While multi state co-operative is much talked about in town, there is little discussion about multipurpose cooperative in Indian context. But employing the concept of multi-purpose cooperative in solving everyday municipal problems, Maharashtra based Buldana Urban has made a name for itself by altering the fate of the town Buldana.
Buldana Urban offers water ATMs, Vedic schools, hotels, bridges, spinning mills and even guest houses at religious places such as Shirdi and Tripati. It makes available everything that could boost the idea of cooperative negatively perceived by the people at large these days.
And it is not a minuscule company; it boasts a business mix of 1.3 Billion USD and its workforce counting close to
5500. The success of the mainstay of the company the job of offering credit as a cooperative could be gauged from the fact that it has a spread of about 365 branches.
Buldana’s CEO Dr Sukesh Zamwar who in a period of 6 years made it a billion dollar group is a bundle of energy and dynamism. Having done his MS from Germany and MBA in Banking & Finance he set out on a course of making Buldana Urban a household name.
Born in Yavatmal-a small town in Maharashtra, he did his schooling here and then he got selected for MBBS at a prestigious Government medical college, Nagpur.
Under his leadership Buldana urban got the highest award of cooperative in the Asia pacific region in the form of CUMI award. He was the First Indian to have annexed this award.
He also got the highest national award from NCUI in the credit union sector. He also had been nominated for the first URBAN cluster development project.
“Buldana urban every year plants 50000 trees all along the area and also by the side of road. We have adopted a village of population 50000 and we are trying to run it on biogas, biomass, solar and wind energy. We are running 7of our branches on solar as well as wind power. We are selling solar lamps in rural areas. We are installing biomass and biogas plants. Our branches are using computers which are consuming only 5watt energy. We offer loans on electric vehicles”, said Mr Zamwar to Indian Cooperative.
Zamwar has bagged many awards such as CUMI award at Manila in Philippines for financial innovation and
deepening in the Asia Pacific region, Innovative banking Award , World corporate excellence award by CMO Asia, Best youth CEO award by the prestigious banking frontier magazine ,etc.
Zamwar is also Vice President of Global Youth Network on cooperative and Chairman of Youth Committee of International Cooperative Alliance (Asia-Pacific). He also has the honour of being the Coordinator of Asian Confederation of Credit Union (conglomerate of 27 nations). He is also Advisor to BRICS (BRAZIL, Russia, India, China, and South Africa) Cooperative Bank.
(The full article could be accessed at the column Co-op Success story or by clicking on…
Well done Dr. Zamwarji.
Being from cooperative fraternity I know the journey of Dr. Zamwar is not so easy to summarize it in few paragraphs. I urged Dr. Zamwar and Indiancooperative portal to pen the journey of success story of Buldana Urban so as to let others know how to overcome hurdles (which others always makes excuses to shield their failures).
In post LPG fierce competition scenario coupled with environmental obligations, Buldana Urban showed us what cooperatives can do on multi-fronts may it be social concerns, environmental issues, professionalism in business, right time and sustainable diversification, prudency, vision and what not?
Cooperative Movement, one of the largest movement of the people in India, has true potential and capabilities to empower weaker sections of the society be it farmers, women, tribal and unprivileged masses and nation-building in the shortest period of time.
However, the movement equally needs honest, dedicated and visionary volunteers like Dr. Zamwar. Otherwise we can see only these isolated islands of success in cooperatives and not a movement as a whole.
Any way the time is changing and hope Buldana Urban’s success story will become a guiding lantern for others, if they genuinely wish to do so.
Wish you best luck Dr. Zamwar and to Cooperative Movement.