Financial Literacy draws Women Customers

Purvi Bhavsar, MD at Pahal Financial Services & Priti Rathi Gupta, Founder & MD at LXME share the special initiatives adopted for attracting and serving women customers:

Purvi Bhavsar advocates obligation-to-income ratio for credit evaluation among women customers

Ravi Lalwani: What percentage of your customers are women? What percentage of your overall business comes from women customers? How have both these figures changed over the last few years?

Purvi: As a prominent microfinance institution, most of our clientele comprises women borrowers from rural or semi-urban areas, many of whom possess limited literacy. These women borrowers encounter significant challenges when seeking loans from formal entities such as banks and other financial institutions, primarily due to the absence of formal income documentation and the inability to provide tangible assets as collateral.

Through our microfinance loan product, we extend collateral-free loans to empower these enterprising women. Additionally, they can participate in group loans, wherein a collective of women serves as guarantors for each other, relying on social collateral rather than tangible assets.

Our active membership encompasses over 500,000 women customers, and we take pride in positively impacting the lives of more than a million women borrowers since our inception.

Priti: 80% of the customers are women and 20% are relatives of these women. This number has increased over time. While we are sustaining the 80/20 ratio, our platform is experiencing rapid growth in the number of women users, primarily due to strong word-of-mouth referrals, making us an integral part of their coffee conversations.

What changes in demand for financial services are seen among women customers in the last 2 years?