In a bid to tap the smaller towns and villages in the country, private sector lender YES Bank is planning to adopt 2,000 villages by 2021 and provide banking and agri-tech solutions to more than a lakh people through this initiative.

By March next year, the bank plans to adopt 200 villages that will be selected on the basis of available cultivable land, irrigation facilities, cropping pattern, and credit culture, among other key productivity criteria.

As part of its first-of-its-kind village adoption programme, YES Bank said that it has started the financial inclusion initiative from a nondescript village called Abhimayupur, in Haryana, where more than 100 farmers will be introduced to digital banking through financial literacy sessions.

The bank will also provide Sim Se Pay, a chip-based mobile banking solution for feature phone users without internet connectivity.

Customer base

Sumit Gupta, Group President and Group Head, Rural Banking and SME Banking at YES Bank, told BusinessLine that while the idea is to empower the unbanked, especially farmers in the hinterlands, it also creates an opportunity for the bank to expand its customer base in rural India.

So far, YES Bank has a major presence in urban and semi-urban areas. With this initiative, it aims to expand into the rural pockets of the country.

At present, YES Bank has about 420 branches in rural areas. It also has a partnership with two regional rural banks that are into micro-lending to farmers and SMEs through Kissan Credit. It has about 2,500-odd rural customers seeking credit.

“We are committed to the rural geography, and already have a good customer base seeking micro-credit. With the digi village initiative, we plan to touch about 30,000 villagers and farmers over the next couple of months. We plan to reach out to these potential customers who are not banking with us, but might soon want to through the financial literacy programmes,” said Gupta, adding that the bank is already investing heavily in ramping up its network, deployment of workforce, and efforts to reach out to rural consumers.

Gupta, however, did not divulge an estimate of investments the bank will make under the Digi Village programme till 2021.

Digi Village programme

With farmers’ income likely to double by 2022, the Digi Village programme is also important for the bank, as it has the potential to tap over 30,000 farmers. It will impart knowledge about Good Agricultural Practices (GAP), which will subsequently improve the bank’s lending ability to these farmers. The plan is to disburse loans worth ₹4,500 crore by March 2021.

“We plan to leverage our extensive branch network and harness the potential of our agritech partnerships through YES Scale Agritech accelerator, thereby maximise the number of lives impacted,” said Gupta, adding that the programme will also enable farmers with knowledge and skills to improve existing processes and explore newer revenue-generation opportunities with the help of agritech and fintech solutions.

To bolster the programme, the bank also plans to harness its existing capacity-building programme for farmers in more than 350 villages across States, including Uttarakhand, Haryana, Punjab, Rajasthan, Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh and Maharashtra.

Besides financial inclusion, the programme will also conduct workshops that will impart education on digital banking, mobile banking, operating an ATM, opening online savings account, loans, sessions about crop rotation, drip/sprinkler irrigation, and integrated nutrient management, among others.

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