Mahagram Is Shaping The Financial Services Ecosystem In Rural India

In order to provide digital banking and e-governance services to all the people living the rural India, Mahagram—a social enterprise has launched a citizen service delivery portal called ‘GramSevak.com’.

These services are provided through digitally-enabled feet-on-street representatives as known as “Mahagram Sevak”. These “Mahagram Sevaks” will earn a commission for services provided by them through the portal. Citizens can use the “GramSevak.com” platform to access e-governance, banking, and insurance services with the support of their local “GramSevak” representatives. The Company hopes to enroll nearly one million unemployed youth under the “GramSevak” project, which will provide them with a source of regular income.

Mahagram is a social enterprise focusing on financial inclusion that introduces rural India to the new-age digital banking services. Working as a boon for the rural, the customers can now avail of numerous e-banking services at their nearest kirana stores. The company converts the local kirana stores into banks enabling them to offer banking, loans, and insurance services to the villagers.

The company aims to increase the ratio and habit of household savings in rural India. “At Mahagram, we are indulged in offering basic banking services like deposit and withdrawing transactions to consumers but it is now high time for rural people to save money,” said Ram Shriram, CEO Mahagram.

Working towards its aim, Mahagram has recently signed a partnership with the IndusInd Bank, a new-generation Indian bank to digitise the country’s payment ecosystem and provide a wider horizon to transact especially for its customers in rural India. The partnership between the two aims to boost financial inclusion, encourage socio-economic development, mitigate the risks of a shadow economy, and accelerate the growth of a cashless society.  Through this association, Mahagram aims to add 15 million small merchants to the UPI QR in this fiscal year.

Based in Mumbai, Mahagram now has a presence in almost all Indian states. It is building scalable solutions to grow its market and to enable its customers to send, deposit, and withdraw money from the nearest grocery stores.

Since its inception, Mahagram has been organically funded by its core promoters and stakeholders. Mahagram services nearly 15,000 PIN codes and provides basic banking, e-governance, and other BFSI services through its distribution network of around 12,000 distributors and over 7,00,000 retail partners among the mom-and-pop stores.

According to Invest India, the country is amongst the fastest growing Fintech markets in the world. Indian FinTech industry’s market size was USD 50 billion in 2021 and is estimated at USD 150 billion by 2025.

The Indian Fintech industry ecosystem sees a wide range of subsegments, including payments, lending, wealth technology (WealthTech), personal finance management, insurance technology (InsurTech), regulation technology (RegTech), among others.

The Fintech sector in India has seen a funding of USD 8.53 billion (in 278 deals) in Financial Year 22. 

As of May 2022, India’s Unified Payments Interface (UPI) has seen participation of 323 banks and has recorded 5.9 billion monthly transactions worth over USD 130 billion.

As of April 2022, 16 Fintech companies have gained ‘Unicorn Status’ with a valuation of over USD 1 billion in India.