Microfinance: India vs. China

EKGAON NAMED WINNER OF THE FIRST ANNUAL DELL SMALL BUSINESS EXCELLENCE AWARD IN INDIA

* Recognizes Small Businesses that Use Technology in Innovative Ways to Better Serve Customers
* EkGaon differentiates itself among record breaking 5,000 applicants

Delhi, India
October 8th, 2009

Dell, UTVi and Endeavor India named the national winner of 2009 Dell Small Business Excellence Award.

Based in Delhi, EkGaon functions as an IT services provider for rural India, designing and developing technology and information systems to address the varying needs of developing communities. The company, founded in 2002, has become a pioneer in mobile rural accounting and mobile tracking of transactions for small rural financial organizations.

The company has a history of creating innovative interface designs for semi-literate population through image capture, numeric and audio output. Their goal was to create a system that enabled rural financial institutions to better serve their customers through paperless updates to a central financial database. This service then grew to address the more pressing need to provide an organizational framework for lending groups- the microfinance institutions clients. The camera based and spoken interaction system for lending groups has enabled a new semi literate population to access financial services. The innovative use of interface design allows customers to capture more information accurately, without having to rely on banking correspondents who would travel to a village infrequently and might not have the customer’s best interests at heart.

As the company grew, it needed a way to streamline and automate its operations while still providing the level of human interaction its customers had come to expect. The use of mobile banking solutions has also reduced the cost of loans and financial transactions by removing physical barriers to having bank branches in rural areas. The solution has the ability to transform the landscape of rural banking as physical proximity is replaced by digital correspondence in a rich format of text, audio, and picture interaction.

“In an effort to capture information about an expanding rural clientele we are identifying problems at the individual level and letting them drive development. Creating the atmosphere where we can co-develop solutions with local participation is one of our end goals but also one of our greatest operational strengths as we are able to address local needs faster and more precisely than our competitors,” said Vijay Pratap Singh Aditya, co- founder and Chief Executive Officer of Ekgaon. He added, “Technology is a critical tool for EkGaon, it’s what allows us to facilitate collaboration over long distances between our offices in north and south India, partners globally and track client performance in real time.”

It was this strong focus on co-development of solutions with customer participation backed by innovative technology that set EkGaon apart from the record breaking 5,000 applicants for the 2009 Dell Small Business Excellence Award.

“EkGaon is living proof that smart IT investments can not only pay off for the business itself, but for their customers as well,” said Ravi Bhardwaj, General Manager – SMB, Dell India.

EkGaon will receive $25,000 in Dell products and services, and a day of best-practice sharing with Dell experts, including time with Chairman and CEO Michael Dell.

EkGaon joins the 13 national winners from Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, France, Germany, India, Italy, Japan, Mexico, Spain, United Kingdom and the United States for a chance to win the global Dell Small Business Excellence Award¹ worth $50,000 in Dell technology and services and participation in a global entrepreneurs’ summit. National winners are being announced now, and the global winner will be announced later in 2009.

To learn more about EkGaon and its technology strategy for success visit http://www.ekgaon.com

About Dell
As the visionary outcome of a true entrepreneur, Dell (NASDAQ: DELL) is committed to helping small and medium businesses solve their technology challenges, ease business pain points and draw greater value from IT. With ProManage-Managed Services, Optiplex – the world’s No. 1 business desktop, new Latitude laptops, the designed-for-small business Vostro line, energy-efficient PowerEdge servers and Small and Medium Business Solutions Center, Dell is here to support entrepreneurs every step of the way.
Contact Information
Media Contacts for Dell:
Minari Shah Dell 9945822759 Minari_Shah@dell.com
Simran Singh Sethi 20:20 Media 9810815160 simran@2020india.com

¹Visit http://www.dell.co.in/ceaward for Dell Small Business Excellence Award official rules.

That professor is so retarded it's outright funny. In a free market economy, Chinese government don't give you TV or food, you work your ass off and find someone to exploit you for money. That's how capitism work, be it in China or America in the 1900s before government becomes an overbearing entity and forcing companies to relocate overseas. There is no deal made, that government takes care of you, that is something from the old communist China.

As for protests, that's fairly normal, I actually view that as sign of emergence of free society. People have rights to voice their opinions, be it appropriation of land for road construction or buliding dam (2 million people moved to pave the path of the three gorges dam, which in term created renewable energy for 150 million people, something you can't do in a democratic society). In Mao's time if you dare to hold a protest, you'd get a bullet to the head and your family get the bill for the bullet. And if you are looking at the opposing camp, which was supposingly democratic China (Taiwan) before 1992, it's the same thing if you are a communist sympathier. I have lived under both dictorships, and China today isn't so bad, it used to be even worse than North Korea.

South Korea, Taiwan, Singapore grew the fastest while they are under dictatorships. Today, South Korea and Taiwan are thriving democracies. Singapore went from a screwed up, leftover war torn little city state that is on the verge of anniliation by its huge neighbor Malayia into one of the most properspous Asian cities without having any nature resources or democracy. Japan had a military governmen post war war, far cry from democracy when a foreign military goernment is running your country, and had the same political party for like 50 years. After 150 years of nearly non-stop warfare, it's a miracle Chinese communist party keep the Chinese from killing each other or foreign powers trampling over the nation. Try putting 1.4 billion people in America, give them 1/30 of arable land and 1/4 the water after 150 years of wars, see how our politicians handles the chaos that ensues, that'd be fun.

India is a democracy, sounds good. Until you realize unlike America, where there is only two parties that are in power, there are hundreds of different parties, languages, cultures, it's near impossible to build consensus and get things done, like say, maybe business working there would like to have steady electricity and clean water? O yea, not to mention over 89 groups of rebel forces identified by Indian government occupying 40% of land in India. It's an interesting democracy, yes, but democracy, as aristole says, it's mob rule. Majority of minorty, rich over poor. And founders like Thomas Jefferson was strongly against such an idea (that's why America started with only white protestant land-owning protestent men can vote). In democracy, the rich controls over the poor through media manipulation and religion. It's not perfect, but it works well for developed countries with high education level where people can make informed decisions, not so great for a country that has 40% workforce being illerate, 40% high school dropouts like India. The professor is probably from the Brahmin class, priviledged few that had all the best advantages growing up.

Why do people join communist party in masses? Well, young people who are dissatified with the way things are done, are joining. Communist party is too strong to confront directly, those guys will literally roll you over with tanks. Idealistic young people join the party in attempt to change the way things are done. Political changes are slow because those old revolutionary are not yet dead and still in control of army. Business men who aren't happy about government policies are joining, and lobbying for changes (good or bad? beganning of special interest groups?). China produces 3 times as much Ph.D. as India, and the highest concentration of Ph.D. and management talents, engineering talents are within the communist party. Those aren't the old days of Mao's long march revolutionaries. Those are western educated technocrats who knows how to run a country efficiently. Chinese people aren't stupid, if communist party messed it up big, they will rip them apart like they did to the Chinese nationalist party (ruled China from 1911 to 1949, currently in Taiwan).

1.
As for your pictures about rights, it's tragic what's happening. But your image is all wrong. Your first image it's a protest agaisnt President Chen Sui-bien, a democractically elected president in Republic of China (Taiwan), who is currently in jail. They are protesting against how the president is aligned himself with special interest groups while people suffers. Communist party actually use the same image that you have to tell Chinese people that that's how democracy failed us Taiwanese.

2. Impractical information. Well, those commies are terrible at media manipulation. They are just not very skilled at controlling the media like we do here in USA, with common people willingly tag along with war in Iraq or big bank bailouts (how many rebellions do you see breaking out from the 10 trillion+ dollars we spend on bailouts? In China, Taiwan, or Korea, if something like that passes, we'd see bloodshed on the street or at least fist-fights in congress). Americans display utter apathy to their own democratic process. What's the point of protesting when nothing really changes? There is the great fire wall of China, but any half wit retard can access it with a proxy. Just about every netizen I talked to in China knows a trick or two to break through it. And police enforcement in this regard is very lackluster at best. People have access to internet, no problem. Only dumbass CNN reporter typing in English on a Chinese government provided network gets blocked.

3. Microfinacing is a scam, under the guise of being a social benefit enterprise. I did a few calculations, and found some of those so called social benefit enterprises are nothing more tha collaterialized loans with 30 to 50% interest rate with default risk of less than 3% from rural India. And given the leverage of a typical bank (say, 20 times) with default rate of 3%, we are looking at profit margin that exceeds successful smuggling of cocaine from Columbia to USA. You might as well sell them cocaine with that bloodsucking interest rate. I'd love to go into microloan business and charge, say, a more reason rate of 6% for loans to those people in developing country if I had the capital. If you are desperate and want to take a gamble with your entire livehood, microloan from those bloodsuckers might be a way to go, but as a financial advisor, I would not be taking 30% interest loan from any those of dehumanizing companies. Chinese government made the right decision, by forcing their banks to lend to the poor peasant at much cheaper rate than multinational microlending institutions.

I look at things purely from a finance perspective, I am not affiliated with those damn commies, my family suffered greatly being on the losing side of the Chinese Civil war. But I do see how they seems to be making the right decisions when it comes to business and finance in the last 30 years, and I am hopeful that new generation in power can make more right choices than wrong choices going forward.

The Center for Media Research has released a study by Vertical Response that shows just where many of these ‘Main Street’ players are going with their online dollars. The big winners: e-mail and social media. With only 3.8% of small business folks NOT planning on using e-mail marketing and with social media carrying the perception of being free (which they so rudely discover it is far from free) this should make some in the banner and search crowd a little wary.

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