Guest Speaker

On March 13, 2009 Mrs.Chetna Gala Sinha, Founder and Chairperson of Manndeshi, Mhaswad came as guest speaker to address the fellows. It was a session in which she shared about her personal life, the way Manndeshi came into existence, the challenges she faced to build it etc.

Ms.Sheela Munro, Program Manager, Manndeshi, Hubli and Ms.Rekha, CEO, Manndeshi, Mhaswad also accompanied Ms.Chetna for the session. The session began through welcome speech from Ms.Meenakshi, fellow, DFP and brief introduction about the guest speaker by Mr.Devdanam also fellow of DFP.

Ms.Chetna started her words saying its privilege to address the students group, as most of her talk and communication will be with higher officers. She is educated in the field of Economics and during student life she had Public movements. During the moment, she came across a person and accepted him as her life partner. Husband was from an agriculture family, different in caste and class, it was a challenge to she took where she saw different corners of life. It was her first exposure to agriculture and farming family.

About the organization: In 1987 Chetna along with her husband, went to Kolapur from Maswad to sell two tons of onion they grew, but the amount they got was lesser than what they had to pay for transportation. This gave her a thought to start up a Credit Co-operative Bank for farmers with the share value of Rs.10/-. During those days, it was monopolized by NABARD and the village had municipal council. This was observed till 1991-1994, during this period she found that women are better money managers and thought of starting something for women that can give financial stability. Then she started a women bank, for which she started working from the grass root level, writing proposals and thus it was started from the scratch. As per the rules it needed 5,00,000/- to start the bank, but at the end 6,00,000/- was collected with each person contributing Rs. 25/-. When approached the CGI of RBI for license, the proposal was rejected for the reason most of the women were illiterate and they can’t handle the financial aspects.

This was a setback for Ms.Chetna, and she went back crying, but the village women didn’t give it up. They all took it as a challenge and committed for study so that they are no more called as illiterate. When again proposal was made same question raised, but that time the women were so confident to challenge the officers with the skill they had to calculate the rate of interest. At last, the license was approved in August 1997. In the past ten years, the bank has 1,20,000 clients and has a share of 20 crore and with this huge amount, Manndeshi started Non Banking Finance Company. In the beginning no one came to take loan and shared a story in which husband tried to manipulate the situation and to borrow one lakh.

Meanwhile a video on Manndeshi was shown to the fellows. Later on she continued saying the bank has door step banking system in which the loan amount can be paid at door step. A pigmy collector collects the amount as per their convenience, where it can be paid daily, weekly, fortnightly or on monthly basis. The pigmy collector gets 3% of the amount collected.

In the year 2006, Business School on Wheels was started for the rural women which trains women on Computer and Tailoring. According to Ms.Chetna, women think reality where as men aspires. When asked the reason behind name Manndeshi, it says Mann-River (in maswad which is almost always dry), and in Marati it means Sand and Deshi is local.

The other activities are providing scholarship of girls, providing bicycle without interest on it. HSBC is also supporting in lending money under its Corporate Social Responsibility and also Business school of education. When asked about her vision, she said the focus is on expanding whole of Maharastra and North India specifically in Gujrath.

After Deshpande Started supporting Manndeshi, it started a new branch in Hubli, Karnataka during August 2007. Then the Program Manager, Ms.Sheela answered for the questions asked about the Hubli branch. She shared about the challenges, saying she was worried of what can be done with the bus sent from the head office for the purpose of training. Those were the days she even thought of sending it back.  But after all the hard work now the situation is entirely changed and expressed the feel of joy to say, now two more buses are needed as the enrollments are taking place even long way back. The session was very much interactive, all the fellows got chance to ask questions and were addressed from the guests. Manndeshi has no funding from the Government, Ms.Chetna doesn’t not entertain as she faced the different views while tried taking those funds.

By answering the queries, the session concluded by vote of thanks form Ms.Usha, fellow, DFP followed by photo session.

Thus the session gave an insight about the social concern of enlightening and upliftment of rural women with a concept of Enterpreneurship.