To all intents and purposes, Nidan – a cooperative is a bank for the urban poor. It collects small amounts of money from asphalt vendors and deposits them.
Nidan has suddenly helped the poor in cities acquire a prudential financial behaviour. Earlier they were too overcome with threshold fear to go to a proper bank. Nidan has removed their fear and instilled confidence in them.
Financial inclusion in India is still not widespread. Only 40 percent of the Indian people are covered by the banking services. However, banking for the ordinary people began in the 80s when the noble laureate Muhamad Yunus from Bangladesh propounded the concept of micro-finance.
Following globalization there has been a big rise in the number of the urban poor in India. Nidan has surfaced against this backdrop. It is part of the National Association of street vendors of India. It offers 4 percent of interest on deposits. It claims thousands of members.