Tiny Loans Big Differences

Saritha Rai writes in New York Times how Tiny Loans Make a Big Difference in Lives of Poor. The article traces Mr. Khosla when he was Shamsabad and was listening to the women in rural areas who received tiny loans from a microfinance program run by SHARE Microfin and how it helped them start homegrown businesses, transformed their poverty-stricken lives and made better education possible for their children.

I was completely blown as I listened to the stories of these tenacious women," Mr. Khosla said. "I started crying." In his view, the microfinance initiatives he visited in India and Bangladesh last month ran more efficiently than most Silicon Valley organizations. "They have sophisticated credit algorithms," he said. "Does the woman own a buffalo? Some chickens? Does she have a toilet in her home? What kind of roofing material does her home have? Does she bring a shawl to the village meeting?"