He gives loan at close to 24% and delivered on mopeds at borrowers’ homes. “They come to us even at this interest as this works out less than what they have to pay in bribes or on transport to access other loans,’’ he explains.

Akula’s story has become legendary ever since he was nominated among the “100 people who shape our world”. Born in Hyderabad, he grew up in the US. He returned after his college education and began working with an NGO dealing with microfinance. Soon he realised that microfinance could be an important tool to eradicate poverty. But “the microfinance they were doing was incredibly inefficient,” he says.

He, then, enrolled in a PhD programme on microfinance in University of Chicago.

Akula had to raise $52,000 from more than 300 friends and family members to start his first lending operation in 1998. Today, financial giants such as Citigroup Inc., ABN Amro Holding and HSBC Holdings Plc have already provided millions of dollars for SKS to lend out.