Status update — August 1, 2019

Kiva and Mahashakti have agreed to a repayment plan to fully repay their amount outstanding by December 2019.  As of the time of this update Mahashakti is current with the repayment agreement, and Kiva will settle the repayments collected to lenders.

Status update — October 16, 2017

Kiva is moving Mahashakti Foundation from inactive to paused status, as the organization is currently 3 months behind on repaying funds owed to Kiva lenders. While Kiva continues to actively monitor this situation, there are a variety of reasons why this organization has had difficulty making repayments recently.

In the aftermath of the demonetization of 500 and 1000 Rupee notes by the government of India in late 2016, Mahashakti borrowers were unable to repay their loans in time as there was a scarcity of currency notes. This strained Mahashakti’s collection and disbursement of loans, and the organization has been struggling to align its lending operations and cashflows since then. In addition, Mahashakti Foundation has faced difficulties in accessing liquid assets, such as cash and short term borrowing, causing it to be unable to repay Kiva and its lenders.

Kiva continues to work with this partner to recover the amount owed to Kiva lenders, and will provide additional relevant information as it becomes available.

Status update — December 26, 2016

Due to regulatory changes by the government of India, Kiva is no longer able to send funds to Mahashakti Foundation. As a result, Kiva has moved this Lending Partner to inactive status. This means Mahashakti Foundation is no longer fundraising loans on the website, though Kiva fully expects the partner to continue to send repayments owed to Kiva lenders for as long as the partner has an outstanding balance. If the regulations change and this partner requests to fundraise on Kiva again, Kiva is willing to re-open their line of funding. We will first conduct any additional monitoring and due diligence tasks we believe necessary before allowing the partner begin fundraising for new loans.

Partner description:

Mahashakti Foundation is a public charitable trust founded in 2004 to improve people’s livelihoods in the low-income state of Odisha through microfinance and development services.

The foundation was born out of a program run by Odisha’s leading NGO, the Friend’s Association for Rural Reconstruction, or FARR. Started in 1984, FARR is dedicated to mobilizing communities for human rights awareness and economic development, especially among tribal and vulnerable caste groups in the state.

Recognizing that many of these people depend on forestry trades and seasonal cashflows, FARR started offering microcredit as an alternative to exploitative informal money lenders in 1994. Ten years later, Mahashakti was created to implement an official microfinance program with the help of the CARE organization and financial support from the United Kingdom’s Department of International Development.

Today, Mahashakti operates in six of Odisha’s poorest districts. This area is considered to be the poorest region in the country, with 91% of the population residing in villages, and 39% belonging to tribal communities where the average daily income is below USD$1. Mahashakti was founded to work with these populations and empower them to address their own socio-economic, political and cultural needs.

Keeping this in mind, the organization provides micro-savings, microcredit, micro-insurance (health and life), livelihood development services, health care options, water and sanitation services, food security programs and more.

Mahashakti is currently working with 25,000 poor families through different development activities. In the last six years, it has disbursed INR 60 crores (USD$10.8 million). Its present outstanding portfolio is INR 5 crores (about USD$900,900). Its current repayment rate is 98%.

Mahashakti’s core values include:

- Honesty in all transactions with all stakeholders of the organization.

- Empathy in understanding the concerns and ideas of people inside and outside of the organization.

- Courage in finding the right solutions and outcomes to issues and problems without compromising values in the face of adversity.

- Teamwork as a means to achieve the organization’s mission and objectives by respecting one another.

- Punctuality, respecting and honoring organizational commitments within the scheduled time frame.

- Excellence in each and every sphere of organizational activity, and achieving results that are better than those already achieved.

- Communication and candor to express opinions freely and frankly without inhibitions.

- Transparency by inculcating a high degree of commitment through reporting exactly what is and is not expected of us. 

Mahashakti’s operational philosophy is as follows:

1. Operational principles based on justice, mercy and humility.

2. Good governance, which is every stakeholder’s expectation.

3. Operational excellence through transparency in systems and processes.

4. Compassion for the poor and respect for individuals.

5. Human approach to business, focused on relationship building rather than short term gains.

Mahashakti has a number of high-level affiliations with financial institutions like Oikocredit, Rabo Bank, Ananaya Finance and more. It is also a member of national and international-level microfinance networks like Sa-Dhan, SAMN, AMFA, INAFI, MIX Market and CGAP.

Recently, the organization was awarded grade A on its Code of Conduct Assessment from Access Assist, a respected non-profit that evaluates and monitors financial services to the poor.