How Hardika Shah of Kinara is creating social capital
₹6,500 crore. Despite plenty of turbulence for the NBFC sector in the years after Kinara was founded, assets under management for the NBFC grew 150% between fiscal 2022 and the quarter ended December 2023. Assets under management as of February 2024 was ₹3,113 crore.
The company helps small firms in businesses ranging from provisions stores to medical shops, from auto components to cloud kitchens. Women-owned MSMEs account for almost 12% of the customer portfolio. Kinara’s five-year-old HerVikas programme for women entrepreneurs has issued more than ₹700 crore in business loans.
What HerVikas does is give women with businesses extended grace periods before their EMIs kick in. It offers them a 60-day repayment holiday, a 1% discount on the interest rates the company charges and lower loan processing charges. The percentage of women among its customers is less than one might expect, but Shah is realistic about the fact that the prejudices women face working outside their homes is deep-rooted in India, which has one of the lowest female participation rates in the workforce in the world.
“If you don’t support your daughter working outside the home or don’t like her working, I can’t change that," she says matter-of-factly. Prejudice against women extends to the venture capital industry: Recent data from Tracxn shows that just 7% of venture capital funding went to startup companies in India with female founders in 2023. Kinara is a model for women-led organisations with most of the senior positions in the company filled by women and considerable LGBTQ+ representation in its ranks.
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