It’s not everyday that an email makes me go WOW! Today, Go Finance contacted me to share some exciting news. They’ve taken their dream – to take financial literacy program to the masses – and made it reality by partnering with a popular local TV station.

Here’s GO Finance CEO Sam Chandar to share the story:

“GO Finance is a pioneer in the Micro-Finance Industry in India in promoting Financial Literacy as a platform for empowerment of women in the country. Due to our financial constraints and limited resources we have been seeking to innovate on various fronts.

One of the greatest challenges was to take our Financial Literacy Program to our existing and potential clients in a cost effective manner. Motivating women from multiple locations to come over to designated locations in reasonable numbers and getting infrastructural arrangements in place and screening the Literacy Program was turning out to be both a physically and financially daunting task.

In one of our Innovation Sessions we hit upon an idea of achieving mass reach in not only a cost effective but appealing manner. What could be better than tying up with a leading TV Channel with a viewership profile matching our target audience and running the literacy program?

We identified one of the best channels in the Region and tied up for a series of prime slots. We had the basic content available which needed to be modified and adapted for telecasting. We got our own staff, zeroed in on the theme, crafted the script and shot an introductory skit that would appeal straight away to our target audience.

We ensured that all our existing and potential clients were informed of the dates and slots and also conducted a blitz awareness campaign across our various locations. We also set up help lines and got the software ready to receive calls/text message responses/feedback from viewers coupled with participation contests.

Our first program came on air on 31st July 2012 at 1:00 PM which is prime-time during which most of the women in our target audience take a break and have lunch sitting in front of the TV. We have used a revolving band at the bottom of the screen throughout the program displaying Opportunity logo thereby creating a strong branding effort for us.

The Channel (Jaya Plus) we are using is extremely popular in South India; in addition there are sizeable Tamil speaking people in other states as well. As a result, our Financial Literacy Program will be reaching out to millions of viewers in Tamil Nadu alone, which has a population of nearly 36 million women.

We aimed for the stars and shot at the sky; we now wait to see where we land!!”

Thanks for sharing this with us Sam – and please keep us all updated with progress!