Vijay Mahajan

Vijay Mahajan (born 1 October, 1954) is an Indian social entrepreneur and chairman of BASIX, a group he founded in 1996. Today, BASIX has supported the livelihoods of over a million rural poor households, of which a third have been supported directly with micro-credit worth over Rs 1000 crore, in addition to savings and insurance services, agricultural/business development services and institutional development services. The other two thirds are supported through over 100 NGO or community based microfinance institutions, whom BASIX provides assistance in funding, training, MIS and operations.

Education

He has studied electrical engineering at the Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi. He has also studied management at the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad, from where he graduated with a gold medal for scholastic performance, and public policy at the Woodrow Wilson School, Princeton University.

Career

Vijay has worked at Philips in a marketing position for four years, mostly in Eastern India. His work took him to several industrial project locations in the hinterland.

Vijay started work in rural economic development in 1981. In 1983, he founded an NGO, PRADAN. Today, PRADAN is one of India’s more effective NGOs, specializing in rural livelihoods and micro-finance. It works with over 100,000 rural poor households.

Thereafter, in 1991, Vijay decided to work as an independent trainer, consultant and researcher and to focus exclusively on the issue of rural livelihood. Realising the need to attract mainstream financial resources, Vijay conceptualised the establishment of BASIX, which he founded in 1996. BASIX is a new generation institution devoted solely to promoting rural livelihoods. It is among the first micro-finance companies in the world to attract commercial debt and equity investments, both internationally and from within India. He is currently the chairman of the Board at BASIX.

Positions and Recognitions

Vijay was selected an “Outstanding Social Entrepreneur” by the Schwab Foundation for Social Entrepreneurship in 2002. He has been a keynote speaker to the OECD Foreign Aid Ministers in Paris in 2004, at the Geneva Private Equity Conference on Microfinance, 2005; and at the Goldman Sachs global forum on microfinance, 2006.

Vijay has been an advisor to the Planning Commission, Government of India, the state governments of Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and Sikkim, and to the RBI and NABARD. Vijay has co-authored a book “The Forgotten Sector” on rural, non-farm sector in India. He has published over 50 articles on rural livelihood, development and micro-finance in international journals.

Vijay serves on the Insurance Regulatory and Development Authority, the Micro Finance Development and Equity Fund and the national Committee on Financial Inclusion. He is the Principal Advisor to the Government of Rajasthan on Livelihoods. He also serves on Boards of several NGOs, and is member of the Executive Committee of CGAP, a global consortium on microfinance.

Among his inspirations, he includes Ravi Matthai of IIM Ahmedabad, Verghese Kurien of NDDB, Prof. Mohammad Yunus of Grameen Bank, Bangladesh and Ela Bhatt of SEWA.

External links

* [http://www.basixindia.com BASIX]
* [http://www.pradan.net PRADAN]
* [http://www.cgap.org CGAP]