Chetna Sinha :

About 17 years ago, when Chetna Sinha and her husband -- both farmers by profession first approached the ReserveBank of India with the idea of founding a bank to serve the rural women of our country, it was ridiculed upon.

'How can you run a bank with illiterate women who can't even read and write?' asked an officer.
Today, the 53-year-old entrepreneur has been successful in not only starting but also successfully operating three different rural enterprises that are committed to the cause of rural women in the country, which includes India's first co-operative bank for rural women the Manndeshi Mahila Bank.

In 1997, when Sinha started the bank in Mhaswad, a small village in the Satara district of Maharashtra with a semi-literate workforce of women from the same village, she wanted to provide loans to help farmers recover from their economic condition. But 15 years later, she has managed to do more than just that.