Tag Archives | business correspondent

No-frills Savings: MFIs have a case to make

By on August 26, 2011 in Banking, MFI

[Editor's Note: It's a pleasure to bring you TechSangam's second guest writer - Srijan Kaushik. After graduating from DAIICT (Dhirubhai Ambani Institute of Information and Communication Technology) in 2007, Srijan has been working in Bangalore-based Ujjivan - a Micro Finance Institution (MFI)  focused on urban poverty alleviation. He works on financial product design and development [...]

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Eko’s Race to Profitability Received a Few Booster Shots

By on July 13, 2011 in Banking

Earlier this week, TechSangam was the first blog to report on Eko Financial’s $5.5 million funding round from Creation Investments. TechCrunch’s Sarah Lacy followed with this really nice coverage on Eko. Sure TechCrunch hardly covers the Indian startup ecosystem but I just couldn’t resist the we first jibe. When Abhishek Sinha (Eko co-founder & CEO) [...]

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Eko India Financial Services raises $5.5 million round from Creation Investments

By on July 10, 2011 in Banking

We had written about Eko Financial Services in a two-part series (Part 1 linked here). Today they are announcing the closing of a $5.5 million funding round from Creation Investments, a Chicago-based social ventures fund. I had a chat with Abhishek Sinha (Eko co-Founder & CEO) soon after their funding closed and he shared some [...]

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Khata Kholo Har Darwaza Kholo – Eko’s Branchless Banking (Part 2)

By on May 12, 2011 in Banking

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 [...]

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Khata Kholo Har Darwaza Kholo – Eko’s Branchless Banking (Part 1)

By on May 1, 2011 in Banking, Y' Turks

[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 [...]

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