Istanbul, 10 September 2020: More than 80% of all people employed in India work in the informal sector, with limited access to financial services. Securing credit for housing purchases, even in urban centres, is a dream beyond the reach of many of these workers, who lack the credit history and profile to get formal loans.

Shubham Housing Development Finance Company provides housing finance solutions to families with informal incomes through an innovative credit program that builds credit history beyond traditional proof of income. Founded in 2010 with the purpose of helping build homes for those outside the formal income circle, Shubham Housing Development Finance Company has been driving financial inclusion in the informal market across nine Indian states.

Since 2011 the company has provided 40,000 families with access to credit for house purchasing with 160,000 lives impacted and a current loan portfolio of US $400 million.

Motivated by the benefits brought by past impact measurement studies, Shubham Housing Development Finance Company, was particularly interested in gathering feedback from its clients on their needs as a reference for creating a holistic value proposition for its services.

As an inclusive business member company of UNDP’s Business Call to Action (BCtA), the company joined BCtA’s Impact Champions Programme to understand how their innovative business model had directly and indirectly impacted their clients’ lives. While the company closely tracks business performance, there was no system in place to measure and manage social impact and other non-financial metrics.

BCtA’s Impact Lab provides an end-to-end impact management solution for inclusive businesses. The Impact Lab helps companies develop Sustainable Development Goals-focused impact framework for data collection, analysis and reporting, and is designed to help companies drive business value while delivering impact by understanding, proving, and improving their contributions to the SDGs.

Selected BCtA member companies partake in the Impact Champions Programme to undertake impact measurement and management with an SDGs lens, where they are provided with training, hands-on support and technical assistance from BCtA.

After completing their impact measurement study, the company had several takeaways that will shape its decision-making processes in the future. Firstly, Shubham confirmed the market gap between the demand for housing and the supply of housing finance. A survey validated their perception that their clients lacked awareness about financial products available to them. Secondly, Shubham found that communicating its impact to its own employees during training sessions had an effect on employee motivation and productivity. Lastly, “Shubham is integrating impact measurement into its operations processes by making it a routine practice to listen to and act on customer feedback to improve and grow our inclusive business,” said Vidyut Perti, Head of Strategy, Marketing & Partnerships.

Read about Shubham Housing Development Finance Company’s impact measurement and management journey by downloading the case study below.