In twelve years as an IAS officer, Deepa Bhatt oversaw dozens of welfare schemes. The ones that worked best, she noticed, put money directly in the hands of women running small businesses.
In 2017 she resigned to start Sakhi Capital, which offers small, flexible loans to women who run tailoring units, dairies, kirana shops and beauty parlours.
Credit plus confidence
Every loan comes with basic bookkeeping training delivered by other borrowers. The platform has lent to 85,000 women with a repayment rate of 98.6 percent.
Rural women are not a charity case. They are the most reliable borrowers I have ever met.
“The biggest barrier was never ability,” Deepa says. “It was that no one had ever trusted them with capital.”
