The company’s financial inclusion project, ‘Integrating Mobile Financial Education and Services for Financial Inclusion in India’ wins the coveted award in the ‘Digital Finance Plus’ (DF+) Social Impact in emerging Asia
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Bangkok, Thailand
Grameen Foundation has been awarded the 2016 Mondato Award for the Digital Finance Plus (DF+) Social Impact in Emerging Asia category for its work to integrate mobile financial education and services in India. Its project, ‘Integrating Mobile Financial Education and Services for Financial Inclusion in India,’ is enabling microfinance clients to use digital technology to repay their microloans. Grameen Foundation is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Grameen Foundation.
The Mondato Award recognizes excellence and innovation in Mobile Finance and Commerce and Digital Finance Plus. Through innovation, Digital Finance Plus transforms lives for the better. The winners represent some of the most innovative solutions from emerging startups, as well as established companies paving new paths in the industry.
In partnership with Citi Foundation, Grameen Foundation worked with Sonata Finance Pvt. Ltd., a leading Indian microfinance institution, and Oxigen, a mobile payment operator to develop a mobile wallet platform for Sonata’s clients. The new model enables clients to make loan repayments via mobile phone instead of going to an office. The program has reached out to over 23,222 beneficiaries in training them on mobile financial services. Till now, transactions worth INR 1.5 cr have been routed through Oxigen.
Commenting on the occasion, Ms. Chandni Ohri, CEO, Grameen Foundation stated, “We are honoured to receive the prestigious Mondato Award. Our key motivation for this project was to increase access to financial services, especially among women, by harnessing the growing presence of mobile phones in rural India and technological developments in digital financial services. Today, the mobile penetration in India stands at 85 percent while only 0.3 percent of people have used mobile money. This demonstrates the huge scope for expansion and innovation in this area.”
Some of the notable winners in the past include BIMA for the Mondato DF+ Social Impact of the Year Award for MFS in Emerging Asia category & Lenddo for the Mondato Asian MFC Innovation of the Year Award. BIMA is a provider of mobile-delivered insurance and health services in emerging markets. Lenddo is a leader in social authentication and scoring technology, using alternative data to provide credit scoring and verification for the emerging middle class.
About Mondato Summit
Mondato Summit Asia is a one-of-a-kind, senior-level thought leadership event that delivers indispensable knowledge, practical solutions, stimulating engagement, and invaluable contacts. Sitting at the crossroads of tech, finance, telecoms and commerce, Mondato Summits occupy a unique space, helping stakeholders navigate the fast growing, but highly fluid and complex, digital finance and commerce (DFC) ecosystem.
About Grameen Foundation
Grameen Foundation is a global nonprofit organization that harnesses the power of mobile technology to deliver a vital mix of financial, agricultural and health services and information to the world’s low income segmentsest people. Our innovations enable women, smallholder farmers, and low income segments communities to build their assets, educate their children, protect their health and strengthen their resilience.
Grameen Foundation was founded in 1997, inspired by the work of Nobel Laureate Professor Muhammad Yunus and the Grameen Bank, whose microloans sparked innovation and entrepreneurship among the low income segmentsest of the low income segments. Professor Yunus was a founding member of our board of Directors and today serves as member emeritus. Grameen Foundation is headquartered in Washington, D.C., with offices in Colombia, Ghana, Kenya, India, the Philippines, Uganda, and the United States. For more information, please visit www.grameenfoundation.org or follow us on Twitter @GrameenFdn.
About Grameen Foundation
Grameen Foundation (GFI) is a social business and a wholly-owned subsidiary of Grameen Foundation USA that catalyses double bottom line approaches to serving the low income segments and the low income segmentsest. Its mission is to enable the low income segments, especially the low income segmentsest, to move out of poverty by strengthening institutions and businesses that serve them. Grameen Foundation aims to achieve this by enabling the growth of truly double bottom line entities that use quantitative and verifiable measures of social results and by demonstrating new business models for serving the low income segmentsest. It currently focuses on enabling the provision of financial services and information. For more information, please visit www.grameenfoundation.in
Photo Caption: Chandni Ohri, CEO, Grameen Foundation (second from right) receiving the Mondato Awards 2016 for a project on financial inclusion
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Media Contact Details
Gopika Gulati, Marketing Communications Manager, Grameen Foundation, +91-9650603387, marcomm@grameenfoundation.in