The Lok Capital (or People’s Capital) initiative was launched at the end of 2001 with the support of a grant from the Rockefeller Foundation. The objectives of the initiative were to:
Mobilize private, international and philanthropic support for funding microfinance activities in India
Provide financial and non-financial support to micro-lenders to help them become self-sustaining and commercially viable
India was chosen as the target for the Lok Capital initiative for two reasons. First, schemes intended to improve access to credit to the poor have not proved to be greatly successful. There exists an enormous potential for commercially viable micro-lending to urban and rural poor - relative to the demand for microfinance, the Indian MFI sector is underdeveloped. Second, the Lok Capital team has a deep understanding & working knowledge of India, including its complex regulatory environment and investment culture.
Lok Capital initiative was launched in 2000 with the help of a study grant from the Rockefeller Foundation
Lok Foundation was set up in 2003 to fulfill the following objectives:
>
Act as a catalyst for directing risk capital to MFIs
>
Help to build scalable businesses that provide affordable financial services to the unbanked
>
Act as a platform for sharing knowledge and best practices in the Indian microfinance industry
>
Provide management support to visionary entrepreneurs running social enterprises whose abilities were limited to running ‘development focused’, non-scalable organizations
Lok capital is a pioneer in the microfinance VC space - Lok was the first intenational fund dedicated to microfinance in India and backed by institutional investors including several reputed development finance organisations.
