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May 3, 2025
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The Homeless In India

Every Indian must have a house by 2022. That is the dream of Prime Minister Narendra Modi. People living on footpaths is a common sight in most metro cities. According to the government’s definition, homeless or houseless people are those who live in “the open or roadside, pavements, inhume-pipes, under flyovers and staircases, or in the open in places of worship, mandaps, railway platforms etc.”

According to Census 2011, there are close to 1.8 million homeless people in India and this population is declining but this is still a huge number and is more than the entire population of some countries of the world.

The Indian government launched NULM (National Urban Livelihoods Mission) in 2013 to provide a source of income to the ‘urban poor’ and indirectly reduce homelessness. The execution of this scheme however has been nothing but flawed. Time and again, the Supreme Court has taken the state and the central governments to task regarding the same but there seems to be little improvement and the mission of NULM scheme is a distant dream.

Homelessness is an issue which leads to other perils in society and should be tackled on an urgent basis. There should be a proper policy on tackling homelessness. The Supreme Court mandated the governments to provide one shelter for 100,000 people. According to the findings of the panel appointed by the court, state governments fear that if they comply, then it will lead to an overflow of migrant workers in their states. Land allocation for shelters is another major issue.

Every year, hundreds of homeless people in Northern India die due to the cold wave in winter. NGOs like Habitat for Humanity have stepped up and started working to help resolve the problem. However, because of our huge population, it needs combined efforts from the Government, NGOs as well as CSR to ensure that every citizen is provided basic shelter.

Thank you for reading the story until the very end. We appreciate the time you have given us. In addition, your thoughts and inputs will genuinely make a difference to us. Please do drop in a line and help us do better.

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The CSR Journal Team

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HSBC hosts ‘Helping Hands Mela 2018’ at its branches in India

HSBC’s Helping Hands Mela, a unique annual event that brings NGOs from across the country into HSBC’s premises, is scheduled this year from 29 October to 3 November 2018.

During this period, HSBC invites local NGOs into its branches to display their products, which ranges from arts and craft, accessories, hand crafted jewelry, home linen, stationary, diyas to food items such as jam, pickles and chutneys. It gives NGOs and communities an opportunity to sell their products at prime HSBC locations to customers and the public. The proceeds of the sale go towards supporting the causes and communities that the NGOs serve.

This is the 18th year of the Mela and around 70 NGOs will participate in 21 HSBC branches across 12 cities. Branches in Bangalore, Chandigarh, Chennai, Coimbatore, Gurgaon, Hyderabad, Jaipur, Kochi, Kolkata, Mumbai, Noida, New Delhi will host the Mela. The Mela also provides HSBC employees an opportunity to interact closely with NGOs and understand the issues facing communities around them.

Aloka Majumdar, Head of Corporate Sustainability, HSBC India said, “The funds raised are utilised for the development and social welfare of the community. Hosted in our branches across India, we extend a welcome to our customers and the public to share the Diwali spirit by helping the less-privileged sections of society by purchasing the products displayed by the NGOs.”

When: October 29 – November 3

Where: HSBC Bank branch nearest to you

Piecing Together The Financial Inclusion Puzzle

financial inclusion
“Money is the seed of money, and the first guinea is sometimes more difficult to acquire than the second million.”

Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Inequality and exclusion are two of the most pressing challenges facing the world today. In recent years, policy planners have realized that development will be uneven and not wholesome if we do not address the problem of exclusion of large sections of the population – who remain exiled from the development mainstream ― in a big way.

Inclusive growth is necessary for ensuring that the benefits of a growing economy extend to all segments of society. Providing opportunities to every individual to use his potential for improving his well-being is essential for developing prosperous and stable societies.

Access to and integration into these networks enhances their productivity and leads to shared prosperity. It is now accepted wisdom that a key ingredient of inclusive growth is financial inclusion. Greater financial inclusiveness is a gateway for more balanced development and a more cohesive society. Inclusive growth is widely recognized as having four mutually supporting pillars — an employment-led growth strategy, financial inclusion, investment in human development priorities and high-impact multidimensional interventions (win-win strategies).

Inclusive financial systems  have  potentially transformative power to accelerate development gains. They provide individuals and businesses with greater access to resources to meet their financial needs, such as investment in education and housing, capitalizing on business opportunities, saving for retirement and coping with various economic shocks.

Access to financial services has a critical role in reducing extreme poverty, boosting shared prosperity, and supporting inclusive and sustainable development is the key element of financial health. In the absence of proper formal financial systems, they have to rely on informal means of managing money, like cash-on-hand, family and friends, moneylenders, pawn-brokers… or keeping it under the mattress! These choices are expensive, insufficient, risky, and unpredictable.

The poor need to set aside money in times of plenty and draw it in lean times. Life is one long risk for them as they are just a tragic event away from a financial catastrophe. Without inclusive financial systems, individuals and enterprises in low income communities lose promising opportunities, have their potential to use their entrepreneurial abilities constricted or have their capital constrained to their own savings and earnings. Managing money is hard, and it’s harder when you live on an earning that makes you plan your life on a day-to-day basis. Limited access to finance is seen as a major contributor to persistent poverty.

Poor people operate almost entirely in the cash economy, particularly in the developing world. They use cash, physical assets (such as jewellery and livestock), or informal providers (such as money lenders and payment couriers) to meet their financial needs. However, these informal mechanisms can be insecure, expensive and complicated to use. Moreover, they offer limited recourse when a major problem arises–such as a serious illness in the family or a poor harvest.

When more people have access to affordable and high-quality financial services, they have more opportunities to thrive. This is especially true for women, who are often underserved by traditional financial institutions. In all societies, howsoever oppressed or illiterate women their women are, they remain the stewards of household savings. They require financial products and services that appreciate their experience and perspective. Financial inclusion of women enhances their self-confidence and places the power of financial decision-making in their hands, resulting in large development payoffs.

Financial inclusion focuses on removing obstacles to the use of these services, whether the obstacles are price or non-price barriers. A number of constraining factors and financial market imperfections, such as information asymmetries and transaction costs impede greater uptake and usage of appropriate financial services. They are likely to be highly imposing on the talented poor and on micro- and small enterprises that lack collateral and documented financial histories which may lead to self-exclusion.

Though we are living in an era of spectacular innovation in financial inclusion, formal financial institutions find it hard to serve low-income customers because of the high costs associated with acquiring and serving them. The small transaction sizes and lower balances in accounts make them a drain on bank’s resources. There is substantial scope to increase access to financial services in rural areas and among low income communities where they remain under-penetrated. Earlier a major challenge was the high cost of delivery through traditional brick and-mortar structures.

Meaningful financial inclusion is very challenging and tough, involving a complex interplay of factors, viable business models and significant behaviour change by new account holders. For certain segments, regulatory frameworks, legal and cultural norms and distance represent significant barriers. We have to be realistic about how long it will take to fully address these challenges.

We now have a whole slew of providers that are beginning to find firm roots. Progress will happen, but certainly just not according to our wishful time frames. Low income people need contextualized and customized services on account of the peculiarities of their financial lives, particularly their irregular/volatile income streams and expenditure patterns.

Dr Moin Qazi is an author, researcher and development professional who has spent four decades in the development sector. He has beenDr. Moin Qazi appointed a new member of National Institution for Transforming India (NITI) Aayog Committee on Financial Inclusion for Women. He has worked for three decades with State Bank of India as a grassroots field officer, program manager, policy maker and researcher in development finance.

Views of the author are personal and do not necessarily represent the website’s views.

Thank you for reading the column until the very end. We appreciate the time you have given us. In addition, your thoughts and inputs will genuinely make a difference to us. Please do drop in a line and help us do better.

Regards,
The CSR Journal Team

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Child-free By Choice, For The Planet’s Sake!

child-free couple
To lessen their environmental impact, some people are making drastic choices, choosing to limit the size of their family or even to be child-free (not have children at all). Consider it a way to own up to their citizen social responsibility (CSR).
“Overpopulation is the elephant in the room when it comes to environmental issues,” Harriet Spark, an ethical international designer said in an interview. “It’s such a hard topic to talk about, let alone act on but, nonetheless, it’s one we should be talking about.” In recent months, there has been unprecedented coverage in the global media about family size and overpopulation, with features in The Guardian, The Washington Post, Quartz India and The New York Times addressing a topic that has previously been taboo in some countries. British fitness vlogger Zanna van Dijk recently shared with her 63,540 subscribers her disinclination to have children for environmental reasons.
The decision to have a child is primarily an emotional one and often in India, a cultural pressure to which most people succumb. But as our resources are being stretched to breaking point, it is evident that the uncomfortable truth associated with overpopulation is crossing people’s minds and motivating some to not contribute further to the problems, states a report on antinatalists (a popular term for people who are child-free by choice).
Last year, Population Matters released “Small Families, Small Planet,” a YouTube video highlighting the environmental benefits of having a smaller family. The release was supported by research from scientific journal Environmental Research Letters, which estimated that if each family has one fewer child, it could save 58.6 metric tonnes of carbon a year, compared to giving up a car which would save 2.4 metric tonnes per year.
Recycling and using public transport are good if you want to reduce your carbon footprint, but to truly make a difference, you should have fewer children… or none at all. What do you think of this child-free approach to CSR?

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जिंदा है रावण

अमृतसर में रावण दहन हो रहा था, रावण को जलते देख खुश हो रहे थे, रावण का अहम जल रहा था, अहंकारी रावण राख हो रहा था, रावण की बुराइयों पर राम की अच्छाई जीत पा रही थी, रावण मर रहा था लेकिन इसी बीच ऐसा हादसा हुआ जो भुलाए नही भूलता, वो चीख़, वो दर्द, वो मंजर, वो अफरातफरी, वो ट्रेन जो रौंदती हुई चली गई, हर तरफ मौत ही मौत थी, रावण दहन हो उठा था, रावण मर चुका था, साथ ही पटरियों पर दौड़ती मौत भी 60 लोगो को अपने आगोश में ले चुकी थी। इस दर्दनाक हादसे में प्रतीकात्मक रूप से रावण तो मर गया लेकिन अभी भी लोगों में रावण जिंदा है ऐसा हम इसलिए भी कह रहे है क्योंकि इतने बड़े पैमाने पर अगर रावण दहन का कार्यक्रम आयोजित किया जा रहा है तो आखिरकार क्यों नही सुरक्षा के व्यापक इन्तेजामत किये गए, क्यों नही पुलिस भारी मात्रा में मौके पर मौजूद थी, क्यों नही लोगों को रेलवे ट्रैक से हटाया गया।
इस घटना के बाद आयोजक फरार है, आरोपों के घेरे में नवजोत कौर सिद्धू भी आई, घटना बड़ी होने के बाद मीडिया ने भी मामले को हाथों हाथ लिया, लगातार मामला सुखियों में छाया रहा, जमकर राजनीति हुई, हर कोई इससे बचने और मौत की आग में राजनीतिक रोटियां सेंकते नज़र आया। किसी भी शख्स ने इस मसले में सामाजिक जिम्मेदारी नही निभाया, ऐसे में क्यों न कहा जाय कि अमृतसर में हुए इस नरसंहार में आरोपी सभी लोगों में रावण अभी भी जिंदा है। युगों से साल दर साल पूरे देश में रावण का पुतला जलाकर दशहरे का त्‍योहार मनाया जाता है। अगर रावण सालों पहले मारा गया था तो फिर वो आज भी हमारे बीच जीवित कैसे है? अगर रावण का नाश हो गया था तो वो कौन है, जिसने 60 लोगों को पटरियों पर रौंद दिया। वो कौन है जो बिना इजाजत इस कार्यक्रम को अंजाम दे रहे थे, वो कौन है जिन्होंने अपनी सिटीजन सोशल रिस्पांसिबिलिटी नहीं निभाई। वो कौन है, जिन्होंने हमारी बेटियों को, बच्चों को, माताओं को, हमारे भाईयों को मौत के घाट सुला दिया। वो कौन है जो पैसे और पहचान के दम पर किसी अभी तक पुलिस की गिरफ्त से बाहर है। वो कौन है जो सरकारी पदों का दुरुपयोग करके भ्रष्टाचार को बढ़ावा दे रहें है।
वो रावण था, जिसने सालों कठिन तपस्या करके ईश्वर से शक्तियां अर्जित कीं और फिर इन शक्तियों के दुरुपयोग से अपने पाप की लंका का निर्माण किया था। और एक आज का रावण है, जो पैसे, पद, वर्दी और ओहदे रूपी शक्ति को अर्जित करके उसके दुरुपयोग से पूरे समाज को ही पाप की लंका में बदल रहा है। क्या ये रावण नहीं है, जो आज भी हमारे ही अंदर हमारे समाज में जिंदा है? हम बाहर उसका पुतला जलाते हैं लेकिन अपने भीतर उसे पोषित करते हैं। रावण जो कि प्रतीक है बुराई का, अहंकार का, अधर्म का, आज तक जीवित इसलिए है कि हम उसके प्रतीक एक पुतले को जलाते हैं न कि उसे, जबकि अगर हमें रावण का सच में नाश करना है तो हमें उसे ही जलाना होगा, उसके प्रतीक को नहीं।

Children Lead Anti-Littering Sensitisation Campaign

Phenk Mat Mumbai, an initiative by Club Mahindra and Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) supported by Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) imbedded a social and sustained behavioural change in the youth of the city by internalizing the habits of cleanliness and making them the lifelong ambassadors for anti-littering behaviour.

The campaign planned to internalise anti littering behaviour in children using Social Behaviour Change Communication techniques is a campaign run in schools with a combination of workshops, education, engagement and competitions.

The programme commenced in June 2017 is an ongoing programme, managed by Centre for Social and Behavior Change Communications (SBC3). Until end of September 2018, the programme had covered 310 schools and nearly 3 lac children. By February 2019 the programme will cover 400 schools. Children covered by the programme also had an impact on their households across the city.

Arun Nanda, Campaign Chairman, Phenk Mat Mumbai and Chairman, Mahindra Holidays and Resorts India Ltd. said, “Children are capable of influencing the mass if they are really made aware of the larger consequences taking place in the society. Phenk Mat Mumbai is one such initiative taken believing this fact and we are glad to see the encouraging results.”

The celebration event of the successful implementation of this cleanup initiative witnessed participation of 73 children from 185 schools.

The school program was designed using the techniques of Social and Behaviour Change Communication which entails the use of communication to change behaviours, by influencing knowledge, attitude and social norms.

In each school, the programme ran over two months with direct impact of improved cleanliness in the school and demonstration by children of their commitment to anti littering.

CSR: Corporate Actions Against Fake Jobs

fake jobs alert

Digitisation in recruitment has spread out the fake job racket dramatically. With job scammers using big brand names to lure the vulnerable job seeker, corporate entities have taken up the responsibility to spread awareness. The brands have taken measures to ensure that job aspirants are easily able to differentiate fake jobs from real ones if they conduct basic research.

TCS has posted several samples of fake job offer letters received by candidates from the racketeers. The company has also started including QR codes in their offer letter which can be scanned using mobile phones, that would take the candidate to a verification page on the company’s website.

Tech Mahindra has started using a digital signature on their offer letters since 2014.

Infosys has clearly mentioned on their website that they do not charge candidates anything during or after the hiring process. It has also stated that the hiring process will involve at least one face-to-face interview with the candidate and that the candidate will not be informed of the same through instant messaging platforms. The Infosys recruitment team would only send emails from the email addresses under the domain @infosys.com. The recruitment team would never ask candidates for personal details like credit card numbers, bank account details, or tax info for the hiring process.

Wipro has also listed common attributes of fake jobs on their website. The website states that the fake offers came from public email IDs. They would even have the Wipro logo on the letterhead. However, there will be grammatical mistakes in the letter, and the candidates would be asked to deposit a certain amount in a given bank account. The person offering the job would also call the candidates asking for documents such as qualifications, photographs and experience certificates to make the offer seem authentic.

Thank you for reading the story until the very end. We appreciate the time you have given us. In addition, your thoughts and inputs will genuinely make a difference to us. Please do drop in a line and help us do better.

Regards,
The CSR Journal Team

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Collaborative Philanthropy For Creating A Million Jobs

Million Jobs Mission
Every year, some 12 million young Indians join the workforce, according to a recent EY study, and 64% of the population is likely to be of working age by 2020-21. That’s at the heart of India’s much-vaunted demographic dividend, which is supposed to propel its GDP—but there is a huge disconnect between job creation and GDP growth. The key is to ignite bottom-up, inclusive growth through job creation, something China has successfully done, rather than jobless GDP growth.
It seems a perfect match with the priorities of the Modi government, which is throwing its might behind job creation through three high-decibel programmes—Make in India, Smart Cities, and Digital India. These programmes come in the wake of the decade from 2005, when only 3 million additional jobs were created while 60 million job-seekers were entering the workforce.

Ambitious mission

In 2016, Social Venture Partners (SVP) India’s founding chairman, Ravi Venkatesan, announced Million Jobs Mission. The ambitious mission aims at creating an ecosystem to train and skill one million Indians by 2020. SVP India was founded in Bangalore in 2012 as a member of the global SVP network. The first American chapter emerged in Seattle in 1997 from the desire of successful technology professionals to improve the impact of their charitable giving by leveraging their professional skills and business networks.
At a joint interaction with the core team, including Dr. Ganesh Natarajan, Chairman, SVP India, Govind Iyer, Egon Zehnder and the founders of Srujna in Mumbai, I learnt that livelihood, including job creation and vocational training, is an overarching national focus area for all chapters. SVP India chapters have mobilised well over 180 business leaders, philanthropists and active citizens to become one of the largest networks of engaged donors in India.

Unique approach in India

SVP India began by adopting the tried and tested grant-making processes of SVP chapters around the world, assisted by SVP’s network office and close personal ties with chapters in Seattle, Portland and other American cities. But the scale of India’s social problems coupled with the entrepreneurial fibre of those who joined the Indian chapters raised many questions about scale and impact.
Making small grants to non-profit organisations in the classical SVP style was a necessary and appropriate starting point for a group of people addressing social problems through collective action. But several partners realised it was not enough to move a few out of poverty and into employment by funding small initiatives, but rather to invent new models that can scale efficiently, attack structural impediments, and even influence policies.
Fulfilling the moral imperative to achieve greater impact required SVP India to “come up with creative solutions, not live in a silo,” said Dr Natarajan, who is also Chairman, Pune City Connect (a collaborative platform that enables corporations to work with the Government on social and city innovation) and 5F World, a platform for skills, start-ups and social ventures. He was Chairman of NASSCOM Foundation for three years from 2014 to 2017. SVP’s partners in India could lean on a large body of experience and insights from U.S. chapters, but ultimately they had to find an Indian way forward that worked effectively in the local cultural context.

Scaling impact

“One pathway for scaling social impact is to find more established organisations and work with them to help scale their impact. If they are on a trajectory to impact 25,000 lives over a period of time, our engagement would aim to scale this to say one lakh people,” said Dr Natarajan.
The chapters’ support of LabourNet, Pune City Connect and NGOs like Srujna exemplify this additional pathway, with individual partners adding value to grants by advising senior managers at nonprofits on business strategies for sustainable growth, mobilising third party funding, assisting with access to technology solutions, or introducing nonprofits to potential corporate partners.

Shared ecosystem

The ecosystem mentioned earlier is a livelihood platform comprising diverse stakeholders including nonprofits, skills agencies, donors, investors, employers and government who often operate in silos without cross-institution collaboration. SVP India envisaged a platform that would bring stakeholders together, connecting them for new partnerships with shared objectives and efficiencies.
Coming back to the Million Jobs Mission, at the time when it was announced, plans for how such an ambitious goal would be achieved were sketchy. The ecosystem stakeholders convened at the inaugural conclave of the Million Jobs Mission (MJM) held in New Delhi in January 2017. MJM will be a platform for multi-stakeholder collaboration that will support nonprofits with the potential to create jobs and enhance incomes at scale.

Collective impact framework

SVP has created a backbone organisation needed to provide its chapters and consortium partners with the secretariat support of the sort associated with the Collective Impact framework.
Lead Partners from SVP provide significant amounts of time mentoring and guiding the design partners to achieve their goals as the secretariat engages with other large players (government agencies, donors) for long-term institutional support. The movement will only grow as similar conclaves are being planned every year, each adding a further 10-15 design partners into the mix in addition to a larger number of consortium partners.
Said Dr Natarajan, “SVP India sees this as a tremendous opportunity to successfully demonstrate the power of collective action in solving a very challenging social problem for India: creating a million jobs!”

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HDFC Bank’s HRDP empowers 7 villages in Wardha district

HDFC Bank today announced the completion of its Holistic Rural Development Programme (HRDP) in 7 villages in the Wardha district of Maharashtra. This programme has reached out to 6,000 people living in these villages. HRDP is a flagship CSR initiative of Parivartan, HDFC Bank’s umbrella brand for all its social development programmes.

Five villages are from Arvi Block: Natala, Bothali, Pimpalgaon, Chaka Majara, Amaji Majara and two from Hinganghat Block: Yerangaon, and Satephal.

The initiatives undertaken in these villages are:

  • Improved farming demonstrations, water management, digital education
  • Clean drinking water and sanitation units
  • Construction of 21 check dams, 18 gabion structures
  • Soil and water conservation on over 1,000 acres
  • Solar fencing on 210 acre, solar street lights
  • Income generation activities such as goat rearing, poultry

Amar Kale, Member of Legislative Assembly presided over a ceremony to announce the completion of the projects undertaken in these villages. The Holistic Rural Development Programme seeks to better village life by focussing on improvements in five key areas of:

  1. Education
  2. Skills Training and Livelihood Enhancement
  3. Natural Resources Management
  4. Water and Sanitation
  5. Financial Literacy and Inclusion

Under this programme, a thorough assessment of the village is carried out to understand its developmental needs. To address these needs in a sustainable and effective manner, the Bank creates long-term solutions in partnership with an NGO and the local community. The beneficiaries of HRDP include small farmers, youth, landless labourers, children and women.

“Through HRDP we are creating an ecosystem to improve the overall economic and social conditions in rural India. Our NGO partners play an instrumental role in planning and executing projects. We also work closely with local communities, who participate in the projects through ‘Shramdaan’, to make the initiative sustainable,” said Nusrat Pathan, Head – Corporate Social Responsibility, HDFC Bank.

In Wardha, the partner NGO for HRDP is Sanjeevani Institute of Empowerment and Development (SIED).

Financial Services Brands Promote Meaningful Spending

financial services brands do meaningful spending

Financial services brands are helping customers let their money do the talking, by facilitating spending and investment with a positive impact.

While people want to support brands with a positive impact, they don’t always have time to scrutinize every individual purchase. Now, financial services brands are stepping in, with payment tracking, analysis and investment tools that help people better manage their sustainability impact. There’s a clear appetite for this, as evidenced by J. Walter Thompson’s data:

  • 62% say they would be interested in a bank that monitored their purchases and gave advice on a sustainable lifestyle
  • 56% would be interested in a credit card that could track their personal carbon footprint.

‘Match your dollars with your values,’ is the ethos behind Aspiration Impact Measurement (AIM), an in-app feature from online bank Aspiration. The app gives customers a Sustainability Score that relates to the impact they’re having on the planet and its people, based on their spending. The app taps into the consumer motivation to vote with their money and to reward businesses that share their values.

A pioneer in this space, Scandinavian bank Ålandsbanken offers the Åland Index, created in partnership with Mastercard and KPMG, which tracks the environmental impact of each credit card transaction. Monthly statements come with a comprehensive overview of the user’s carbon footprint, with statistical comparisons to the previous bill and suggestions on how to reduce future impact.

Along with their spending, people want to invest more wisely too. Cue a slew of apps that guide users to sustainable investments, such as Australia’s Goodments, which exhorts the user to “put your money where your heart is.”

Goodments encourages sustainable investing by matching investors to shares based on their values, thus incentivizing positive corporate behavior. China’s online payment giant Alipay is taking a gamification approach. The company has teamed up with Ant Financial Services Group to launch an environmental project named Ant Forest, which is accessed through the Alipay app. Users track their eco-friendly activities, such as paying bills online, to earn virtual “green energy” points and grow virtual trees. Once users earn enough points, Ant Financial plants a real tree. If current engagement rates continue, Ant Forest will plant 500 million trees in the next five years.

Services like these demonstrate the growing appetite for consumer-facing tools and services which make meaningful spending and investing less time-consuming.

Source: JWT

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