Gramotsava ’07 Organized by XIMB Students Receives Overwhelming Response

Gramotsava ’07 Organized by XIMB Students Receives Overwhelming Response

The untiring efforts and determination to dovetail theory with practice by the rural management students of Xavier Institute of Management, Bhubaneswar have resulted in rich dividends for the partnering organizations of Gramotsava ’07. The annual festival organized by the Rural Manager's Association of XIMB (RMAX) has received

overwhelming response from the partnering organizations as well as the target people in rural areas.

The pre-fair promotion campaign by XIMB students has attracted huge participation from all concerned. The campaign witnessed participation from ICICI Lombard, Britannia Industries Limited, Lotte Confectionary, Hindustan Unilever Limited, Paradeep Phosphates Limited, and Cholayil Private Limited.

"Traditionally, rural areas are witnessed as delinquency prone areas and it has been the principle cause of poor credit disbursement in those areas. The credit disbursement can be easily boosted if it is linked with risk management practices, like various insurance schemes," argued Mr. Sauvik Paul, National Manager, Rural & Agri-Business Division of ICICI Lombard.

The campaign was launched with an objective to explore the possibility of institutional tie-up between ICICI Lombard and MFIs / Milk Cooperatives / Credit Cooperatives in Puri, Khurda & Cuttack districts of Orissa. With students' efforts, ICICI Lombard, which is the number one private general insurance company in India, has successfully tied-up with three credit disbursing institutions in two districts namely - Puri & Cuttack.

"The process of linkage started with visit to the credit disbursing institutions followed by data collection, area of operation, product portfolio, client base and exploring the possibility of linkage with the partnering organizations. Microfinance institutions (MFIs), cooperative credit societies, milk cooperatives, etc., have huge customer base and their credit requirement is small and at very frequent intervals. If we can link the credit repayment directly through insurance, then the loan absorption capacity increases and all concerned are likely to benefit from this," explained Mr. Santanu Thakur, Team Leader of the ICICI Lombard Project of Gramotsava ’07.

Sharing their experience of the campaign, the students said, "Insurance is never bought, it is always sold. It provides peace of mind by hedging the risk. It is easy to tap large number of customers through institutional routes."

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Contributed by -
Team Illuminatix,
Media & PR Cell,
Xavier Institute of Management, Bhubaneswar.

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