The pandemic-ravaged months have taken a heavy toll on every person and specially on girls, who sadly had been the initially set of persons in several households to take a hit on their careers – either due to a job loss or by opting out to support at residence. But these who have engaged closely with girls in their journey through the pandemic appear to have witnessed effective stories of hope and entrepreneurship.
“Women may have been the worst-hit during the pandemic but we found them redefine entrepreneurial zeal and not only were they able to supplement shortfalls in their household incomes but were quick to adopt and pivot businesses to new realities,” says Jayshree Vyas, the managing director of SEWA Bank, a major Gujarat-based cooperative bank, focused only on girls – specially these that are either day-wage earners, migrant labour or operating compact enterprises. SEWA stands for Shri Mahila Sewa Sahakari Bank.
Vyas does point out that there had been challenges galore for all, like banks and that SEWA Bank was no exception. “Despite keeping the bank operations on, as it was categorized as essential services, and with all the challenging of skeletal staff attendance and physical distancing precautions, the bank in this challenging year has managed to grow its total balance sheet,” says Vyas. “While maintaining the revenue and profitability growth will be a challenge, our total balance sheet size has increased from Rs 425 crore pre-pandemic to around Rs 500 crore currently and we have added 30,000 new depositors,” she says.
What stands out through the pandemic months, she says, is the way in which its borrowers, who are all girls, responded. About 20 per cent of the total, who are into garment-generating overcame the shortfall in demand by adding new lines of activities like generating masks with the support of working capital from the bank. Another 20 per cent of who are into foods-associated enterprises, sought access to working to create residence-created foods and support in transportation linkages for residence delivery. What has been new mastering for Vyas was the economic prudence of girls migrant labour. “About 30 per cent of our total members (the term she uses for borrowers) are migrant labour. Almost all of them have returned and almost 98 per cent of them have repaid their loans too,” says Vyas. She thus finds, if you give girls access to the capital they can come up with new methods to strategy the business enterprise or pivot it to a new reality,” says Vyas. For instance, recognizing that several persons had been managing with out maids at residence and carrying out their personal cleaning and swapping, took to generating extended-handled brooms and supplying locally. In reality, Vyas says the want to augment household earnings and to concentrate on savings was so robust that in just through the months of lockdown we saw about 5,000 new accounts open up in some of the worst impacted places with girls looking for access to capital and to new saving alternatives. SEWA Bank, exactly where vegetable vendors make up to 30 per cent of total members, has 80 per cent of its total membership in urban places and the rest in rural places. It operates in six districts of Gujarat, like Ahmedabad, exactly where it is headquartered.