While the rest of the world, excluding China, struggles with a mere 3 percent growth (negative in recessionary times), India’s growth is nearer to 8 percent. But there are two sides to the India story. Flip the page and we see that close to 60 percent of the Indian population lacks access to a bank account or credit services.
 
The key to sustaining India’s growth is financial inclusion and the ubiquitous mobile phone is the tool to achieve it. India’s wireless teledensity is almost 500 million (45 percent of its population own a mobile phone). A worldwide financial institution working with India’s largest PSU bank has already proved it, with rapid results.
 
The State Bank of India (SBI) appointed Eko India Financial Services (Eko) as its business correspondent to drive a financial inclusion project for opening SBI Mini savings bank accounts on the mobile platform. These are no-frills or zero minimum balance accounts managed through Eko’s distribution network and backend (a core banking solution called SimpliBank).
 
The CGAP-funded project (Consultative Group to Assist the Poor) has been running in New Delhi, NCR and Bihar since March 2009 and it is aimed at the ‘un-banked’ section of the population.
 
Matteo Chiampo, COO, Eko India Financial Services said, “The project with SBI started in March 2009. In just eight months we got 7,000 customers (5,500 in Delhi and 1,500 in Bihar). We started the project in Bihar about three months ago. So far we have collected Rs 22 lakh in savings deposits in a very inexpensive way.”
 
But how did Eko manage to achieve so much in a short span of time? Its distribution network played a major role here.