ICICI Bank is proposing to create 500 more ICICI Digital Villages by the end of 2017. The bank revealed the plan at a function ‘ICICI Rural Summit – Sashakt Gaon, Smriddh Bharat’ organized to mark the completion of a project to transform 100 villages into digital villages. Inaugurating the summit, finance minister Arun Jaitley said other private sector banks should also take up similar initiatives to achieve digitization in rural areas. The ICICI Digital Village program involves creating a digital payment ecosystem for financial activity in villages, providing free vocational training and facilitating market linkages and providing access to health facilities. Chanda Kochhar, MD and CEO of ICICI Bank, said the bank has trained over 11,300 villagers, including more than 7,500 women, in 17 states in the last 100 days. She said the plan now is to cover at least 500 villages by December 2017. The bank has also provided loans to the tune of Rs 14 crore to customers of these 100 digital villages and with more addition, the credit flow is going up, she said.
