Indian Economy News

ICICI Bank to expand 'digital village' programme

New Delhi: After transforming 100 villages into ICICI Digital Villages in 100 days, ICICI Bank Ltd is planning to take the initiative to 500 more villages by December.

The ICICI Digital Village programme involves creating a digital payment ecosystem for financial activity in villages, providing free vocational training and facilitating market linkages, and providing access to health facilities.

Inaugurating ‘ICICI Rural Summit – Sashakt Gaon, Samriddh Bharat’, finance minister Arun Jaitley said he hoped other private sector banks will emulate the initiative to boost digital inclusion.

“One of the learnings we have experienced is that the advantages of economic reforms will reach the villages... Now, a fundamental change has taken place and the debate (political) has disappeared, with that, segment of society (villagers) feel that they have been included in the whole economic reforms process,” said Jaitley.

Speaking at the event, ICICI Bank managing director and chief executive officer Chanda Kochhar claimed over 11,300 villagers, including more than 7,500 women, were trained in the last 100 days across 17 states.

“We intend to expand the number of such villages by another 500 by December 2017. In the process, we will train an additional 50,000 individuals and impact 12.5 lakh lives,” she added.

Disclaimer: This information has been collected through secondary research and IBEF is not responsible for any errors in the same.

Partners
Loading...