Early Warning System

Regions

South Asia

Geographic location where the impacts of the investment may be experienced.

Countries

India

Geographic location where the impacts of the investment may be experienced.

Financial Institutions

US International Development Finance Corporation (DFC)

International, regional and national development finance institutions. Many of these banks have a public interest mission, such as poverty reduction.

Project Status

Active

Stage of the project cycle. Stages vary by development bank and can include: pending, approval, implementation, and closed or completed.

Bank Risk Rating

Environmental and social categorization assessed by the development bank as a measure of the planned project’s environmental and social impacts. A higher risk rating may require more due diligence to limit or avoid harm to people and the environment. For example, "A" or "B" are risk categories where "A" represents the highest amount of risk. Results will include projects that specifically recorded a rating, all other projects are marked ‘U’ for "Undisclosed."

Borrower

NeoGrowth Credit Private Limited

A public entity (government or state-owned) provided with funds or financial support to manage and/or implement a project.

Sectors

Education and Health

The service or industry focus of the investment. A project can have several sectors.

Investment Type(s)

Loan

The categories of the bank investment: loan, grant, guarantee, technical assistance, advisory services, equity and fund.

Investment Amount (USD)

$ 20.00 million

Value listed on project documents at time of disclosure. If necessary, this amount is converted to USD ($) on the date of disclosure. Please review updated project documents for more information.

Loan Amount (USD)

$ 20.00 million

Value listed on project documents at time of disclosure. If necessary, this amount is converted to USD ($) on the date of disclosure. Please review updated project documents for more information.

Project Cost (USD)

$ 26.50 million

Value listed on project documents at time of disclosure. If necessary, this amount is converted to USD ($) on the date of disclosure. Please review updated project documents for more information.

Bank Documents

Project Disclosure

Primary Source

Original disclosure @ DFC website

Updated in EWS May 15, 2022

Contribute Information
Can you contribute information about this project?
Contact the EWS Team

Project Description

If provided by the financial institution, the Early Warning System Team writes a short summary describing the purported development objective of the project and project components. Review the complete project documentation for a detailed description.

According to NDB documents, the proposed project is a COVID response on-lending facility for a digital non-bank financial institution that provides short-term loans to consumer facing, retail oriented, underserved micro, small, and medium-sized enterprises that are often denied credit by the formal lending sector.

The Project is expected to have a highly developmental impact on India, a lower-middle-income country, through the expansion of NeoGrowth’s MSME portfolio, which is focused on small retail businesses. India’s poverty is a well-documented development challenge. One in five Indians is classified as low-income and 80% of India’s lowest income populations live in rural areas. MSMEs play a crucial role in the Indian economy accounting for 29.8% of GDP, yet often cannot access financing to make necessary capital expenditures to grow their business and increase productivity. The Project will increase the amount of start- up and working capital available to MSME retailers spurring economic growth and alleviating economic poverty, with a focus on the “missing middle” small borrowers that are too large for traditional MFI lending, but too small for most commercial bank underwriting programs. In support of this new financing, NeoGrowth expects to hire an additional 1,298 employees to support the rapid expansion of its branch network and MSME loan portfolio over the next five years.

Investment Description

Here you can find a list of individual development financial institutions that finance the project.

US International Development Finance Corporation (DFC)

Contact Information

This section aims to support the local communities and local CSO to get to know which stakeholders are involved in a project with their roles and responsibilities. If available, there may be a complaint office for the respective bank which operates independently to receive and determine violations in policy and practice. Independent Accountability Mechanisms receive and respond to complaints. Most Independent Accountability Mechanisms offer two functions for addressing complaints: dispute resolution and compliance review.

No contact information was provided at the time of disclosure.

ACCESS TO INFORMATION

Unlike many other development finance institutions, DFC does not currently have an access to information policy.

Under the United States Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), DFC is obliged to respond to reasonably formulated requests for Agency records. However, DFC may apply exemptions from release to certain types of information and may charge fees in responding to requests. DFC has a designated FOIA officer who is trained in how to respond to requests and implement the law. You can learn more about filing a FOIA request at: https://www.dfc.gov/foia

ACCOUNTABILITY MECHANISM OF THE UNITED STATES INTERNATIONAL DEVELOPMENT FINANCE CORPORATION (DFC)

The Office of Accountability is an independent office that addresses complaints about environmental or social issues related to DFC-supported projects. The office provides communities an opportunity to have concerns independently reviewed and addressed. If you submit a complaint to the Office of Accountability, it may assist you by either seeking to address your problems by facilitating a problem solving dialogue between you and those implementing the project and/or investigating whether the DFC complied with its policies to prevent environmental, social, human rights, and labor harms.

You can find more information about the Office of Accountability at: https://www.dfc.gov/who-we-are/office-accountability