Are you M A D ?

Give a hungry man a fish to eat & you feed him for a day, But teach a man how to fish & you feed him throughout his life.

Each one of us is a philanthropist at heart & we all have contributed in big and small ways to help our fellow citizens. I would like to ask you this question – Have you fed them for a day or have you fed them for life? 

Are you Making A Difference?

Let’s go back to December 2014 & transport ourselves 532 kms from Pune to a small town called Digras in Yavatmal district of Maharashtra. Here we meet Sunita Jadhav who lives with her husband Balu and 2 school going children. Balu is a daily labourer & works very hard 12 hours a day & 7 days a week to make ends meet for his family, but life is a constant struggle. Sunita is smart & ambitious and she also has tailoring skills learnt at her parent’s house. But she cannot utilize her skills in this small town without setting up her own business. She cannot take a loan from the local banks or credit societies as she is not creditworthy enough for them. The local moneylender would happily provide her with the required loan against collateral of her jewelry and at a very reasonable interest rate of only 10% - per month. So what can she do now?

Cut back to present date & we find that Sunita has been running a small tailoring business for the last 14 months. She has been contributing Rs. 3000/- every month to the household which now is nearly 40% of the monthly inflow. Instead of using firewood, she now uses a LPG cylinder for cooking & plans to construct a toilet outside the house. She now has a bank account & also saves around 400 rupees every month, which she plans to increase every year. She is now more confident due to her new-found success and also meets other women in her town to encourage them to use their skills to set up a business too. Do you agree with me that this is excellent example of Making A Difference?

You might now be wondering about what caused this transformation? Sunita had connected with a local NGO & was provided a collateral free loan thru a non-profit platform called Rang De. She bought a sewing machine & required raw materials for her tailoring business and started making children & women clothing which she sold at a decent profit to people in the locality. She repaid the loan in 12 easy installments at an interest rate of 10% per annum & now plans to buy another pico machine which will further enhance her business.

Rang De is a crowd-funding platform which helps philanthropists like us to connect with beneficiaries like Sunita. We can channelize a small portion of our overall investment portfolio into Rang De as social investments & this amount is then used to provide loans to rural poor to set up small businesses. The amount repaid back by the beneficiary can then be reinvested or withdrawn back by the investor. In this way we can utilize some of our investment portfolio to improve the lives of multiple people thereby Making A Difference.

Rang De has complete transparency in their transactions, follow 6 Sigma processes and is supported by grants from organisations like ICICI Foundation, World Bank & Tata Trusts. They have been in operation for the past 8 years, disbursed loans worth Rupees 46 crores & have directly impacted 50,000+ families. Again would you agree with me that this is an affirmation of the principle of Making A Difference.

I have personally been an investor in Rang De for the past 3 years & have invested over 1.74 lacs till date thereby directly impacting 286 families. It gives me tremendous sense of satisfaction and therefore I would like to make a sincere appeal to each one of you to consider Social Investing thru Rang De thereby help in Making A Difference.