Sa-Dhan & BoI Join Hands to Boost Financial Access for Small & Women-Led Enterprises

By: WE staff | Wednesday, 30 April 2025

• Sa-Dhan and Bank of India (BoI) have entered into a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU)
• The collaboration is intended to increase financial access to small, micro, and women-owned businesses
• Emphasis on empowering the underserved segments of society through improved credit availability

Sa-Dhan, a self-regulatory organization directed by Reserve Bank of India for impact finance and microfinance institutions, has signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with Bank of India (BoI) in order to foster financial access of small, micro, and women-owned businesses.

This public-private alliance will contribute towards important national priorities such as Financial Inclusion and Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Under the agreement, the two institutions will co-operate on various initiatives such as offering enterprise finance to SHGs and non-SHG entrepreneurs, promoting climate-resilient technologies and green finance, supporting WASH (Water, Sanitation, and Hygiene) programs, enabling co-lending to MFIs, and promoting financial literacy and awareness of government schemes.

Part of the partnership is that Sa-Dhan will identify SHG and non-SHG entrepreneurs in need of enterprise funding. It will also conduct capacity-building activities among SHG members, Vitta Sakhis, and rural entrepreneurs and support the uptake of digital platforms and financial technologies through the help of BoI.

Jiji Mammen, Sa-Dhan's CEO and Executive Director, underlined that the project will enable balanced access to cheap finance for non-SHG as well as SHG businesses and also ease other development goals such as climate financing. He also added that together the initiatives towards digital inclusion and financial literacy would spur the penetration of enterprise finance in semi-urban and rural India, in turn empowering small enterprises and women entrepreneurs.

Seconding this view, P. R. Rajagopal, Executive Director, Bank of India, believed that the partnership would enable small, micro, and women-owned enterprises to avail of timely and convenient finance, leading to inclusive and sustainable growth.