In order to fulfill Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s ‘Digital India’ dream, ICICI Bank plans to reach out 600 Indian villages to transform them into technology-savvy digital villages at the end of this year, a move that aims at promoting ‘less cash’ economy in the country. Now, the bank has already created 100 digital villages across the country within 100 days of demonetisation and is eyeing to add 500 more to the list by the end of 2017.
“The 100-village project, which also included imparting skill training and providing credit linkages to people living there, was taken up by the bank after noticing that minimum inconvenience was caused to people living in a model ‘digital village’ in Gujarat during the demonetisation period. We will transform another 500 villages into ICICI Digital Villages by December 2017 and train another 50,000 individuals,” ICICI Bank Chief Chanda Kochhar told the reporters on Tuesday, while declaring 100 digital villages here in an event.
Supporting ICICI Bank’s initiative, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley also said it is being realised that reforms are benefiting rural population and have-nots. “I think one of the learning experiences has been that the advantage of that reform will reach the rural people,” Jaitley said while dedicating 100 ICICI ‘digital villages’ to the nation.
He also said the outcome of note ban has proved critics wrong as neither the GDP nor agricultural output suffered. Appreciating the rural masses for being flexible in adapting to technologies, he said, “One great advantage of this whole exercise of demonetisation was the movement towards digitisation. And the movement towards digitisation itself has created newer technologies, newer form of electronic modes of payments.”
As far ICICI Bank’s initiative is concerned, the bank provided vocational training to 11,300 villagers, including 70 per cent women, and opened more than 2 lakh bank accounts during the 100-day period. “A credit linkage facility was also given to many in these 100 villages to help them earn their livelihood. The bank has also provided loans to the tune of Rs 14 crore to customers of these 100 digital villages and with more addition, the credit flow is going up,” Kochhar said.
The ambitious project, which began in November 2016, was inspired by the success of India’s first digital village created by ICICI Bank at Akodara in Gujarat in 2015. “We were very happy with the work we did in Akodara 2 years ago. We noticed that during the demonetisation period, this village saw very less inconvenience compared to others, because of the digital banking and other infrastructure we had created there. This made us think that we can do more on this front and we decided to convert 100 villages into digital villages,” she said.
Kochhar said the initiative has already covered 17 States, including Maharashtra, Andhra Pradesh, Telangana and Gujarat. “Also, we have opened more than 2 lakh accounts so far, which covers most of the adult population in these villages. We have installed POS machines, micro ATMs and also opened accounts for Village level Centres (VlCs). “We have also introduced very simple features for mobile banking so that people in those villages can do banking just on the basis of SMS and without requiring smartphones,” she said.