August 01, 2014
As part of our AppLab Money India initiative, Grameen Foundation is collaborating with ThinkPlace to design a new suite of loan products for clients of Grameen Koota, a microfinance institution in Bangalore. In this blog, which first ran on ThinkPlace's website, Mark Thompson shares his insights on working with the women Grameen Koota serves.
Sometimes you come across a project that not only makes you want to drop everything and start working on it straight away, but changes your life as well.
We work on a lot of great projects at ThinkPlace, but my most recent project was eye opening, challenging and rewarding all at once.
The journey started with a lot of pre project research, but this story began with a flight to India.
ThinkPlace partnered with Grameen Foundation to look at a product suite for income generating loans for their client Grameen Koota, a Micro Finance Institution (MFI).
These loans are offered to Indian women living below the poverty line and with no access to formal banking services. To give you an idea about the level of income we were dealing with – it’s around $1-2 income per day. The startling statistic is that there are 800 million people below the poverty line in India.
Click here to read the full post.
You can also read Mark's follow-up post on his interactions with clients and watch this video to learn more about the project.