Home Competition Stories Svatantra Avant-Garde 3.0 | A peek into Micro-financing

Svatantra Avant-Garde 3.0 | A peek into Micro-financing

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Svatantra Avant-Garde 3.0 | A peek into Micro-financing

India being a diverse country in every domain, be it business, occupation, ethnicity, culture etc. So the challenges faced in every front are myriad, however, it is the trade and business which can root out the majority of the problems faced.

In developing countries like India, the system of banking is still lagging behind even though it has spread its wings in a blinding speed. The conventional banking system with a lot of formalities can be a bit too complex for not so educated countryside dwellers and this where micro-financing comes into play.

Svatantra is a next-gen microfinance entity offering differential banking solutions. At Svatantra, we constantly leverage technological innovation in order to bank the unbanked. Svatantra has been assigned a rating of A- by ICRA for its significant contribution in the microfinance space in less than three years of its operation.

Avant-Garde 3.0 was a unique initiative in that direction to encourage India’s brightest minds to brainstorm together, and design methods to revolutionise the microfinance industry.

Avant-Garde 3.0 was open to both 1st and 2nd-year students of select Business schools in India. Participants required to form a team of four members and register online. View the complete details of the competition here.

The contest was spread across two different rounds. The students had to build a healthcare insurance product for the rural households, thereby impacting the social and economic sustainability options of the stakeholders.

The successful teams from the first round got an opportunity to present their plan to the panel of jury. Special emphasis was given on these three basic parameters - Innovation, Practicality and Data Analysis supported with a correct approach while judging the entries.

In the words of Ms Ananya Birla, Founder and Chairman of Svatantra Microfinance and Co-Chairman of ASSOCHAM Microfinance, “This is our third year hosting Avant-garde and we are very happy to see such a fantastic response in participation by over 900 students, from 20 top-ranked business schools across the country.

At Svatantra Microfinance, we believe in egalitarian growth substantiated by profitability and sustainability, actions that have immense scope to deepen our outreach further. Our business is one which at the core, focuses on social impact and reaching out to the bottom of the socio-economic pyramid to further growth as a whole.”

After excelling in all the judging parameters the team from IIM Kozhikode was declared as the winner and awarded INR 200,000 the runner-up team from XLRI received INR 100,000. Both the winners were invited for a PPI with Aditya Birla’s Leadership Program.

Competition like Avant Garde 3.0 would help the students to know more about the rural population who forms the backbone of India Economy by putting in their hard work in agriculture and also assisting the industries by offering workforce. With discussion, more innovative ideas would come up that would eventually be beneficial and Microfinancing is one such route.

Microfinancing can be very beneficial in multiple ways, firstly, it would help to strengthen the banking system thereby bringing in more cash to the economy and also reinforce the rural economy and agriculture. India still being an agrarian economy will reap its benefits in the longer run. Micro-financing helps rural women in the most promising ways which will be a boon in uplifting their social status and thus be instrumental in creating a developed India.

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