MFI Report

In year 1996 Dr. Sharma, along with Mr. Amarendra Kishore, had promoted an NGO for the welfare of the tribal population and other disadvantaged communities, called The Indian National Trust for the Welfare Of Tribals (INTWOT), which has since been renamed as Sulaxmi Lok Sansthan (SLS). SLS has completed more than 100 research and land-based community action projects till date, in conjunction with the Government of India and development organizations of international repute. Presently, SLS employs more than 50 motivated and skilled professionals, who work with around 2,000 families in 90 villages across nine economically backward states in India, including Orissa, Bihar, Jharkhand, Chhattisgarh, Uttar Pradesh and Rajasthan. In 2003, Dr. Sharma and Mr. Sandeep Narang, the CEO of SFPL, promoted Shubham Financial Services (SFS), a partnership, which was primarily responsible for originating vehicle loans for ICICI Bank and took training for several loan products from numerous financial institutions, including leading banks. SFS facilitated disbursement of a large number of vehicle loans for ICICI Bank in a short span of four years and did not have a single default associated with the portfolio that it originated. Though conducting due diligence was not part of the duties that SFS had, it vetted each proposal rigorously. SFS was often felicitated by ICICI Bank and the bank declared it as a role model for other channel partners, to the extent that the bank even requested it to train other channel partners. Senior officials of ICICI Bank, including Dr. Nachiket Mor, the then Executive Director encouraged the SFS promoters to venture into microfinance, because of their combined developmental and finance experience. Finally, convinced that was the most natural step to further their developmental ambitions, the promoters of SFS decided to close it down and venture into microfinance full-time. Hide