B-school is India Shining
Tuesday, November 10, 2009
Mann Deshi Udyogini is like no other business school. Its students don’t come to the class armed with laptops, the faculty does not moonlight by writing reports for big business groups, companies don’t fall over one another to give its students jobs with fat salaries. In fact, it does not even have campus recruitments. Yet, its strike rate in producing successful businessmen – no, make it businesswomen – is perhaps better than any other B-school.
Since inception in 2006, it has trained over 7,000 women, 75 per cent of whom are on their own now, having become entrepreneurs in their own right. All its students have been rural women – poor, often illiterate or school dropouts.
The B-school was started in Mhaswad by the Mann Deshi Foundation, a NGO behind the Mann Deshi Mahila Sahakari Bank. With four branches (in Mhaswad, Vaduj, Dahiwadi in Maharashtra, and Hubli in Karnataka), it also has two vans that operate as mobile B-schools.
