AGARTALA: Innovative Microfinance Company Bandhan will operate as a bank from October next year and focus on empowering women and rural people, says its chairman and managing director Chandra Shekhar Ghosh.

"Bandhan Financial Services Private Ltd (BFSPL) would start its journey as India's youngest bank from October next year," Ghosh said.

"By October next year, we have to fulfil certain guidelines of RBI to become a full-fledged bank in India. We are now working day and night to achieve the goal," he said.

Ghosh said Bandhan would build on its experience as a micro-financier and as a bank strive to strengthen capacity building of people.

"Long back, a poor but energetic woman in a village in West Bengal had taken loan from us, 3,000, for making 'Muri' (puffed rice); after a year she came to us seeking a loan of 20,000 to increase her selling. There are thousands of such instances happening in rural Bengal."

Kolkata-based Bandhan was set up in 2001 as a micro-finance institution.

Bandhan (meaning togetherness or bonding) provides loans of a minimum of 1,000 and maximum of 5 lakh for small trading activities and from 1,000 to 10,000 for non-business activities like building a sanitary latrine and for children's education.

"Our people every day meet around one million people in eastern India and other parts of the country to change their mindset on social uplift and economic emancipation by covering them under the micro-financing. The main thrust of Bandhan is to work with women, who are socially destitute and economically exploited."

For the first time in 10 years, Mumbai-based IDFC and Kolkata-based BFSPL were selected by the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) earlier this year to set up banks, from among 25 non-banking finance companies (NBFCs).

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