Finding Novel Ways to Support India's Poor.

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Author: Rawe, Julie

Builders & Titans

Loaning a few bucks to Third World entrepreneurs may not sound like cutting-edge banking. Indeed, microfinance might attract more investors, as "actorvist" Tim Robbins suggested at a recent U.N. gala, if it had a hipper name, like "MiFi" or "MiPod." But Vikram Akula is using advanced technology--smart cards--to make venture capital available to more of the 800 million people in India who live on less than $2 a day. In the hinterland, where there are few landlines, let alone ATMs, the founder of SKS Microfinance is starting to dispense loans, typically $116, on smart cards, which its loan officers had been using to record repayments electronically. The plastic approach intrigued Visa International, which is now pairing SKS with cell phone--based card readers. The cash-free system is more efficient and safer too. As Visa's emerging-markets chief, Debbie Arnold, put it, a cash-laden loan officer "might as well carry a big bull's-eye on his back." Akula, 37, has already made SKS one of the fastest-growing microlenders, having dispensed $52 million to 221,000 clients since 1998. SKS keeps its default rate below 2% by using software that provides real-time data. When he spots a red flag, he says, "we're on it like a SWAT team." Such transparency has attracted Silicon Valley types, with David Schappell of Unitus, a nonprofit venture-capital firm devoted to microfinance, likening SKS to the little coffee shop that became Starbucks. Microccino, anyone?

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By Julie Rawe