ICICI Bank has announced that it will transform 100 villages into ‘Digital Villages’ in as many days as part of its continuing effort to provide digital ecosystem across the country, including rural India. The Digital Village programme encompasses digitization of transactions & commercial activities, vocational training and credit facility to help villagers earn a sustainable livelihood.

• These villages, which will be spread across the length and breadth of the country, will enable villagers to use digital channels for banking and payments transactions.
• Under this initiative, villagers will be able to open bank accounts using Aadhar-based e-KYC and make cashless payments to retail stores through an SMS/USSD-based mobile solution.
• Additionally, ICICI Bank in association with ICICI Foundation for Inclusive Growth (ICICI Foundation), the CSR arm of the ICICI Group, will impart vocational training to nearly 10,000 underprivileged villagers, especially women, to help them earn a sustainable livelihood.
• The bank will also extend credit facilities to the trained villagers in a bid to boost self-employment opportunities in the villages.
• Its success motivates us to scale up the initiative a big way—we will now convert 100 villages across the country into digital villages.
• We will create a cashless ecosystem at these villages, provide vocational training to 10,000 villagers in first 100 days and offer them credit linkages so that the villagers can start their own business ventures.
• This ambitious move is inspired by the immense success of India’s first digital village, created by ICICI Bank at Akodara in Sabarkantha district of Gujarat, said MD & CEO Chanda Kochhar.