In this episode, I talk with Sachi Shenoy, co-founder of Upaya Social Ventures, an organization that picks up where micro-lending leaves off by helping people who are living in poverty to build businesses and scale them to create jobs for others in their community. Nearly one billion women are completely excluded from the formal financial system. Without even a bank account in their own names, they lack the basic services like secure ways to save money, pay bills, and get credit. Microcredit--literally, providing small loans to women considered unbankable--has been a game changer for women, but it, too, has its limits. Upaya identifies early-stage entrepreneurs with the greatest potential for job creation and invests in them. Before co-founding Upaya, Sachi worked with Unitus, a microfinance accelerator, and before that, she worked at SKS Microfinance (now known as Bharat Financial Inclusion Ltd.) helping to provide small loans to women living in rural slums in India. In the interview, Sachi talks about what we’ve learned about the transformative power as well as the limitations of microlending in recent years. She also talks about how living with a disability has shown her that there will always be another way to do something—we just have to be creative.

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