Social Impact Assessment of Microfinance Programmes - weman

Chapter Eight: Kashf
8.1 Institutional Review
8.1.1 Background and History
Kashf Foundation, a non-profit microfinance institution started in Lahore in 1996. It was
founded by Roshaneh Zafar after being inspired by the success of the Grameen Bank.
Roshaneh wanted to achieve two things with Kashf; one was to alleviate poverty and the
other was to work towards women’s empowerment. Therefore, Kashf started with the
mission to ‘provide quality and cost effective microfinance services to low income
households especially women in order to enhance their economic role and decision
making capacity’.
At the start, Kashf was registered under the Society’s Registration Act 1860; however, it
is changing the legal status to a non-profit Company by Guarantee under section 42 of the
Companies Ordinance, 1984. The reason for the change is to bring the organization under
stricter regulation and thus improve its image.
In September 2006, Kashf celebrated its 10 year anniversary with accomplishments such
as being one of the first sustainable MFIs in Pakistan, providing loans to over 250,000
poor households with plans to reach 850,000 clients by 2010. Over the years Kashf has
received many awards for its spectacular performance, such as the AGFUND
International award and CGAP financial transparency record.
Kashf started with micro loans for women; however, with the changing needs of the
market it has also started offering larger individual loans for micro entrepreneurs. In the
past year Kashf has rapidly expanded its branch network and from 35 branches at the end
of 2005, it has increased it to 70 branches at the end of 2006, and they are planning to
open 50 more branches in 2007(list in Appendix). With its systems and processes all
streamlined and proven, Kashf is rapidly expanding its outreach.
In 1996, Kashf started as an action research programme with support from the Grameen
Bank. The initial two years were spent in understanding the market and the needs of the
clients in peri-urban and urban settings. At this point there was no entity in Pakistan that
specialized in providing microfinance services to low income communities, and most
programmes were implementing a holistic approach, where microcredit was one
component of their overall development strategy.
Kashf started its microfinance programme in Lahore, however, now it has expanded to
Kasur, Gujranwala, Faislabad, Karachi, Khushab and their surrounding areas. Most of
these branches are for the General Loan category, though six have a specialized section
for the Individual Loan category. By December 2006, Kashf had an outreach of 135,000
clients (Figure 8.1), a staff of 600 and a portfolio of approximately 4 billion rupees, with
PAR under 1 percent