Karuna Krishnaswamy

Karuna Krishnaswamy heads strategic planning, monitoring and evaluation in two programmes in GIZ India. He has 10 years of experience in conducting research, impact assessments and project advisory in access to finance and a mini-career in IT prior to that. He has a B. Tech from IIT Madras and Masters’ degrees in Economics and in Computing Sciences.

By Karuna Krishnaswamy

Blog

Why Women Self-Help Group Members Make for Good Bank Agents

Pilot projects that train women self-help group members as bank agents in rural areas in India are proving to be promising.
Blog

What Caused Mass Defaults in Karnataka, India

While the origins of mass defaults may be rooted in cultural and political considerations, in this post we focus solely on customer behaviour and the lending practices of MFIs that operate in these towns.
Blog

Some Insights into Over-indebtedness in India

Microfinance Institutions in Andhra Pradesh and elsewhere in India are keen to avoid over-indebtedness or place clients in distress.
Blog

What Do Customers Want? New Findings from India

The Andhra Pradesh (AP) government passed an ordinance introducing substantial changes to MFI lending practices in the state.
Blog

Mobile Banking in India: Grass-Roots Marketing

A notable difference in the role of banking agents (also called Customer Service Providers or CSPs) in India compared to other countries is that the agents are responsible for customer acquisition in addition to processing transactions.