Vikram Akula
| Vikram | |
|---|---|
 |
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| Born | Ryakal Village, Medak district, Andhra Pradesh, India |
| Nationality | American |
| Alma mater |
Tufts University Yale University University of Chicago |
| Occupation | Founder, SKS Microfinance |
| Parent(s) | Akula V. Krishna Padma Krishna |
Vikram Akula is a pioneer in market-based approaches to financial inclusion. He is the founder and former chairperson of Bharat Financial Inclusion Ltd., formerly SKS Microfinance, an organization that offers microloans and insurance to poor women in India. He stepped down as SKS Chairperson in November 2011 and became Chairperson Emeritus. Akula is also a founding investor and a Director in AgSri, a sustainable agriculture company focused on helping small sugarcane farmers reduce water use, and a Director in Bodhi Educational Society, which establishes schools for underprivileged children in India. For his work in financial inclusion, he was named by TIME magazine as one of the 100 most influential people in the world in 2006.
Akula currently serves as Chairperson of VAYA Finserv Private Limited. Founded in 2014, the India-based company provides financial services to low-income groups on behalf of partner banks.
Akula's father, Akula.V. Krishna, was a surgeon who settled in Schenectady, N.Y., where Akula went to school. Akula graduated from Niskayuna High School in 1986 and enrolled at Tufts University, where he graduated as a double major in philosophy and English with honors in 1990. He went to Yale University for a M.A. in International Relations, and was awarded a fulbright scholarship for an action-research microfinance project in India in 1994-95. He completed his Ph.D. in Political Science from the University of Chicago in 2004.
Upon graduating from Tufts, Akula returned to India and worked with the Deccan Development Society, a small grassroots rural non-profit organization in 1990. He then worked for the Worldwatch Institute in Washington D.C. as a researcher, where he wrote articles about poverty and sustainable development. During his Fulbright, Akula returned to the Deccan Development Society, where he helped manage the organization’s microfinance program. Akula saw the limitation of non-profit microfinance and proposed a more market-based approach. He outlines his philosophy in his book, A Fistful of Rice; My Unexpected Quest to End Poverty Through Profitability, published by Harvard Business Press in 2010.
In 1996, Akula completed his Fulbright and went to the University of Chicago to pursue his Ph.D, which he completed in 2004. As a Ph.D. student, he created a business plan for a for-profit microfinance company and in December 1997, Akula returned to India to set up Swayam Krishi Sangam (SKS) as a vehicle to implement the plan. Initially set up as a non-profit, SKS converted to the for-profit SKS Microfinance in 2005. SKS Microfinance secured a round of equity investment of $11.5 million in March 2007, led by Sequoia Capital. In November 2008, SKS raised an equity investment of $75 million, the largest equity investment raised by an MFI to that date. SKS raised additional equity from Infosys founder Narayan Murthy and Bajaj Allianz, which represented the first-ever microfinance investment by an insurance company.
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