Courage is capital: Chetna Gala Sinha on her journey in transforming rural women’s financial independence

Chetna Gala Sinha, social entrepreneur, microfinance banker, and activist, gave a powerful start to SheSparks 2025. In her keynote address, she took the audience through her journey as a young student at Bombay University to the Founder and Chairperson of Mann Deshi Bank and Mann Deshi Foundation—organisations that provide financial services, business education, and digital literacy to women in underserved communities.

As the Founder of India’s first women-led rural bank, Sinha has empowered over one million women, proving that financial independence is first about finding ways to break systemic barriers with resolve, before having access to money.

Sinha’s journey began in 1981 when, as a young student at University of Mumbai, she was inspired by activist Jayaprakash Narayan's call for youth to work in India’s villages. Influnced by his work, she left city life behind and moved to drought-stricken regions in Maharashtra, where she saw women breaking stones in extreme heat—a scene that stayed with her.

During her keynote address, Sinha recalled how her defining moment came when she met Kantabai, a blacksmith who wanted to save money but was denied a bank account because she could only deposit Rs 3 a day. This rejection led Sinha to the idea that if banks didn’t serve rural women, she would start one herself.

“It was not easy at all,” said Sinha. “The Reserve Bank of India denied us a banking license, stating that the women behind the proposal were illiterate. I was so devastated, I cried in the bus all the way back home. But when I met the women, they said, ‘We cannot read and write because there were no schools when we were young, but we can count’."

For the next five months, Sinha helped these women read and write, returning to the RBI with their own thumb impressions and a challenge—they asked officials to test them against bank employees on calculating interest rates without a calculator. Their determination paid off, and Mann Deshi Bank was granted its license, becoming India’s first women-led rural bank, run entirely on women’s savings, credit, and capital.

What started as a small savings bank is now a Rs 500 crore institution that has introduced pioneering initiatives like doorstep banking–since many women couldn’t leave work to visit a bank;  digital wallets and face recognition banking that empowered women who couldn’t read PIN numbers; pension schemes for rural women, which was the first-of-its-kind, and a business school on wheels, which has trained 80,000 women in financial literacy, entrepreneurship, and digital skills.

Sinha also spoke about one of Mann Deshi’s success stories—Kerabai Sargar, a farmer who mortgaged her gold to buy fodder during a drought. This led to Mann Deshi Bank creating water banks and cattle camps, which helped thousands of farmers sustain themselves through severe droughts. Kerabai later became a radio jockey, hosting a programme that educates rural communities on water conservation—despite never having attended school.

As she addressed SheSparks 2025, Sinha left the audience with a powerful lesson: women do not need handouts, but opportunities. "Never give poor solutions to poor people. They are smart. Their courage is their capital," she said.