Two years ago, several prostitutes from Mumbai’s red light districts had set up a women’s cooperative group in Kamathipura area. PSI, a Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit organization supported the prostitutes for setting up the bank that was launched with 1.6 million rupees.

Now, the prostitutes are doing something they hardly have been able to do before, depositing their savings in a bank. The Women’s cooperative group set up the small bank in the Kamathipura area just to help the prostitutes to get rid of poverty and exploitation by paying the debts to brothel owners.

The simple act of saving some money was previously out of thought for many customers of the Sangini Women’s Cooperative Bank. Regular banks India often shun prostitutes because of lacking residence proofs, other documents or birth certificates officially required to open an account. Now, the small bank in their own area is helping them to deposit an average of 10-20 rupees.

The bank is running its operation from three narrow rooms and opened a cooperative store in one of the rooms. Shilpa Merchant, PSI’s Mumbai director said that the cooperative had thought it would take at least one year to get 100 customers.

But, the group opened the bank with more than 100 accounts on day one. Now, the bank invests daily deposits totaling 25,000 rupees in the form of fixed savings schemes. The bank deposits the amount in other state-run banks and earns 9.5 percent interest per year on the total amount.

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