Update: Bhandan gets featured in Business Standard

I have written on Bhandan before, with regard to its efforts to incorporate job creation into its larger loans disbursed to micro enterprises looking to grow. Well now the organization is once again pushing new initiatives as the MFI’s CEO Chandra Shekhar Ghosh is trying to both grow Bhandan’s organizational footprint while simultaneously create schools in Bengal and elsewhere. His inspiration arises from his own experiences with BRAC and their ability to create schools serving tens of thousands of people. From a Business Standard profile:

Ghosh is funding this project with the Rs 72 lakh he got from a fellowship from Ashoka Social entrepreneurship programme. He says that the children of those who take loans from Bandhan are going back to school and there has been a fall in drop-out rates.

Ghosh is also looking to expand the capabilities of Bhandan itself.

Now, next month the microfinance institute (MFI) will open ten offices each in Delhi, and then in Mumbai. The slums in the two metros are the next target for this microfinance organisation which is being eyed by several top banks for equity share.

This approach to sustainable expansion is reflected in Ghosh’s view of how clients should also prosper as well:

“Development has to be sustainable and beneficiaries should stand on their own after receiving support for three years, or our programmes are of no use,” he says. “Bandhan is now full of excitement about opening ten new branches in Delhi and ten in Mumbai. It is a totally new terrain,” he says.