Our Journey

2005

Swadhaar was born as the brainchild of two friends embarking on a journey together with a shared vision. Veena Mankar and Late Haseena Vahanvaty’s dream of providing financial access to poor and low income working women and entrepreneurs bears fruit. They choose to start work in the slums of Mumbai, a city both have lived in and love.

Swadhaar FinAccess, (SFA) was thus launched in Mumbai as a Non-Profit Organization. Microcredit pilot tested from 2006 to 2008.
Tribute to Late Haseena Vahanvaty

2010

  • Financial Education for urban community members was started
  • Modules were developed for training after interacting with community members
  • The Methodology adopted was classroom training & travelling teams who mobilized and trained groups of women

2013

  • Started financial inclusion and Literacy Centers (FILC)
  • Client Education for Swadhaar FinServe Pvt. Ltd. clients was launched
  • Pilot of Airtel money was conducted where SFA trained 15,000 customers to use the technology

2015

  • Financial Education modules were digitized
  • Women from the community and graduates of Financial Education Program were on boarded as Financial Health workers
  • Client Education launched in 34 locations (Saksham – financial education) which is still an ongoing project of SFA

2017

  • Swadhaar Saathi our Money management Application was launched
  • Swadhaar Dost a Field workers app was launched to help with operations of SFA

2018

  • Swadhaar Saathi has 8,500+ users form the low income communities
  • Reserve Bank of India selected SFA as one of the 6 NGO’s for 3 years pilot of Centers for Financial Literacy in in Rohtas and Darbhanga in Bihar state, India.
  • Financial Education for loan clients in Bihar launched which is supported by RBL Bank - CDC