Chetna Sinha

Chetna Sinha, is the Founder-Chairperson of the Mann Deshi Bank and Mann Deshi Foundation.

Chetna has been awarded the Nari Shakti Puraskar, India’s highest civilian award for women who work in the area of women’s empowerment. She has served as a Co-Chair of the World Economic Forum in Davos (2018), Switzerland, and as a Co-Chair of Financial Inclusion at the W20 Summit (2018) in Argentina. On 11th March 2024, she was invited to speak at the inaugural session of the 68th Commission on the Status of Women (CSW) at the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) in New York City.

In 1996, Chetna Gala Sinha founded the Mann Deshi Foundation in Mhaswad, a drought-stricken area of Maharashtra, with the aim of economically and socially empowering rural women. In 1997, she set up the Mann Deshi Mahila Sahakari Bank – India’s first bank for and by rural women.

Today, the Mann Deshi Bank has 105,000 account holders and has facilitated loans exceeding 780 million, consistently innovating to introduce new financial products tailored to the evolving needs of female micro-entrepreneurs.

Mann Deshi runs Business Schools, a Community Radio and a Chambers of Commerce for rural women micro-entrepreneurs. To date, it has supported nearly half a million women.

With an ambitious goal, the organization reached one million women in 2024, reflecting Chetna Sinha's tireless dedication to transforming lives and fostering sustainable development within marginalized communities.