Grameen Koota Headquarters
Trip Start
Jul 26, 2008
1
14
64
Trip End
Sep 27, 2008
Bangalore,
India
Friday, August 8, 2008
Chairperson/Director : Vinatha M Reddy and Managing Director : Suresh K. K.
Grammen Koota is a wonderful story that starts when Ms. Reddy, a Montessori School teacher reads a book by Alex Counts about microcredit in India. She instantly becomes totally enamoured with this concept and writes Alex asking for more information and indicating an interest in getting involved. After three months of not hearing from Alex, and about to write Alex again, in her mail she received a letter from Professor Yunus asking how he could help her. That led her on a path that included attending Grameen Dialogue, reading everything she could about microcredit, visiting other microcredit practitioners and developing a plan to start a Microfinance Institution in India
Founder/Director Ms. Reddy
. She solicited seed funds and received $50,000 and lots of technical support from Grameen Trust. She hires Suresh, who was also a school teacher - teaching school children computers, as her Managing Director and in 1999 Grameen Koota is launched. Together the two of them and many others set out to enable the poor through microcredit.
Today Grameen Koota has 150,000 borrowers and nearly 600 employees.
Their target and committment is to having 2,000,000 borrowers in 2011.
This is an incredible story and I encourage you to spend more time in their website learning about Grameen Koota.
Below are links to the video interview that I had the privelege of doing with Ms. Reddy - a very extraordinary woman who is an example to all of us about how one can truly change the world.
Video Interview of Vinatha M Reddy - Founder/Director Grameen Koota
Video Interview of Vinatha M Reddy - Founder/Director Grameen Koota - Part 2
