Articles by Shashwat Mody
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Monday
November 19
2012NexThought Monday: Training Half a Billion People for Good Jobs: How Governments and Vocational Efforts Are Leaving Out the BoP, How to Reform Them for Inclusion
Outdated curriculum and low-paid teachers mean many vocational institutions are simply unable to prepare the students for employability. In the past decade, however, a handful of institutions have been able to provide high quality vocational programs to the bottom of the pyramid.
- Categories
- Education
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Tuesday
August 28
2012How Microfinance Institutions Can Manage Default Risk AND Build Financial Inclusion
High client growth and low default rates are typical benchmarks for gauging the success of MFIs. But the two measures can be counterproductive for MFIs looking to achieve real social impact through financial inclusion. Achieving low default rates and higher client growth rates together is only possible when the client’s cash flows are more than adequate to cover the average loan size.
- Categories
- Uncategorized
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Thursday
May 3
2012A Profit-Driven Approach to Affordable Education: A Review of HippoCampus Learning Centers
In 2003, Indian private schools accounted for 23 percent of total enrollment, today they’re 30 percent. However, what still proves illusive is a mechanism to help poor families afford to send their children to private schools. In 2011, Grameen Koota and HippoCampus Learning Centers teamed up to address this through a plan that minimized fixed costs per student rural villages in India.
- Categories
- Education, Impact Assessment
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Monday
April 16
2012NexThought Monday: Changing Consumer Behavior Via Financial Literacy
After last year’s microcredit crisis in India, many microfinance institutions (MFIs) have reconsidered not only how they lend to customers, but also what responsibilities they have to educate their customers in financial literacy. I recently interviewed Samit Ghosh, founder and CEO of Ujjivan Financial Services, who explained how an innovative financial literacy program developed by nonprofit Parinaam Foundation in collaboration with Ujjivan, seeks to change borrowing behavior.
- Categories
- Education
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Guest Articles
Thursday
March 8
2012Reflections On Microfinance: Past, Present and Future
Microfinance institutions depended on very low default rates coupled with rapid growth to provide adequate investor returns. Aligning loan officer incentives with repayment rates and customer service may have helped microfinance institutions become more customer centric.
- Categories
- Social Enterprise
- Tags
- microfinance
