Kishore Biyani, Retail King, offers lessons to microfinance sector in new issue of Microfinance Insights

In an exclusive interview featured in the latest issue of the quarterly journal Microfinance Insights, Nachiket Mor, President of the ICICI Foundation for Inclusive Growth, interviews Kishore Biyani, Group CEO, Future Group, to draw from his experience expanding his fast-growing retail conglomerate.

Mumbai, Apr 8 : In an exclusive interview featured in the latest issue of the quarterly journal Microfinance Insights, Nachiket Mor, President of the ICICI Foundation for Inclusive Growth, interviews Kishore Biyani, Group CEO, Future Group, to draw from his experience expanding his fast-growing retail conglomerate.

Speaking about the sector, Biyani said that microfinance has the potential to be a significant distribution and marketing channel and could enable businesses and services to expand into the lowest levels of the economy.

In the interview Biyani also spoke about the need to create effective second-rung leaders, partnerships within the industry, and perhaps controversially, increase the sector's marketability in terms of the marriage opportunities it affords its staff.

Other voices in the sixth volume of the journal, focusing on human resource challenges and solutions for the sector, include a commentary on the recently released and controversial Forbes list of Top 50 MFIs, and insights on the sector's staffing gender gap.

Ian Callahan of Morgan Stanley talks about how the Forbes list may serve a larger purpose for the sector.

Mary Ellen Iskenderian, President of Women's World Banking in New York, says that Muhammad Yunus isn't the only one who should receive credit for microfinance's progress.

With an industry facing stiff competition, regulation, and rapid growth, issues such as recruiting, training, and retaining staff, are being acknowledged as the most challenging yet. This issue looks at what some microfinance institutions (MFIs) have done to tackle those challenges.

As the first issue under the leadership of new Managing Editor, Lindsay Clinton, several new features have been added to the journal including a global survey of more than 90 MFIs, a Commentary section, and Global Viewpoints, where MFIs from around the world, from Tunisia to Bolivia, share their perspectives.

Other features of Vol. 6 Microfinance Insights: HR Challenges include:

-- The trend of Westerners moving to developing markets to practice microfinance;

-- A Delhi-based MFI that only hires slum women;

-- Why ESOPs may not be the golden bullet for incentivizing MFI staff members;

-- An HDFC banker's take on investing in MFIs;

-- Results from the first-ever Microfinance Insights survey, on human resource challenges, with responses from nearly 100 institutions around the world.

Microfinance Insights is a dynamic, fast growing publication with over 5,000 readers who praise the publication as a valuable resource and a thought leader in the microfinance sector. Shafiq Ahmed, of UK investment firm, Sphere Partners said, "We see Microfinance Insights as the Economist of the Microfinance sector."

ANI