Spandana has continued to successfully manage growth. Its gross loan portfolio stands at close to Rs. 300 crores, and has a client base that represents more than 800,000 households. This is estimated at constituting almost 1.5% of the BPL population of India.

The strength of Spandana has been in managing growth and profitability in a sector that has largely been under-serviced. As a result, the domains of intervention for Spandana are not limited to financial services. With ambitions of being the foremost service provider for its clients, Spandana was faced with a challenge to

• leverage its core strengths from the micro finance experience and become an enabler of services that were so far unavailable to this segment
• within the financial services sector, transform from an NBFC (non banking financial corporation) to a mainstream Bank with more robust & diverse service capabilities
• invite equity participation from foreign investors to give momentum to the above two goals

Quicksand was approached with the challenge of re-visioning the Spandana brand and articulating the new identity of the organisation to all interested stakeholders.

It involved, foremost, for the design team to understand the brand and all interfaces that it had with its customers. The attempt was also to uncover stories that would be inspirational and become the guiding beacon for designing the new face of the organisation.

Quicksand embarked on a design research exercise that involved:

• visioning workshops with the top management & CEO of Spandana, Mrs.Padmaja Reddy
• contextual research with Spandana’s customers, experiencing the micro-lending process first hand
• extensive film & photographic documentation of the people, processes and places touched by Spandana

The ensuing design exercise resulted in a new identity, a film and a manifesto for the brand that was unveiled at the largest MFI summit held annually in Canada. Spandana was subsequently also co-invested in by Lok Capital (a micro finance focussed equity fund) & JM Financial.

Click on images below to preview the film & manifesto designed. You may also download the manifesto by clicking here.

The manifesto was printed on recycled paper symbolic of an inspirational story of the founder of Spandana selling discarded newspapers to raise the first corpus of fund for lending. The film was shot at different centers of Spandana while living with the customers & documenting their lives as narrated by them.