Microfinance Focus, January 11, 2011: Hyderabad based Bhartiya Samruddhi Finance Ltd , microfinance arm of BASIX has recently received a $ 22 million funding (INR 100 crores) from a public sector Bank. Samruddhi is registered with the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) as a Non Banking Finance Company (NBFC). This is the flagship company of the BASIX group.

The loan has come at a crucial time when microfinance institutions across India are reeling under severe liquidity crunch due to reduced bank lending since the issue of microfinance ordinance in Andhra Pradesh.

Bhartiya Samruddhi Finance Ltd is the microfinance arm of BASIX and has disbursed over 3,246,321 loans worth Rs.409, 424 million as on 31^st October 2010. Basix is working with over a 3.5 million customers, over 90% being rural poor households and about 10% urban slum dwellers. It is present in 17 states including Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, Orissa, Jharkhand, Maharashtra, Madhya Pradesh, Tamilnadu, Rajasthan, Bihar, Chattisgarh, West Bengal, Delhi, Uttarakhand, Sikkim, Meghalaya, Assam and Gujrat.

According to its official website, BASICS Ltd earlier owned nearly 100 percent of Samruddhi with an equity base of Rs 4.5 crore at its birth in the year 1997. Samruddhi expanded its equity base to Rs 20.6 crore in 2001. The additional equity came from the IFC, Washington, Shorebank, Chicago; Hivos- Triodos Fund, Netherlands; the ICICI Bank and HDFC Limited from India. The investment by BASICS Ltd was also enhanced to Rs 9.7 crore, bringing its share of Samruddhi holdings to 49.5 percent.

Basix Livelihood services include Microfinance, Agricultural and Business development services and institutional business development services.