Grameen Koota

CreditAccess Grameen Limited (formerly known as Grameen Koota Financial Services Pvt. Ltd.) was born to address the need for timely and affordable credit to India's poor and low-income households. It operates under the brand name ‘Grameen Koota’ in 5 Indian states with a customer base of nearly 2 million women. Grameen Koota offers collateral-free loans and other non-financial services to women from poor and low-income households. Its primary objective is to provide access to credit for rural women to establish small or microenterprises that can accelerate the growth of India’s rural economy. In May 1999, Grameen Koota was founded as a project under the T. Muniswamappa Trust (TMT), a not-for-profit organization in South Bengaluru with seed capital from Grameen Trust, Bangladesh. It replicated the Grameen Bank Bangladesh microfinance model, successfully adapting it to the Indian setting. Grameen Koota was registered as a Non-Banking Financial Company (NBFC) in 2007, which was subsequently reclassified as a Non-Banking Financial Company - Micro Finance Institutions (NBFC-MFI) entity by Reserve Bank of India (RBI) in 2013.