Radha R

Radha R who lives in a small town on the outskirts of Pollachi in Tamil Nadu had gone through tremendous hardships in the past to make a living out of her small and single machine tailoring shop.

She started the tailoring unit five years ago to support her family as the expenses grew while her husband’s income remained insufficient to meet the family expenses. However, despite getting enough orders for stitching from her locality, she could not fulfil the orders on time as her sewing machine was too old and she didn’t have enough materials to support her efforts.

Radha struggled to make both the ends meet and desperately wanted to revamp her business by purchasing a new sewing machine. She approached local money lenders for a loan but the demand for collateral security and exorbitant interest rates remained an obstacle to raise funds. During that time, a Muthoot Microfin Credit Officer visited her unit and explained about the organisation’s financial offerings without any collateral security. She was excited and soon joined a Joint Liability Group at the neighbourhood and availed her first cycle microfinance loan of ₹ 25,000.

She bought a modern sewing machine and utilised the balance amount to purchase other tools and materials for the unit. Subsequently, her productivity increased double fold and she was also able to expand her product lines that brought more customers. Within months, her client base increased and profit from the unit hit a minimum of ₹ 500 a day.

A few years later, Radha expanded her business by opening a grocery store adjacent to her tailoring unit with further loans from Muthoot Microfin. The microfinance loan enabled Radha to buy essential commodities in bulk at wholesale prices and this helped her gain increased profit margin at the grocery shop.

Radha is grateful to the organisation for offering timely financial support for her. She says, “Muthoot Microfin came to my life as a surprise and at a very critical time, I never looked back to my hardship days ever since my association with the organisation: I would recommend Muthoot to all people I know”.