Community social impact is not just about making someone financially independent, it’s about creating a sense of self respect in people,” says Rangan Varadan, CEO and Co-founder, MircoGram.
A PhD in finance and economics from the Lehig University and ex-Head of Banking and Capital Markets Domain and Competency Group at Infosys Technologies, Varadan is on a rural India mission with his friend Sekhar Sarukkai, another Indian, one of the tech hot heads working in Silicon Valley.
They are the people behind MicroGram, a peer-to-peer lending platform that empowers rural entrepreneurs with access to loans from socially minded investors.
THE GREAT IDEA The inspiration for MicroGram came from Kiva.org, a US-based crowd funding model. The Kiva model offers lower rates of interest, making it viable for the borrower.
WHAT IT MEANS MicroGram crowd sources funds as social investment and lends it to poor farmers who cannot afford loans at high interest rates. “We borrow from individuals and that money is given to our on field partners – some NGOs who in turn lend it to farmers at an approximate rate of 14-16%. This interest rate is split into three – 6-8% as service fees for the NGOs, 6-8% is paid to the lender and 2% is given to MicroGram.
