ETSA 2023 Social Enterprise winner | Financial security for the poor is the next step after financial inclusion: Seema Prem of Fia Global
The Economic Times Startup Awards 2023.
More than a decade ago, when Seema Prem returned to India armed with a degree from MIT and driven by the vision to offer financial services to the unbanked, little did she imagine the challenges that awaited her and Fia Global, the outfit she floated to realise her vision.
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Offering CollegeCourseWebsiteIIM LucknowIIML Executive Programme in Data ScienceVisitIndian School of BusinessISB Digital Marketing and AnalyticsVisitNorthwestern UniversityKellogg Post Graduate Certificate in Product ManagementVisitIndian School of BusinessISB Professional Certificate in Product ManagementVisitWhen she got three districts of Burdwan, Purulia and Bankura in West Bengal to set up banking outlets on behalf of State Bank of India, she realised that financial inclusion was not about technology alone, but people’s confidence in Indian banks.
“These people were impacted by the chit fund scams back then, so they would deposit money in the morning and withdraw in the evening due to the fear of losing their hard earned savings,” Prem told ET.
But things slowly changed, and eventually the government’s Jan Dhan Scheme took banking to the remote corners of the country. Fia Global and other players rode that wave.
“We onboarded 10 million customers across 16 states within three years and then Jan Dhan happened and it jumped to 20 million accounts suddenly,” she said.
Fia Global bagged theSocial Enterprise Award in the 2023 ET Startup Awards, which were announced recently.
While the policy push helped expand business, low margins and high operational costs made business viability a major challenge for Prem. These are not the type of businesses that
