The Hindu : Andhra Pradesh / Hyderabad News : Microfinance

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Sunday, Feb 04, 2007
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Andhra Pradesh

Andhra Pradesh - Hyderabad

Microfinance - his single-point agenda

Vikram Akula, CEO, SKS Microfinance Pvt. Ltd., made it to TIME magazine in 2006. He spoke toShubhra Tandonabout how it all started and his vision

Vikram Akula was seven years old when the notion of poverty struck him while at an aunt's place in Hyderabad. "A woman dressed in a torn saree along with her son, almost my age came in to sell pots," says Mr. Akula.

His aunt paid the woman with rice in exchange for pots that she bought. "To this day, I remember how the woman kneeled down to press her finger into each grain that she dropped, picking them up one by one.

Over the course of visits to India , I promised myself to do something to eradicate poverty some day," adds Mr. Akula.

Working as a community organiser with Deccan Development Society in India taught him "that of all the development interventions, the single most important one for the poor was economic development". Finding the existing models "inefficient" and unable to "scale to reach all of India's poor", he decided to cast his own way.

Starting from unacceptability of his ideas to difficulty in raising funds, he faced several challenges at the field level too. But steady as he was, Mr. Akula launched SKS in late 1997.

Starting off with a capital of just Rs. 23.4 lakhs contributed by friends, biggest banks are providing multi-million dollar lines of credit to SKS now, which has provided Rs. 500 crores in loans to over 4,20,000 underprivileged women in 11 states in India, since 1998.

"I feel that microfinance revolution could be more powerful than green revolution because it unleashes the entrepreneurial talent that exists among the poor- talent that is yearning to break free if given the right opportunity," adds Mr. Akula

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Andhra Pradesh