On the 8th and 9th of February 2010, Access Microfinance Alliance (AmFA), one of the largest small MFI networks in India, organized ‘ACCESS INVEST’, an investor readiness workshop for its members. The workshop saw participation of 25 participants from around 20 MFIs from the eastern region of India.
Bhagirath Iyer, member of the IFMR Capital origination team, was invited to describe different sources of fund-raising to the MFI participants. He spoke about the newer sources of fund-raising like Non-Convertible Debentures and Securitisation for high-quality MFIs sharing IFMR Capital’s experience of structuring, arranging and investing in three path-breaking MFI securitisation transactions. The session sparked tremendous interest and some of the NGO MFIs present were keen to know more about the process and whether the avenue will be open to them.
Seeing the overwhelming interest generated, AmFA is keen that IFMR Capital shares its experiences at such Investor Readiness workshops to be held across India in the future.
Looking forward Indian Microfinance today is looking at more efficient and reliable sources of funding than bank lending driven by priority sector lending requirements. IFMR Capital expects that interactions such as these will educate more high quality MFIs, whether small or medium; NBFCs or NGOs on the benefits of accessing the capital markets for debt funding.
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Kirti Rao from IFMR Capital (presently known as Northern Arc Capital) contributed to this post.
