GUWAHATI: Legendary industrialist and Tata Trusts chairman, Ratan Naval Tata has said that for a prosperous India, the country must be a land of equal opportunities where entrepreneurship and enterprise reaches the masses.
Speaking at the launch of the North East Small Finance Bank Ltd here on Sunday evening, Tata said, “If we are to have a prosperous India in the future as against the past, there will have to be realisation that we need to be a land of equal opportunities where entrepreneurship and enterprise can reach the hands of a large number of Indians who have not had that opportunity.”
“What we are ushering in today is a step in that direction,” the Padma Vibhushan awardee said, referring to the opening of the region’s first small finance bank that aims at catering the under-served or financially excluded areas of the Northeast.
Tata has through its investment arm, RNT Associates Pvt Ltd, invested Rs 40 crore in the bank.
“The Tata Trusts has been very happy to participate in this (launch of the bank and financial inclusion of rural areas) and to play a role in spreading prosperity to millions of people around us who have hitherto not had access to funds, not had the opportunity of enterprise and the entrepreneurships they would like to have,” the former chairman of Tata Sons, who arrived here from Mumbai this afternoon, said.
The industrialist also gave a glimpse of the banking scene in the past when big borrowers and not the small borrowers have found funds to grow.
“We have today in our own way opened the door to the vast number of people. I congratulate the management and the investors of this enterprise and look forward to seeing the bank grow in the country in the years to come,” Tata, 80, said.
He also expressed his happiness to visit the Northeast, a region which “he does not get to visit often.”
“Apart from the happiness of visiting this part of India which I do not get to visit very often, I am glad to be able to present in an occasion such as this,” he said.
Assam finance minister, Himanta Biswa Sarma while thanking Tata for playing a role in bringing banking to the doorstep of the small borrowers, also lauded Tata Trusts’ role in bringing cancer care to the doorstep of the people of the region.
Lauding the bank’s management and investors for the transformation from RGVN CSP in 1995 to a bank in 2017, said the state government would be happy to associate with skill development of the beneficiaries of the bank besides entrepreneurship and entrepreneurial activity.