Paytm AshaKiran joins hands with Grameen Foundation to help rural women and youth realise self-employment opportunities -:- www.deekpay.com

As part of the Paytm AshaKiran programme, we have entered into a partnership with Grameen Foundation for Social Impact (GFSI) with an aim to provide self-employment opportunities to rural women and youth in the field of banking and finance. Within the framework of this partnership, we will provide job-oriented training aimed at enhancing financial literacy and inclusion amongst the unbanked and less-banked segments of society. In the first phase, we plan to launch a pilot project in Nagpur district of Maharashtra, which is expected to cover over 300,000 people, providing them with financial education and digital financial literacy training by the end of the current financial year. The programme will also continue to expand to a number of small towns in the Indian states of Maharashtra, Karnataka, Haryana, Andhra Pradesh and Uttar Pradesh.

Grameen Foundation will utilise G-LEAP (Grameen Learning Platform), an Android-based mobile learning platform, and Grameen Guru, an augmented reality-based chatbot app, to help train and equip the individuals involved. At the same time, we will provide comprehensive banking and entrepreneurship training to help these individuals and promote self-employment.

Renu Satti, Managing Director and CEO, Payments Bank, Paytm said, "We are delighted to partner with Grameen Foundation in our endeavour to empower rural India. We always endeavour to make them aware of the financial services sector and help them integrate into the mainstream economy. Our goal is to make uninterrupted banking and financial services available to even the remotest villages in our country. We will continue to focus on supporting and educating rural women and youth to help them achieve financial inclusion."

Speaking at the event, Prabhat Labh, Chief Executive Officer, Social Impact, Grameen Foundation, said, "This partnership combines Grameen Foundation's expertise in technology-enabled learning, human-centred design, and a deep understanding of the barriers and challenges faced by under-served communities, with Paytm Payments Bank's innovative digital finance and payments offerings, to provide an effective and scalable solution for women's and youth's livelihood development and financial inclusion with an effective and scalable solution."

The project will also build on the success of Grameen Foundation's earlier projects, which included digitising MFI operations through Aadhaar Enabled Payments (AEPS), deploying Interactive Voice Response (IVR)-based learning, implementing the Business Contacts model in MFIs, and promoting targeted savings for low-income women.