Hello Readers,
In rural India, finance for women is still restricted to self-help groups, many of which have disbanded over the years due to negligence and a lack of substantial efforts to engage women in microfinance.
To remedy that and engage women in finance, neobank BharatATM launched a programme in March, called ‘Bank Sakhi’ (sakhi means female friend).
What the startup does is essentially identify women in small towns and villages, partner with them, and onboard them on the BharatATM platform so they can start offering its services, such as withdrawal/deposits, bill payments, etc., from either their kirana stores, if they have one, or at people’s doorsteps.
So far, the company has enrolled around 11,230 women in the programme, across India. It piloted the project in Odisha, where it enrolled around 230 women in the programme.
But, why is BharatATM focussing on women?
Ram Shriram, CEO and Co-founder of Mahagram, the parent company of BharatATM, tells YourStory that even in households where men are sole earners, it’s women who handle most of the money in terms of expenditures related to grocery shopping and running the house.
“We realised if we could enrol a few women and got them a savings account, they would help other women start their own accounts too,” Ram tells YourStory.
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News & Updates
- Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk won't be joining Twitter's board, the social media platform's CEO Parag Agrawal said in a tweet. Musk, who owns 9.2 percent in the company, was supposed to join the Board on April 9.
- A new report by PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) states that they believe India has at least 50 startups that can become unicorns by the end of 2022. Overall, the consultancy firm states the country should have at least 100 unicorns by year end.
- Glance has forayed into the television segment as it aims to make Android smart TVs more interactive with two-way communication. This will be done through an interactive content platform for the home screen or screen zero of Android smart TVs.
- Just three days after announcing its India launch and Unified Payments Interface (UPI) integration, Coinbase has halted UPI transactions on its app. The move came after The National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) refuted Coinbase's claim of using UPI for crypto transactions.
- Binance has received In-Principle Approval (IPA) to operate as a broker-dealer in virtual assets in the Abu Dhabi Global Market (ADGM). With the preliminary approval, the crypto exchange is one step closer to receiving final regulatory permission.
Before you go, stay inspired with…
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– Priya Sharma, Founder, Learning Dino
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