Asasah was formed in 2003 as a social enterprise with the objective of being a Microfinance Institution (MFI), by a group of individuals with the idea of replicating the Grameen Bank approach as its operating model. It started distributing credit in January 2003, with the objective of improving the quality of life of financially poor and socially deprived people inter-alia providing technical assistance, training and learning opportunities to women and children, shortly after registering itself as a company under section 42 of the Companies Ordinance 1984. Asasah is the first microfinance institution who started operations with hundred percent commercial funding.

 

Pakistan is an agricultural country and approximately more than 70% of its population resides in rural areas, where business and other income generating opportunities are either very scarce or limited. Neither the individual nor the households are contributing to GDP, rather they are living as parasites on national economy.

 

Asasah has been positioned as a project of micro-productivity enhancement, where poverty is result of lack of money or material possessions. Asasah aims to make each household productive by providing:

• Financial Assistance according to the need and capacity of a household to initiate or expand its income generating activities through its womenfolk, who are the hub of a household;
• Necessary Information and Informal Education to run their small businesses smoothly;
• Links its members to the relevant markets in order to help them get a better price for their products

 

Microfinance Program

Asasah believes that Microfinance indeed cannot be provided in exclusion but has to be packaged with all complimentary services. ASASAH has tried to revive and recoil the original concept of providing financial and non-financial products/services. Customers need financial services that are tailor-made to suit their requirements. These services include a multitude of targeted credit products with appropriate loan sizes, savings, enterprise trainings and market linkages.

 

Asasah has segmented the market of microfinance between the productive poor and micro-entrepreneurs having running businesses. The productive poor avail Asasah’s general services and the newly introduced Karobari Udhar, whereas the micro entrepreneurs can avail its specialized services like Karobar Barhao, Mera Karobar, Livestock and micro enterprise training.

 

Livelihood Programs

Asasah has been striving to improve the livelihoods of poor segment of the society through providing its credit and financial products/services. Livelihood Program has been designed to serve such unbanked and non-credit worthy, extreme-poor. It aims at designing and implementing improved sustainable livelihood options for the extreme-poor. Nature of poverty of this class of poor requires long-term interventions to an extent where they could be regarded as credit-worthy and may be served through any microfinance program; this is the main forte of the Livelihood Program of Asasah.