MFI Bandhan Financial Services builds market linkage for its borrowers

KOLKATA: Chandra Shekhar Ghosh, the founder chairman of the country's largest micro lender Bandhan Financial Services, has decided to build a retail chain to provide market linkages to his borrowers who produce apparels and handicrafts.

The microfinance company has christened this chain as ' Bandhan Creation' using its brand name Bandhan, which has a good recall in rural West Bengal.

The first of its stores has been inaugurated on Thursday at Salt Lake.

"This will act as a marketing link for our borrowers," Ghosh told ET. "Marketing is still a challenge for small units and this linkage will help improve the repayment rate."

Bandhan Creation is registered as an associate company of the MFI. It will also source finished goods from other self help groups and small producing units who are not Bandhan's borrowers.

Bandhan has started its journey in 2001 as a society and formed a separate non-banking financial company in 2006. Bandhan Financial Services had acquired the loan portfolio and the borrowers of Bandhan in 2009 as a process of consolidating its financial activity.