Muhammad Yunus: Building Social Business Ventures

“Whether for profit or for non-profit our involvement relates to benefiting people” one of his very famous quote which you can hear him saying in the video here. One man, One dream, One organisation “Grameen Bank” . Being a professor he could have easily chosen to sit back, relax and lecture on “how to eradicate poverty in this world” instead he chose to do it himself by establishing grameen bank, a bank which gives out small amount of money to poor people who want to start a business. These business ventures may be small like opening up a tea shop, a tailor shop but they are a big for the people who are starting it because the income they gonna generate out of it will change there life forever. Pull them out form the dungeons of  poverty.The idea of microfinance lives with an idea of inclusive growth, where we concentrate on the bottom of the pyramid, the term made popular by C.K Prahlad. The logic is simple if you treat this strata of society as beggars, they will remain so. But you empower them, do a bit of  hand holding then they can create wonders.  I would like to share a small incident that moved me a lot.

I somehow managed to miss my train for mumbai (i do it everytime, miss trains, miss busses, loosing tickets in the train, forgetting ATM pins etc. i am that perpetual poor guy that you see in a bollywood flick who always managed to get into some trouble..:) )..i was in Guntakal and wanted to catch Udyan express to mumbai, it was early morning i think around 3 or something. I missed my train and had to wait on the station. Desperately wanted to have tea but couldnt find any stall open that time, suddenly a boy, i think aged 16 appeared like an angel and asked me if i wanted tea.  I said yes and took a cup and given my talkative nature i started asking him question, what does he do apart from selling tea and stuff like that and what does he dream of becoming one day. I was surprised to hear him,he told me that he do 4 different jobs(i can hardly manage to do one! :) ). First he drops newspaper in the morning, and whatever he earns from it goes to cook meal at home (he told me a trick of  putting in inserts in the newsaper to make some extra buck, there was a sparkle in his eyes when he was telling me this.).Second, he supply packaging material (rope, plastic etc) to the daily vegetable haat (Sabzi mandi..yeah i know hindi too). Third, he  cleans up a small school in the evening daily along with his other freinds. And the fourth he sells tea on the station. I asked why he cant do just one and find ways to make more money out of that. He said that last two job he is doing is to collect money to open up a tea stall on the station. Because one of his distant realtive works in the railway, and he has promised him to get him a license to do so. That is his dream a stall on the station, and he feel it will be his day, a day when he will feel that he has arrived, he has made a mark, the day when he will feel that he is breathing in a free country!

Microfinance is just the thing that the doctor prescribed, it could fast forward and save poor Raman from all that labour and lend him money to start a tea stall or whatever else he can dream off.  Grameen  bank is just doing that and something  similar is being done in India by Vikram Akula of SKS Microfinance. Hope to see more ventures like these!

Let me know what do you feel about this or your story that you want to share with all of us here.

Psst: I am writing about social enterpreneurhsip on socialentrepreneurs.theindianstartup.com