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Bandhan Bank Is Born: Chandra Shekhar Ghosh’s Incredible Journey From a Sweet Shop to Owning a Bank
In most Indian languages, the word Bandhan means bond or togetherness. His bond with the credit-deprived poor in Eastern India’s villages and a Rs 2 lakh loan were the initial capital for Chandra Shekhar Ghosh, the son of a small sweet-shop owner from Bengal, to begin a microfinance institution, Bandhan Financial Services Ltd, and grow it to a private bank in less than 15 years.
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- South Asia
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U.S. startup combines Bitcoin with Islamic microfinance in Indonesia
Founded in San Francisco and recently moved to Jakarta, a financial startup called Blossom aims at nothing less than shaking up the microfinance sector in Indonesia.
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- Asia Pacific
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How one man wants to lend cash to 500m Chinese and lead a microfinancing revolution
Zane Wang Zhengyu, founder and chief executive of lending company China Rapid Finance (CRF), wants to redraw the mainland's credit landscape.Wang hopes to create the mainland version of the San Francisco-based Lending Club, which offers borrowers funds at rates lower than those charged by credit cards. Ideally, the model could help meet the financing needs of 500 million potential mainland customers, many of them borrowing for the first time.
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- Asia Pacific
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- microfinance
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Three Ways the Mobile Finance Ecosystem Can Reach the Next Level: Grameen Foundation takes a look ahead
Mobile finance has spread around Africa and the world, but many still live beyond its reach – especially in rural areas. And both technical and business challenges still make it hard to reach them. In the final post in their series on how microfinance can go digital, Grameen Foundation explores three ways progress will need to be made for the global mobile finance ecosystem to take the next steps.
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Indonesia to Unleash Loan Funds as Micro-lending Rates Cut
Indonesia wants to unleash 30 trillion rupiah ($2.3 billion) of new loans for small businesses and halve some bank micro lending rates to help revive an economy running at its slowest pace in five years.
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- Asia Pacific
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After five-year hiatus, mutual funds turn to investing in India’s microfinance companies
Mutual funds have started investing in debt issuances of microfinance companies after a five-year hiatus.
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- South Asia
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- microfinance
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What India’s Microloan Meltdown Taught One Entrepreneur
Vikram Akula speaks about what went wrong in 2010 and what’s next.
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- Impact Assessment
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- South Asia
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India’s microfinance loans are growing at a scorching pace, but it’s a warning signal
The institutions that give tiny loans to the poor somehow seem to be rediscovering their long-lost obsession for rocket-speed loan growth — the same mistake that once shattered the entire industry.
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- Impact Assessment
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- South Asia