Rang De: India's First Microlending Site
Friday December 05, 2008 , 2 min Read
Moneycontrol.com reports the launch of India’s first peer to peer microlending site, RangDe.org. The site explains the driver behind an online forum for microloans:
Rang De is a unique platform for individuals to become Social Investors and connect with borrowers of microcredit by lending small sums of money.
Unique features of Rang De are:
- Mission to drive down interest rates and make microcredit accessible to all. Rang De will always remain non profit to ensure this happens.
- The only online microlending platform that does not use a payment gateway and still makes payments possible. Register and see how we make this possible.
- 30 day loan disbursal guarantee.
You may wonder what the difference is between this model and a regular MFI. According to Rang De, they are able to offer rates “at least lower by 4%” than traditional MFIs. This allows them to potentially reach populations that could not afford microcredit before. The model is very similar to Kiva.org, which connects entrepreneurs in developing countries with the rest of the world, except Rang De focuses exclusively on India.
Interested in getting in on the action? It’s easy enough, according to the Moneycontrol.com article, when you invest Rs 1000:
A Rang De Social Investor will get back this money at the end of the loan tenure and earn a return of 3.5% pa in addition to the social return of having made a sustainable difference.
At the time this post was written, 123 social investors have used Rang De to disburse Rs 1789000 worth of loans to 281 borrowers.