The rolling placement season, which ended recently at the Indian School of Business (ISB), Hyderabad, amply testifies to the fact that the Indian economy is on a sharp growth curve, providing a ray of opportunities for prospective students to grow with it. For the first time, the ISB has been able to attract more `recruiters' from non-traditional sectors, such as micro-finance, real estate and retail; also, the hefty Cost to Company (CTC) offered in these domains seems to reflect the growing focus on emerging areas of the economy. The thriving micro-finance/insurance sector is a notable phenomenon, say many academic analysts. It's not an exaggeration to say that there is a tremendous response to microfinance and insurance initiatives across the globe.
The recent developments also testify to the fact. The International Finance Corporation (IFC), the private sector arm of the World Bank, is on the path of pumping huge resources into the microfinance stream, and recently it entered into a partnership with many global vendors such as KfW, a German development bank. With an estimated investment of $1 bn, targeting five million micro-enterprises and lower-income population, IFC's proposed initiative will certainly boost the microfinance/insurance business operations across the globe, argue many domain experts. This will no doubt increase the cash flows in the rural sector as each and every initiative brings into light a chain of partners ranging from banks, NGOs, to government and social activist forums, besides infusing a new enterprising dynamism among potential beneficiaries. |
