How IndiaP2P is empowering first-time women borrowers in rural India

In Naidupeta, Andhra Pradesh, K Saraswathi once went door-to-door selling hand-printed Kalamkari textiles. “I started the business three years ago with whatever I could manage on my own,” she recalls. 

Her first formal loan came through IndiaP2P, a peer-to-peer lending platform, after a friend told her about it. With the funds, Saraswathi purchased raw materials in bulk and expanded her business. Today, she employs 10 women artisans who work with her to create designs. 

“We are now making sales over apps too. I’m happy that this sacred art is being revived, and the women in my community are earning from it,” says Saraswathi.

Saraswathi’s journey is just one of the hundreds that mark IndiaP2P’s growing impact—spanning 50+ underserved rural and semi-urban regions—from Nagaland to Madhya Pradesh. Nearly 97% of its borrowers are based in these areas, and 78% of them are women. Many of them are accessing formal credit for the first time.

“There’s this perception that if you’re a rural woman wearing a saree and working every day, you must be a person in need,” says Neha Juneja, Co-founder, India P2P. 

“But that’s just untrue. Many of the women who borrow from us are prudent business operators. They are ambitious, have great ideas and very responsible with money,” Juneja adds.

The platform’s approach is rooted in a vision of credit that is patient, localised, and risk-managed. It leverages tech and field-level operations to deliver tailored credit at scale. 

“Our mission is to create profitable, regulated pathways for investors & lenders to directly fund SDG-aligned opportunities,” says Juneja.  “Amongst this, our focus remains on women owned SMBs and this is where we are unique,” she adds. 

Their outreach, on boarding and other processes are designed largely for women, which ensures a large proportion of inbound women applicants. 

On the capital sourcing side, they work with the data-driven narrative that aligning with SDGs aligns acts as an additional risk filter in investing. There is more than enough evidence that women demonstrate superior borrowing behaviours, so “lending to/investing in women makes sense,” she adds.

Reflecting on the early days of building a women-focused lending model, Juneja says she would pitch India P2P as “a platform for empowering women, and I could see the shutters coming down.”

So, she changed her strategy. “Now I start with data: what’s India’s best-performing asset class over the last 10 years? Small loans given to women.”

Women, she points out, have higher credit scores than men despite lower incomes. They’re more consistent in repayments, and they tend to build more resilient enterprises. “The smart money is building women-focused businesses,” Juneja says. “Simple because they make better customers.”

Unlike traditional microfinance, which often requires women to be part of self-help groups and take uniform loans, IndiaP2P offers individualised products, tailored EMIs, and repayment plans based on business needs. 

Group-based lending models haven’t evolved with the times, believes Juneja. “You now see income disparities within groups, and women are less likely to discuss money openly. Our borrowers vary widely in the kind of work they do, so the credit has to be just as varied.”

India P2P’s FY25 Social Impact report shows that over 75% of loans were used to start or grow businesses. And most borrowers, about 80%, are from lower- and middle-income households, and nearly 92% are self-employed. Close to three fourths of these loans have directly contributed to local income generation. 

The platform’s presence is especially strong in the South and East, where Juneja says the “quality of entrepreneurs”—by which she means a higher degree of financial agency among women—is markedly stronger. 

“In some regions, women take loans and run enterprises without even informing their husbands,” she says. “In the North, that level of autonomy is harder to find.”

Borrowers span a wide variety of trades—from tailoring and dairy to artisanal soaps, wedding decoration services, and upcycled crafts. Many are now selling via WhatsApp, Instagram, and Amazon intermediaries.

One such entrepreneur is Ganga, who runs ‘House of Baskets’ in Tirupati. “I started weaving baskets when I was 12,” she says. 

As a single mother raising two sons, Ganga transformed her craft into a full-time business using recycled plastic waste. “The loan helped me buy raw materials so I can fulfill more orders. It gave me the confidence to expand into ecommerce and support my family better.”

Yet, assessing first-time borrowers, particularly those with no formal credit history, remains a challenge. IndiaP2P addresses this through a ground-up approach. Local field teams visit women at their workplaces to help with loan applications, assess businesses and assets, and build trust—especially critical given that many women remain wary of fully digital loan systems. 

“Women don’t want random agents showing up at their homes. Many of them we see do want to know where their data is going,” says Juneja. “So, our agents go to their workplaces, and we operate 20 branches, mostly across East and South India.”

The lending model also considers broader structural inequities: women are 90% less likely than men to hold collateral or property in their name. “Even when they have gold, it’s seen as family gold,” says Juneja. “So, we’ve developed systems to assess women’s businesses even in the absence of formal income or GST returns.”

To date, 55% of IndiaP2P’s assets under management come from repeat investors, and 32% of its investor base is women. These investors are individual, retail lenders who come to the platform, view borrower profiles and lend between Rs 25, 000 to Rs 50,00,000.

The platform was also among the first to comply with RBI’s T+1 payout rule through its Monthly Income Plan.

“We are expanding our borrower sourcing footprint proactively to increase supply of loans, and also setting up new initiatives under the EquiRize brand to offer more products and options to various investor types,” says Juneja.

While impact is core to the mission, Juneja is clear that IndiaP2P’s success isn’t “built on charity.”

“We don’t ask investors to do a good thing. We offer them an asset class that outperforms. It just happens to be women at the other end of it.”

In a country where formal financial systems still overlook rural women, this model may not just be a promising alternative, it might be a necessary one.