About Rang De

The idea of Rang De was sown in the year 2006 - the same year when Mr. Yunus was awarded the Nobel Prize for his work with Grameen Bank. The motivation for starting Rang De was the belief that the peer to peer lending model could be leveraged to lower the cost of microcredit and reach out to under-served communities. RangDe.Org went live on January 26th 2008 (16:48 hrs to be precise!).

The spirit of Rang De

The name Rang De was decided after a lot of thought. It goes back to the patriotic struggle for Independence. We believe that a similar movement with the same kind of urgency is required to address poverty in India. The words Rang De also denote colour and exuberance and that is the significance we want our efforts to have for the people we reach out to.

Our Vision

Our vision is to make poverty history in India by reaching out to underserved communities through microcredit. We would do this through a network of committed field partners and social investors and offer microcredit that will have a positive impact on business, education, health and environment of the communities we work with.

Our Values

We are not just a non-profit peer to peer lending platform. There is a lot more to Rang De than that. We are as much about social change as we are to do with technology. We are as much about investing time as we are about investing money. We are as much about transparency as we are about financial democracy.

Our Legal Entity

Rang De is registered as a non-profit organisation not because we are against the 'p' word but because we believe we are on a mission and cannot afford to lose focus. We are not in the oftly debated argument about profit or non profit. Our single minded focus is to ensure that our borrowers pay interest rates that are fair and our social investors can make a meaningful difference to other people's lives.

The Rang De Team

We are a bunch of young, passionate individuals who want to bring about a change in India and the way we as a country look at philanthropy. We like to challenge the status quo and tread on paths that are less travelled. We do not believe in compromises and are paranoid about the impact we want to create in the communities we reach out to. In this journey, we believe in collaboration with like minded individuals and organisations so that we are able to see the change we want to see in our own lifetimes.

Our Revenue Model

We believe that we need to be sustainable and scale meaningfully. We get a nominal cut of 1% on all the loans repaid by the borrowers. If you ask us, will that suffice? May not be in the short term but if we stay in there long enough and try hard enough, we will definitely make it. A little bit of perseverance is good for all of us. After all Rome was not built in a day.

Our Long Term Goal

Our long term goal is to provide a meaningful connect between the urban and rural population and enabling individuals to make social investments of their time and money.