Jai Kisan Pens MoU with Karnataka Vikas Grameen Bank to Offer Low Priced Credit, Other Financial Services

Rural fintech startup Jai Kisan sings MoU with Karnataka Vikas Grameen Bank to expand its capabilities to provide access to low priced credit and other financial services to rural customers. The MoU marks the start of a long-term partnership with the bank to create grassroot level change in the state of Karnataka at over 2,000 villages through the bank’s 600+ branches where Jai Kisan has a captive farmer base of more than 100,000 farmers through its network.

Jai Kisan will be one of the first few fintech platforms to fully integrate with the Bank empowering a wide range of rural individuals and enterprises including farmers & farmer groups, women self help groups and rural MSMEs with low-cost financial services.

This MoU will help the startup bridge the dire need for innovation, practical and tech-driven solutions to deploy financial services in a sustainable, cost-effective and scalable manner in rural India. Its tech platform helped Jai Kisan to work closely with its existing partner Omniactive Health Technologies to provide pre-harvest credit to its farmers network, impacting over 9,000 small and marginal farmers in Karnataka, during April and May’20 when the country was under lockdown.

“We are very excited to partner with KVGB to bring low-cost financial services to rural Indians across the state. Karnataka has been one of our most progressive states with a thriving agritech ecosystem and this partnership will help us significantly increase our reach and impact by catering to the underserved in the deepest pockets of the state,” commented Arjun Ahluwalia, Founder & CEO, Jai Kisan.

The company works with multiple key ecosystem and value chain players in Karnataka, creating substantial social impact in the state – including but not limited to farmer producer organizations, farmer co-operatives and foundations to empower them in their mission to improve rural livelihood and fuel development.

Jai Kisan works with over 550+ large corporates, agri-tech startups, rural SMEs and well governed farmer cooperatives and societies to provide its suite of financial services with a digital first approach, to their network of farmers and small and micro businesses.

At an annualized loan disbursal run rate of Rs.276 crore as of December 2020 (within 12 months of facilitating the first loan through the platform) and achieving operational profitability already, Jai Kisan has been rapidly expanding its presence across the country over the past year. Jai Kisan has sparked disruption in a largely cash-driven ecosystem with the aim of empowering every rural Indian with a digital and financial footprint and a vision of changing the way money works in rural India.

To further this motive, Jai Kisan launched ‘Bharat Khata’ in April ‘20, a digital ledger and smart business assistant solution for rural businesses to smartly manage their businesses anytime and anywhere. Bharat Khata has captured over $250 million of annualized GTV run rate as of December 2020 and has fueled growth and cash flow optimisation for its users driving India’s rural MSMEs towards their goal of digitizing, organizing and formalizing their businesses in the new normal.