Banks contribution to Rural India

The Bank has now become partners with the Union Government in its new initiative to disburse payments under various social security schemes, including NREGS wages. The bank contributes to service in rural area, through a simple process that allows beneficiaries to open a zero-balance account, into which the bank credits money due to them, that it gets from the Union government. The money in the account is then handed over to them in the village, through bank-in-the-backyard functionaries.
Functionaries such as Rebka, who prefers to be identified by just one name, is an active member of the local self-help group Velugu Gramaikhya Sangham, or because she is a “motivator” for other members of the group. (The Telugu name of the group roughly translates as velugu village unity association, with velugu meaning light.)
Rebka is the new custodian of hope for the 2,000 people living in Kothlapur, a village in Medak district, 55km north-west of Hyderabad. The 32-year-old helps set up zero-balance accounts at State Bank of India (SBI) for Kothlapur villagers to receive pensions and payments under social security schemes such as the National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme, or NREGS, which promises 100 days of work a year to at least one adult from each poor rural family.
After setting up the accounts, where customers are free from having to maintain a mandatory minimum balance, Rebka lets villagers withdraw money at any time of the day or night, unlike bank branches that follow strict business hours.
Rebka carries a rectangular black box only slightly larger than a cordless phone handset and a flip-open cell phone. The little black box that Rebka carries around is a biometric device that matches the fingerprints of customers and communicates wirelessly with her cellphone, which, in turn, is linked to the SBI servers that hold information about the account holder and the account. The money is then debited from the beneficiary’s account.The entire transaction takes just a few minutes in real time. The biometric device, which matches fingerprints with originals collected and stored in the SBI database at the time the account is opened, ensures that the payment is indeed going to the beneficiary for whom it is intended.
For her services, Rebka gets 0.5-1% of the money she disburses, same as Zero Mass Foundation, a non-governmental organization that is authorized by the Reserve Bank of India, or RBI, to deliver services on behalf of a bank. Zero Mass Foundation, in turn, ties up with local self-help groups, and their members such as Rebka, for last-mile reach.
In Kothlapur, Rebka disburses around Rs50,000 every month to pension beneficiaries and those employed under NREGS.
The initiative was started in November 2006, and SBI has so far opened 1.77 million such accounts across 1,183 villages in eight districts of Andhra Pradesh. In Medak district alone, the bank has opened at least 450,000 so-called SBI Tiny accounts.
India’s banks are trying to deliver banking services to low-income groups. Given that only 59% of Indian adults have bank accounts, the opportunities are enormous. In rural areas, just 39% of the adult population has bank accounts. Coverage is worse when it comes to accessing loans. The credit market is small, with the number of loan accounts constituting only 14% of the adult population. In rural areas, the coverage is 9.5%.
Profits, if any, are in the future, but the costs are now and real. For instance, the apparatus and the cellphone that Rebka carries cost Rs22,500, add to that the commission she and Zero Mass Foundation receive.
Asked when such initiatives would become profitable, Rama Chandra Reddy, deputy general manager (rural business unit) at SBI in Hyderabad, replies: “When at least 40-50% of these accounts become active and people actually start using them for depositing and withdrawing money.” He expects this to happen within a year. Post Comments
This in ‘Backyard banking’ has been quite successful in Kothlapur, Medak, Andhra Pradesh.
For SBI, the rural banking initiative is not taken just as a profitable venture, but aimed at making banking services available to sections of society that had been previously perceived as un bankable.

Changing perspective …A Social Beginning...

Never thought a 200 years old bank like SBI would ever taste this social media. Times have changed so have the priorities. Organizations even though wanting to stay away from this social web for various obvious reasons can’t really dump them for more…much more obvious rationalities. The mindset is clear. STATE BANK OF INDIA now wants a chunk of this growing phenomenon we know as "YOUNGINISM". The jargon might differ but the purpose remains the same.

The Indian scene is still in a very nascent stage when it comes to social media leveraging for businesses and organizations. Contradicting to it, several Indian organizations have cleverly blended the power of their own marketing campaigns and social media efforts to push their brands, products to new highs.

The example of Aircel is apt to mention. Their efforts for a cause bore them a lot of fruit with their “Save Our Tigers” initiative. ICICI bank on the other hand has rightly used twitter to fortify their customer services and the way the bank used to communicate to its clients.

Coming to the India’s oldest and largest bank, SBI wants to connect to its youth segment in a manner that’s not interrupting or disturbing. It wants to go where its youth is rather than dragging them down to it. It has recently launched it twitter face www.twitter.com/SBIconnex to touch base and communicate with the young netizens of the country and beyond.

More to that...SBI also has a dedicated YouTube channel www.youtube.com/SBIconnex which will regularly update different videos related to It and unrelated to it lol :)

Further do check this SBI or STATE BANK OF INDIA blog regularly http://www.sbiconnex.blogspot.com/ for more news, views and updates. Kindly leave a comment if you liked it or disliked it, if u have any questions, we would like to find their answers.

You can reblog this where ever you want but be kind enough to link it to this original post...Thanks...

We are proud to announce that State Bank of India tops the list of ten highest advance taxpayers in India. For this fiscal year we have contributed with a payment of Rs 6,552 crore as advance tax compared to Rs 5,733 crore in the year-ago, We are followed by LIC (second spot), which has made a total payment of Rs 3,253 crore for FY'10 against Rs 2,988 crore last fiscal. Mukesh Ambani-run Reliance Industries occupies the third spot amongst the top ten advance taxpayers with a payment of Rs 3,075 crore. Indian Oil Corporation is fourth in the list while Bank of Baroda (BoB) is seventh. Standard Chartered Bank and HDFC Bank also figure amongst the top ten at fifth and sixth spots respectively.

State Bank of India (SBI) is rolling out over 300 solar-powered ATMs at rural and semi-urban sites across the country.

SBI has signed for 545 machines with Local vendor Vortex Engineering , of which over 300 will solar-powered Gramateller Duo ATMs - developed in collaboration with IIT Madras - in the first large-scale deployment of its kind in the country.

A conventional cash machine consumes about 1000 watts of power and requires an air-conditioned environment, adding another 1500 watts. This means a normal ATM consumes about 1800 units of power every month.

In contrast, Vortex claims that its machines consume less than 100 watts of power and do not require air conditioning, thus using up less than 72 units per month. The saving of 1728 units per month represents a cash benefit of Rs 1,20,000 a year.

In addition, compared to conventional ATM installations, Vortex's machines reduce CO2 emissions by at least 18,500 kg per year.

SBI's attempt to save Tiger

The regional head office of the State Bank of India (SBI) here has adopted a tigress of the Van Vihar National Park, an official said Monday.
The bank adopted the tigress, named Sita, under the animal adoption scheme after paying Rs.125,000 for one year. This is the 22nd case of adoption of a wild animal in the national park in the past 13 months.

Sita was brought to the Van Vihar National Park from Jagdalpur way back on June 22, 1994 when she was just nine months old.

Under the adoption scheme, an animal of choice can be adopted by remitting a reasonable fee needed to meet its expenses in the zoo.

For adopting a lion or a tiger, Rs.125,000 has to be paid annually, for a leopard the annual cost is Rs.50,000, for bears Rs.65,000, hyenas Rs.30,000, jackal Rs.25,000, crocodile Rs.30,000, alligator Rs.40,000, python Rs.6,000 and snake Rs.2,000. This covers food and medical bills and upkeep of the animal’s surroundings.

The amount to be spent on these animals is exempted from income tax. Also, the nameplate of the person or the organisation adopting an animal is affixed in front of the animal’s enclosure and up to six members of the sponsor’s family are allowed free entry in Van Vihar once a week to see the adopted animal.

Chief General Manager of SBI M. Bhagwant Rao provided bankers-check of Rs.125,000 to S.S. Rajput, director of Van Vihar, who in turn provided the certificate of adoption of the tigress to the SBI management.

The Van Vihar National Park in Bhopal launched its animal adoption scheme on Jan 1, 2009 to spread awareness about wildlife conservation.

“The idea came from human adoption. Like human beings, animals too need care, the idea was to involve people in wildlife conservation,” Rajput said.

The zoo sprawls over 445 hectares and is located in the heart of Bhopal. It has multiple status of being a large zoo, a rescue centre for wildlife and a tiger and vulture breeding centre.

It has a wide range of animals - lions, tigers, leopards, bears, hyenas, jackals, crocodiles, alligators, pythons and 207 bird species.

State Bank of India chooses Opus for ATM platform
Opus Software Solutions, a leading provider of software solutions to the payments industry has signed a $10 million deal with State Bank of India (SBI) to replace their existing ATM platform with electraSWITCH.


This deal with State Bank Of India (SBI) will power 25,000 ATMs, 500,000 POS devices and Kiosks and authorize 80 million debit cards by next year; and these numbers are expected to double (including ATMs) by 2014, making this the largest installation in the world.

Migration of ATMs has already commenced and would be complete in 6-8 months, making this the fastest migration of an EFT Switch of this scale across the world.

Opus is implementing this solution through its wholly owned subsidiary - ElectraCard Services. Opus is also providing other solutions from its electra suite to enable SBI to implement 'Go-To-Market' strategies quickly and deliver value added services to its customers. These include an Internet payment gateway, 3-D Secure authentication software, debit card management software and a fraud management solution.

Speaking on this occasion, Mr. Ramesh Mengawade, CEO, Opus Software and ElectraCard Services said, "Opus has clinched this deal amid stiff global competition and stringent quality & process validations. This is a landmark win for Opus as it will become the largest EFT Switch solution provider in the world by 2014. This deal will further strengthen our market dominance in the payment marketplace in India. We are replicating such success stories nationally and internationally."