Shannon - Hyderabad

Thus far the thing that has made this trip the most interesting for me as a non-management related major is that I’ve been able to give a different perspective on the things we’ve been learning and experiencing. One such occasion was our meeting with a few executives at Basix. First of all Basix is the most successful micro-financing agency in all of India. The goal of the company is to promote livelihood through marketing resources, with a focus on rural women in the under-developed parts of the country.
The part of the presentation where I began to see things from an outsider’s perspective was when one of the executives started explaining certain very impressive statistics. The executive told us that even as an agency that works primarily in lending money at the grass-roots level the company can still report a 99% recovery rate. Also compared to similar companies in the United States which offer only a 100% interest rate, Basix can prosper from an interest rate on the loans of merely 24%.
The executive also mentioned that the women who receive the money are more likely to pay it back entirely and in the shortest amount of time. This fact was the most interesting to me because this topic was exactly what my pre-departure article was written about. These women of rural India are more likely to repay their loans because they feel a need to maintain a good reputation and give a positive impression on their society. Also the way that these women choose to invest their money differs from the men in that they make long term investments with low risk involved all with the intention of paying back the loans and supporting their families.