Pigmy Deposit Schemes: Role in Micro-savings and Employment Creation

The boom in the IT&ITes sector made Bangalore city an attractive career hub for all kinds of organised and unorganised sectors. This led to a paradigm shift in the income scenario of the pensioner's paradise. The current statistics show that over 50% of residents of Bangalore fall in middle and low income groups who may or may not generate dwarf savings due to inflating cost of living in this city. Syndicate Bank pioneered the Pigmy Deposit scheme in the year 1928 followed by many other public and private sector banks to inculcate saving habits among the depositors and to mobilize such savings from their door step. This also contributed to emergence of Pigmy agents who collected funds on behalf of the banks from the door step of the depositors for a commission. However, this scheme was not advertised on a large scale and many bankers found this unprofitable due to the size of the funds collected. Eventually this scheme did not reach many beneficiaries who could have been a part of it. "Thus this research working paper converted as a book, looked into the possibility of using this Micro investment technique for encouraging savings and employment enhancement in Bangalore city, India.