Made a unique social investment - eNidhi India Travel Blog

Made a unique social investment

Yours’ truly is now a serial entrepreneur who’s invested in multiple businesses like printing press, textiles, clothing and Hotel Business and so on across India… Before you get carried away by that statement, let me clarify that all I’ve done is invest Rs 2000 each in 5 women entrepreneurs hailing from some remote villages in different states, assisting them set up their small scale business.

When I met RangDe founders at Cerebrate.in and heard their story (read more about RangDe), I decided to invest Rs 10000 in assisting some villagers who’d need some seed funding to start their own business and thereby walk towards financial freedom.

Once I came back to city, I went through RangDe website, spent about 1 hour studying various profiles of prospective borrowers and identified 5 wannable entrepreneurs  in whom I’d invest. I couldn’t find any gentlemen seeking to borrow money listed in RangDe. All were women. Also there were none from Karnataka. Hope they’ll soon extend their facilities to villages in Karnataka. A risk averse investor that I am, I split my Rs 10000 into 5 parts and invested in 5 different people, spread across geography (from Kerala to Orissa and from Maharastra to AP) and type of business-tailoring, hotel, sarees, tents and printing press.

Unsecured borrowing had been a very costly affair so far where interest rates are as high as 30-50%, which is mainly because of equally high default rate. In other words, honest people who repay the loan compensate the lender on behalf of those who take money but never return it. Micro credit facilitators like RangDe are doing good work identifying needy people and helping them with seed funds.

I don’t know anything more about these people and may never meet them. Returns are negligible but I’ll be happy if they can do well in their respective businesses. I’m trusting RangDe and its partners for disbursal of funds and mentoring of these businesswomen. I’ll keep a track of them to the extent I can and will keep you all posted. Join me in wishing them a very prosperous business ahead. (May be I should demand some equity right away…)

My early investment experiences * Fly free on Indigo * Surviving stock market crash *

22 comments:

  1. Sounds interesting and enticing to help our own people. Thanks for sharing the info Shrinidhi. I too will spend some time on this RangDe and decide my future action...
    All the best with your support :)

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  2. That is great initiative! I hope these people are successful in their business.

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  3. Srinidhi,

    Kudos to RangDe.. Kudos to you too for taking this step.

    I will also see what I can do. Thx a lot for sharing the info.

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  4. I too have to go and visit the site.

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  5. Nice of you to publicize RangDe on your blog. Its a great initiative and is very necessary in a country like ours.

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  6. Most people (including me) just talk and complain. You are actually doing something about it. Congratulations and good luck.

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  7. Thanks Ankit, Hari and Sivakanth Reddygaru....

    Hari:

    I'm not doing much. RangDe and its partners are doing most of the work

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  8. That was very generous of you. Good work! :)

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  9. This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.

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  10. I've been a rangde.org investor for over a year. There's no reason to worry about risk as payback rate is 100% due to the group format.

    Anyways, please check out Muhammad Yunus, the founder of microfinance on my blog http://askbutwhy.com. I also cover other topics there that will be guaranteed to open your eyes!

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  11. Thanks Mitesh for the instilled confidence and additional info.

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  12. commendable ..must I admit...great going and great efforts with big heart

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  13. Shrinidhi, any updates on this? How did it go? What's your experience.?

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  14. Lost about 4k spent on few people in Andhra Pradesh. After that sort of lost interest in this scheme

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  15. Others have fully repaid their loans. Haven't made any fresh investments

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