Independence Day Greetings !!! BDT updates

Dear Friends,

Greetings from Bihar Development Trust!!!

Bihar Development Trust wishes you all a very Happy Independence Day. May we continue to work which will increase the pride of our country !!!

It has been long since I have updated you about the work of Bihar Development Trust. BDT is growing steadily in the field of Micro finance and Tasar Silk.

Till date, BDT has provided loans to more than 4200 women borrowers of amount more than 380 lakh rupees. Over last 18 month, our recovery rate is 100%. Our portfolio outstanding is Rs.150 lakh. There has been major changes in Micro finance Industry in last three months. SKS IPO has been oversubscribed by the market. Private sector banks are not agreeing to provide lending to Trust like BDT. There has been overwhelming pressure to transform into NBFC. We are not able to grow as we trapped in low equity-low debt vicious cycle. We have now decided to transform into NBFC . There has been tremendous interest in BDT micro finance and we have received lot of investment offers from High net worth individual

Over last three months , we have

1. Build Drinking water facility in Lodipur village
2. Cemented Drains in Lodipur Village
3. Cemented the 20 looms of weavers in Lodipur
4. Installed a hand pump and toilet for Girls and Boys in Govt School in Adampur, Bhagalpur

These works has been completed with the help of Sir Dorab Ji Tata Trust, All India Association for Craft workers Welfare Association and World of Good Development Foundation.
We need lakhs rupees as donation to our corpus to continue the development Trust to continue the development work. We will be able to execute special welfare projects in Bhagalpur and Patna area based on wishes of individual donors. You can give us donations for education of children of weavers and rickshaw pullers and health of women and girl child of these family. You can donate to BDT for constructing drinking water facility in your village school. You can suggest your own welfare activity for your area and sponser that.

We have been able to make 80 rickshaw pullers proud owners of their own rickshaw in Bhagalpur with the help of Punjab National Bank and American India Foundation. We have plans to scale up to 700-800 rickshaw pullers who will be made owner this year if our credit proposals are sanctioned by SIDBI.

We have been able to mobilise order worth Rs. 23 lakh from buyers like Fab India, Sadhna Udaipur, Rangsootra and CFM. Weavers has been provided training by designers from NID. This is helping us to employ around 100 handloom and powerloom weavers. Its not only handloom but Powerloom is also going through crisis. We are suffering from the working capital problems. We need 40% of the order size as working capital to execute the order. We will request our well wishers to provide us loans for working capital. We need help in up gradation of handloom as well as power looms which can weaver more meters of fabrics per day. Your support can increase the employment to 100s of weavers. We can play a part in increase the Bhagalpur share in overall textile trade of India and world. This trade has potential to provide employment to one lakh families in Bhagalpur.

Finally, we are planning to begin the construction of Agarbatti Stick Unit in Kahalgaon. The land site has been identified and NABARD may release the loan in this month. This project has the potential to provide employment to 5000 families in five six panchayat in Kahalgaon, Bhagalpur.

Over the last three months, we learnt a lot about the uncertainties about agri culture sector. Our agriculture programme suffered setback due to our inability to calculate the working capital right and our wrong decision of not to buy till wheat prices get down.We could not understand the high prices of wheat during our procurement and waited it to come down. We earned 20% on selling the small amount of wheat that we procured in a month.The drought in Bihar has been a surprising natural calamity.The drought failed our plan for promoting SRI. But, the three month experiment has provided a good learning experience which will help us to plan a better programme.

BDT has been planning to provide livelihood assistance to 50,000 families through integrated livelihood programmes with Agarbatti, Silk and agri related program in next five years.
Through its Micro finance NBFC, we plan to provide micro finance assistance to 200,000 families in next five year.

We are grateful to Ananya Finance, FWWB, TMN,RGVN, IGS BASICS, SBI, Union Bank, PNB, Indian Bank, SDTT,SIF, NABARD, SIDBI, AIACA, CFM and many other institutions for their assistance to BDT.


We would like to say that last three and half year has been a great roller coaster ride. We have suffered our bout of depression, nervousness, uncertainty, excitement, agonizing pain, heart felt satisfaction, ecstasy etc over last three year. We are happy to have our share that our decision to found Bihar Development Trust has been right. We are receiving lot of support, motivational mail and even fan mails in our inbox. We have able to provide motivation to lot of people through our initiatives. We would like to thank you all our wishers and friends for their support. We would like to continue our work in gratitude of your support. Few media coverage over last six months is attached with this mail. We hope to live in Developed Bihar very soon.

Thank you for reading such a long mail.

Jai Hind !!! Jai Bihar !!!

Yours Sincerely

Dr. Ravi Chandra