Vikram Akula, founder and chief executive officer of SKS Microfinance of India, delivered the first lecture of the 2007-08 Babcock Leadership Series at Wake Forest University’s Babcock Graduate School of Management on Thursday, Sept. 6.

Demonstrating why he was chosen as one of Time magazine’s 100 most influential people in 2006, Akula described how his company empowers the poor and spurs economic development in rural India by providing them with small business loans rather than a handout. He told the story of one of SKS’ first borrowers, a woman who lived in a remote village in India and earned, along with her husband, about $2 a day. Their 12-year-old son had been forced into bonded labor in order for the family to eat. The woman borrowed $20 from SKS to buy vegetables to sell. After paying off her initial loan, she went on to borrow more money to lease fruit trees and later purchase fishing nets for her husband and his friends. Today she sells vegetables, fruit and fish, and her son is no longer an indentured servant.

“This is what we do,” Akula said. “We provide women with resources to become economically self-reliant. We have proven that microfinance works to get people out of poverty.”


(Sep 6, 2007 at Wake Forest University)

Download