From milk seller to CEO: Here is how Bandhan Bank CEO grew from poverty to rich man
Kolkata : Do you know how the CEO and MD of Bandhan Bank raised from poor to rich? If not, then here is an inspiring story of a man who has learnt life lessons from poverty and has become a legend, worldwide.
Mr. Chandra Shekhar Ghosh, the current CEO and managing director of Bandhan Bank, Kolkata-based private money lender, has spent most of the years of his life among extremely poor people in rural areas of Bangladesh. Born in a village in Greater Tripura in 1960, Ghosh was the eldest of six siblings in a joint family of 15 members. His father ran a small sweet shop and he used to sell milk and give private tuitions to support himself, financially.
After doing his MA in Statistics from Dhaka University, Bangladesh, in 1978, Ghosh joined Dhaka-based BRAC, an international development non-profit working for women empowerment in small villages in Bangladesh. He witnessed that extreme poverty was more painful for women who were also ill-treated by their husbands. He, then, came across those women had the power to improve their lives only if they receive some monetary support. Ghosh then decided to give wings to empower poor women through microfinance scheme. He started his own company, Bandhan-Konnagar, in 2001 and started to give small loans to poor women with a minimum amount of Rs 2 lakh most of which was borrowed from relatives.
"The name Bandhan was chosen with care as it means togetherness, I was on mission to connect society," Ghosh says. “I travelled to small villages in Hooghly district to convince women to taken loans from us for their business or fund their children’s education, but initially they eyed me with a suspicion."
In 2009, he registered Bandhan Bank as a non-banking finance company and became the first microfinance institution in 2014 to receive a banking licence in India.
Ghosh continued to gain the trust of women and fulfil their financial needs. As of December 31, 2017, the bank had spread across 887 branches and 430 ATMs, serving over 2.13 million general banking customers in east and northeast India.
The man who has spent his life interacting with extremely poor people in rural areas has been recognized by the market now. In his book, Bandhan: The Making of a Bank, Tamal Bandyopadhyay writes about Ghosh's life at the Dhaka University where he had to live in the campus temple as he had little money to support himself.
" One day, his bicycle got stolen from the university campus. Borhannbhai (Borhann Uddin, a statistics professor) lent him his old Phoenix cycle which brought the smile back to Ghosh’s face. Until recently, he was driving a Toyota Fortuner; now he has a Land Rover Discovery in his garage," writes Bandyopadhyay.
