Rural B-school in Maharashtra catching global attention

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Nanda Kasabe: Pune, Mar 19 2010, 23:04 IST

Tags: B School | Mann Deshi Udyogini

A rural B-school in rural Maharashtra, designed for unlettered women, has been drawing international attention. Nearly three years after its inception, Mann Deshi Udyogini (MDU) — a business school founded by Chetna Gala Sinha, a Yale University World Fellow, with a $17,500 grant from HSBC — is ready to expand. MDU plans to open similar B-schools for rural women adjacent to the upcoming bank branches of the Mann Deshi Mahila Bank. The bank has recently received RBI’s approval to expand its operations and the focus will now be on opening up such schools in areas where the bank operates, Sinha said.

The Mann Deshi Mahila Sahakari Bank, which currently has three branches, will soon expand its network to six districts — Satara, Sangli, Solapur, Ratnagiri, Kolhapur and Pune. New B-Schools are planned at Satara and Solapur and these should commence operations in a couple of months, said Rekha Kulkarni, chief executive officer, Mann Deshi Mahila Bank. The B-school was started in Mhaswad by the Mann Deshi Foundation, an NGO associated with the Mann Deshi Mahila Sahakari Bank. With four branches—located in Mhaswad, Vaduj, Dahiwadi and Lonand in Maharashtra and Hubli in Karnataka — it also has two vans which operate as mobile B-schools. Gala hopes to take the B-school module beyond just Maharashtra to places in Karnataka and Gujarat.

Since its inception in January 2007, MDU has trained 9,000 women in business development. A total of 60% of the women who have been trained, have subsequently set

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