Khata Kholo Har Darwaza Kholo – Eko’s Branchless Banking (Part 2)
This is part 2 of our coverage on Eko‘s Branchless Banking solution play (Part 1 is here). Eko-SBI-Migrants = Win-Win-Win As you may recall from our earlier analysis (Banking for India’s Domestic Migrants), nearly 50% of migrants prefer to use banks for remittances but only 30% actually use banks. They yearn for the security and …
in Education
Anand Kumar’s Super 30 Journey
Well organized conferences usually feature popular speakers towards the start and end of the day. The penultimate session at Sankalp Forum Day#1 featured a talk by Anand Kumar (of Super 30 fame) — and what a talk it turned out to be. It helped that the audience had a high awareness of Super 30 …
in General
Selected Shorts from Sankalp Forum 2011 (Day 2)
[Editor’s Note: The title of this post is a tribute to the popular NPR/PRI radio program Selected Shorts. This post is a sampling of of tweets that I found interesting on day#2. The list could have been longer but it’s been 4-5 days and Twitter limits the tweets in its searches.] Pankaj Khandelwal, Chairman & …
in Migration
A fresh look at the migration narrative
During one of the panel discussions at last week’s Sankalp Forum, an interesting conversation emerged. Two early-stage VCs (Seed Fund’s Mahesh Murthy and Kae Capital’s Sasha Mirchandani) were making the point that it wasn’t a case of missing ‘investors’ as much as it was a case of missing ‘entrepreneurs’. Of course, their perspective was that …
in General
If I was looking for inspiration…I found it at Sankalp Forum
When I was interviewing Sean Blagsvedt for this post, he casually asked if I was attending Sankalp Forum. “Say, what forum??” was my response. A subsequent perusal of Sankalp Forum‘s site offered sufficient intrigue. A plea for registration fee waiver (on grounds that Techsangam was a non-revenue-generating blog to date) yielded partial success and I …
in General
Defining Social Entrepreneurship
The smart folks over at Stanford Social Innovation Review (SSIR) have made a strong case for a rigorous definition of social entrepreneurship. They argue that social entrepreneurship has become so inclusive that it now has an immense tent into which all manner of socially beneficial activities fit. Social entrepreneurship is an appealing construct precisely because …
Khata Kholo Har Darwaza Kholo – Eko’s Branchless Banking (Part 1)
[Editor’s Note: A few weeks ago I had an engaging phone conversation with Abhishek Sinha, co-founder and CEO of Eko Financial Services, a trailblazing branchless banking social enterprise that’s making a dramatic difference to the lives of India’s migrants. This two-part series draws extensively from our phone conversation, follow-up email exchanges, and related research. Khata …
Banking for India’s Domestic Migrants
India’s 100 million strong domestic migrants contribute a whopping 10% of its GDP. As I covered in The Twentyfirst Century Kabuliwalas of India, domestic migrants are one of the missing links in India’s development. A key recommendation from a study commissioned by UK-based Overseas Development Institute is that migrants need dramatically improved access to market …
A monster in the making: the Babajob story
[Editor’s Note: Last week, I drove down to Richmond Town, Bangalore to interview Sean Blagsvedt, Founder & CEO of Babajob. Babajob’s office is in the 3rd floor of an apartment-style commercial building opposite the Hockey Stadium. Over a delicious cup of cappuccino and a cozy rooftop setting, Sean opened up on how he got to …
in General
The Twentyfirst Century Kabuliwalas of India
Rabindranath Tagore (Bengali poet, novelist, playwright, painter and musician) is renowned for so many works of art that it seems almost criminal to dwell on a personal favorite. Yet I must. Tagore’s Kabuliwala is a poignant tale set in Calcutta about a poor Pathan from Afghanistan (Abdur Rehman Khan) who lives with his old mother …
