Institution Partner in India Surpasses 100,000 Clients
Bandhan achieves rapid growth with support from Unitus.
Redmond, Wash. (PRWEB) October 27, 2005 -- Bandhan, one of India’s fastest-growing microfinance institutions (MFIs) , today announced that it was now providing financial services to more than 100,000 poor clients in India. Unitus, a Redmond, Washington-based microfinance organization, partnered with Bandhan in April 2005. Since that time, Unitus’s capital and capacity-building assistance has helped Bandhan add roughly 45,000 clients and reach an annualized growth rate of 192% over the past six months.
Bandhan—meaning “togetherness” — offers microfinance services to poor women in the Indian state of West Bengal. Founded in November 2000, Bandhan provides microcredit loans and insurance products, as well as health, education and disaster-management services, to both rural and urban poor. Assuming each client has a family of five, Bandhan’s work now directly benefits 500,000 poor people, making an enormous impact in one of India’s most impoverished regions.
"Bandhan's reaching 100,000 clients has been made possible to a great extent through its association with Unitus," said Chandra Shekhar Ghosh, Executive Director, Bandhan. "Unitus’s financial and capacity-building assistance has allowed us to hire critical staff, improve our technology infrastructure and strengthen our relationships with banks. With Unitus's continued support, we're really well-positioned to reach our next target: 1 million borrowers by 2010."
Said Geoff Davis, president and CEO of Unitus: “By hitting the 100,000 client mark just six months after partnering with us, Bandhan exceeded our expectations. Only two percent of microfinance institutions worldwide serve 100,000 or more clients, so it’s tremendously exciting that we now have three MFI partners—Bandhan and SKS in India, and Jamii Bora Trust in Kenya—which have grown to this size. We look forward to supporting Bandhan as it strives to reach 1 million clients in the next five years.”
About Unitus
Unitus is a global microfinance accelerator that acts as a social venture capital investor for the microfinance industry. Unitus identifies the highest-potential microfinance institutions (MFIs) in developing countries and helps accelerate their growth through capital investments and capacity-building consulting, thus empowering them to help exponentially more poor people worldwide. In doing so, Unitus aims to demonstrate that MFIs can be run as profitable, large-scale, poverty-focused businesses with links to local capital markets. As of September 2005, Unitus had seven MFI partners worldwide serving more than 475,000 poor clients. Based in Redmond, Washington, USA, and with an office in Bangalore, India, Unitus relies on innovative financial instruments, and the financial resources of like-minded individuals and foundations, to fulfill its mission. For more information about Unitus, please visit: www.unitus.com.
About the Unitus-ACCION Alliance for India
Unitus and ACCION International, two of the world’s leading microfinance organizations, have together created the Unitus-ACCION Alliance for India. This strategic partnership, thought to be the first of its kind, is designed to catalyze the creation of a countrywide microfinance industry in India, comprised of large-scale, profitable, poverty-focused microfinance institutions (MFIs). ACCION will leverage its expertise to assist commercial entities (e.g., banks and finance companies) in moving 'down-market' into microfinance, while Unitus will concentrate on accelerating the growth of nonprofit/non-government organization MFIs, transforming them into regulated, for-profit financial institutions and connecting them to local capital markets. The Alliance has established as its goal the delivery of microfinance services to 15 million of India's under-privileged by 2015. Unitus and ACCION recently co-located in the India Microfinance Center in Bangalore, from which the Alliance will coordinate its work with high-potential MFIs throughout India.
Media Contact:
Robert Lowry
Public Relations Associate
Unitus
Tel: +1 (425) 881-2574
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