Social enterprises aim to improve communities and help society benefit from their profits, so what could be more enterprising or more social than a bank for illiterate village women?
This is what the unassuming Chetna Sinha has set up: an Indian cooperative bank for 310,000 rural women, doing US$100 million worth of banking and micro-financing.
“People assume poor people want access to credit but they want to plan their lives,” says Mrs Sinha, who visited Dubai in October to speak at the Global Women in Leadership Economic Forum. “Rural women want to control their savings.”
An economics teacher from Mumbai, Mrs Sinha met her farmer husband Vijay when they were student activists and moved to his village of Mhaswad, in the western state of Maharashtra, when they married.
Once there, she discovered that an illiterate woman blacksmith, who sharpened farm tools for a living and saved $1 a day, had been refused a bank account because she was not an “affordable client”.
Mrs Sinha, 57, went to the banks with her and hit the same walls. Eventually, drawing on her activist past, she decided to just create a women’s bank herself.
Mann Deshi Mahila Bank opened its doors in 1991, but it took until 1997 to get its banking licence – mainly because the reserve bank refused to licence a cooperative of illiterate women. So Mann Deshi started literacy classes.
Finally, a frustrated Mrs Sinha challenged the authorities to calculate the principal interest on any amount faster on a calculator than she could in her head. She got her licence.
“The margins may not be high but it does not mean there is no business,” says Mrs Sinha, whose goal is to provide for one million Indian women entrepreneurs by 2020.
But she admits a lot of mistakes were made in the early days – the first being to assume that all the village women needed, to start banking, was a bank account.
To avoid losing a day’s wages travelling when they deposited their cash, she found they also needed doorstep banking – so Mrs Sinha built a team of field agents to visit them.
And they did not want passbooks, as they generally did not want their husbands knowing about their savings. So micro-ATMs were devised – hand-held machines that used their thumbprint to link to their Indian “UID”, or national identity.
“In spite of their poor education, they are smart enough – and techno-savvy,” says Mrs Sinha. “We do not need poor solutions for poor people.”
Today the bank provides daily micro loans, savings plans, pensions and insurance, while the Mann Deshi Foundation runs a business school, a radio station, a financial hotline, has built water banks in the drought-prone state and even donated 10,000 bicycles to get girls to their classes.
“Focusing on women in terms of empowerment and job creation is a proven method to bring entire families and communities out of poverty all over the world,” says Medea Nocentini, co-founder and chief executive of Consult and Coach for a Cause (C3), a UAE-based social enterprise that works with some 300 social entrepreneurs.
“Businesses benefit from diversity, increasing business success and ultimately economic improvements.”
One of the social enterprises that C3 is working with is Reach Mentoring, the first non-profit to be registered in the Dubai International Financial Centre (DIFC) free zone. It has paired more than 200 mentees and mentors in the region since 2014.
“Women running social enterprises have been able to address many of the most prevalent and challenging social issues affecting them, their communities and their children worldwide,” says co-founder Pamela Chikhani, who is also the corporate head of business development and communications for the Oasis Investment Company.
“Women bring different perspectives and approaches to business. At Reach, we believe that bridging the gender diversity gap in the workplace, by engaging female leaders in positions of influence to serve as role models, is critical.
“Inspirational female leaders such as Chetna Sinha are positively impacting the world by demonstrating vision, developing social enterprises with strong business fundamentals and acting as a powerful role model for other women.”
Mrs Sinha was named Indian social entrepreneur of the year in 2013 and in 2015 one of 15 women changing the world by the World Economic Forum.
For every area Mann Deshi has branched into, Mrs Sinha has a story of a lowly working woman who inspired it. One of the schoolgirls given a bike, 27-year-old long-distance runner Lalita Babar, just represented India at the Rio Olympics.
“There is a charm in creating role models,” says this queen of all role models modestly.
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Mercer, the investment consulting arm of US services company Marsh & McLennan, expects its wealth division to at least double its assets under management (AUM) in the Middle East as wealth in the region continues to grow despite economic headwinds, a company official said.
Mercer Wealth, which globally has $160 billion in AUM, plans to boost its AUM in the region to $2-$3bn in the next 2-3 years from the present $1bn, said Yasir AbuShaban, a Dubai-based principal with Mercer Wealth.
“Within the next two to three years, we are looking at reaching $2 to $3 billion as a conservative estimate and we do see an opportunity to do so,” said Mr AbuShaban.
Mercer does not directly make investments, but allocates clients’ money they have discretion to, to professional asset managers. They also provide advice to clients.
“We have buying power. We can negotiate on their (client’s) behalf with asset managers to provide them lower fees than they otherwise would have to get on their own,” he added.
Mercer Wealth’s clients include sovereign wealth funds, family offices, and insurance companies among others.
From its office in Dubai, Mercer also looks after Africa, India and Turkey, where they also see opportunity for growth.
Wealth creation in Middle East and Africa (MEA) grew 8.5 per cent to $8.1 trillion last year from $7.5tn in 2015, higher than last year’s global average of 6 per cent and the second-highest growth in a region after Asia-Pacific which grew 9.9 per cent, according to consultancy Boston Consulting Group (BCG). In the region, where wealth grew just 1.9 per cent in 2015 compared with 2014, a pickup in oil prices has helped in wealth generation.
BCG is forecasting MEA wealth will rise to $12tn by 2021, growing at an annual average of 8 per cent.
Drivers of wealth generation in the region will be split evenly between new wealth creation and growth of performance of existing assets, according to BCG.
Another general trend in the region is clients’ looking for a comprehensive approach to investing, according to Mr AbuShaban.
“Institutional investors or some of the families are seeing a slowdown in the available capital they have to invest and in that sense they are looking at optimizing the way they manage their portfolios and making sure they are not investing haphazardly and different parts of their investment are working together,” said Mr AbuShaban.
Some clients also have a higher appetite for risk, given the low interest-rate environment that does not provide enough yield for some institutional investors. These clients are keen to invest in illiquid assets, such as private equity and infrastructure.
“What we have seen is a desire for higher returns in what has been a low-return environment specifically in various fixed income or bonds,” he said.
“In this environment, we have seen a de facto increase in the risk that clients are taking in things like illiquid investments, private equity investments, infrastructure and private debt, those kind of investments were higher illiquidity results in incrementally higher returns.”
The Abu Dhabi Investment Authority, one of the largest sovereign wealth funds, said in its 2016 report that has gradually increased its exposure in direct private equity and private credit transactions, mainly in Asian markets and especially in China and India. The authority’s private equity department focused on structured equities owing to “their defensive characteristics.”
In numbers: PKK’s money network in Europe
Germany: PKK collectors typically bring in $18 million in cash a year – amount has trebled since 2010
Revolutionary tax: Investigators say about $2 million a year raised from ‘tax collection’ around Marseille
Extortion: Gunman convicted in 2023 of demanding $10,000 from Kurdish businessman in Stockholm
Drug trade: PKK income claimed by Turkish anti-drugs force in 2024 to be as high as $500 million a year
Denmark: PKK one of two terrorist groups along with Iranian separatists ASMLA to raise “two-digit million amounts”
Contributions: Hundreds of euros expected from typical Kurdish families and thousands from business owners
TV channel: Kurdish Roj TV accounts frozen and went bankrupt after Denmark fined it more than $1 million over PKK links in 2013
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Picture of Joumblatt and Hariri breaking bread sets Twitter alight
Mr Joumblatt’s pessimism regarding the Lebanese political situation didn’t stop him from enjoying a cheerful dinner on Tuesday with several politicians including Mr Hariri.
Caretaker Culture Minister Ghattas Khoury tweeted a picture of the group sitting around a table at a discrete fish restaurant in Beirut’s upscale Sodeco area.
Mr Joumblatt told The National that the fish served at Kelly’s Fish lounge had been very good.
“They really enjoyed their time”, remembers the restaurant owner. “Mr Hariri was taking selfies with everybody”.
Mr Hariri and Mr Joumblatt often have dinner together to discuss recent political developments.
Mr Joumblatt was a close ally of Mr Hariri’s assassinated father, former prime minister Rafik Hariri. The pair were leading figures in the political grouping against the 15-year Syrian occupation of Lebanon that ended after mass protests in 2005 in the wake of Rafik Hariri’s murder. After the younger Hariri took over his father’s mantle in 2004, the relationship with Mr Joumblatt endured.
However, the pair have not always been so close. In the run-up to the election last year, Messrs Hariri and Joumblatt went months without speaking over an argument regarding the new proportional electoral law to be used for the first time. Mr Joumblatt worried that a proportional system, which Mr Hariri backed, would see the influence of his small sect diminished.
With so much of Lebanese politics agreed in late-night meetings behind closed doors, the media and pundits put significant weight on how regularly, where and with who senior politicians meet.
In the picture, alongside Messrs Khoury and Hariri were Mr Joumbatt and his wife Nora, PSP politician Wael Abou Faour and Egyptian ambassador to Lebanon Nazih el Nagari.
The picture of the dinner led to a flurry of excitement on Twitter that it signified an imminent government formation. “God willing, white smoke will rise soon and Walid Beik [a nickname for Walid Joumblatt] will accept to give up the minister of industry”, one user replied to the tweet. “Blessings to you…We would like you to form a cabinet”, wrote another.
The next few days will be crucial in determining whether these wishes come true.
WHAT IS A BLACK HOLE?
1. Black holes are objects whose gravity is so strong not even light can escape their pull
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5. Astronomers believe that when the universe was very young, black holes affected how galaxies formed
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