Rural B-School Empowers Indian Women

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Minting Successful Entrepreneurs

The trainers, handpicked by Gala and her five-member executive board, undergo rigorous training in Pune, 120 miles (200 kilometers) away. They do not earn a salary, but, depending on the course, they get 40% to 70% of the fees paid by a student, with Maan Deshi retaining the balance. "That way, even the trainers are motivated to get more students to the school," says program coordinator Padma Kuber.

Clearly, the rate at which Maan Deshi churns out entrepreneurs could give even Ivy League B-schools indigestion. In just six months, it has trained 466 students, and Gala hopes to reach out to neighboring village women through a mobile B-school. In the southern Indian state of Karnataka, she has got the Deshpande Foundation, set up by Gururaj Deshpande, chairman of Sycamore Networks (SCMR), to sponsor the mobile B-school (see BusinessWeek.com, 8/22/06, "India's Banks Are Big on Microfinance").

It was a financial planning course that the semiliterate Aruna Gaikwad, 29, signed up for when she wanted to expand her fruit vending business from retail to wholesale. "I knew how to calculate, but had no clue about the demand-supply in the market," says the diminutive Gaikwad. She now fixes the price for the produce based on the current market demand and supply. How does she calculate this? With her eyes shut, the answer is straight out of an economics text book: "We were taught to compare the quantity of fruit sold in the previous week, and accordingly calculate the demand and supply, and fix the price." She also buys the raw material depending on the availability of capital.

When avian flu wiped out Vanita Pise's family poultry business, the doe-eyed housewife decided to become the bread earner for her 18-member extended family. Defying her husband, she took a $330 loan from the Maan Deshi bank to buy a machine to make disposable paper cups. With the men in her house rarely earning, she slogs day and night on her machine to churn out 5,000 cups a day. Pise, who has won a national award for her work and now wants to include paper plates in her portfolio, makes $67 a month. She has joined the B-school to master the art of making cotton bags. "I also want to learn candle making to supplement my income. I am having fun learning and earning," she says.

Planting Networking Seeds

Gala, an alumna of Yale's World Fellows Program, brings an infectious sense of fun and pride in women's empowerment to her annual return trip to campus. Her impassioned presentations in New Haven have attracted students of developmental studies from foreign universities to intern at her B-school. With the school still in its infancy, six interns from the U.S. and Spain—four just for the summer—have their work cut out for them, from developing a marketing curriculum and human-resource policy to monitoring and writing impact assessment reports.

"When the women here have no access to any knowledge, all this makes a big difference," says Natalie Burton, an American from Johns Hopkins' School of Advanced International Studies in Washington, who is on a two-month stay to help the B-school run more like a business.

That's already happening. Currently operating from five makeshift rooms in two locations, Gala has purchased 1.25 acres in the village to build a residential B-school "so that we can be more professional."

Meanwhile, Gala is being wooed by Indian and foreign banks, insurance companies, and even mobile handset makers, who want to sell their services and products to her rural entrepreneurs. Knowing well that only a lack of money can derail her B-school, Gala is leveraging every opportunity to generate funds.

When HSBC (HBC) recently wanted to work closely with Maan Deshi Bank and offered a $110,000 microfinance loan at 9% interest, she requested them to step in as a sponsor with a $17,000 grant for the B-school. They did. "Why not," Gala says, "when it's a passport to a better future for the women."

Lakshman covers India business for BusinessWeek.