Rani Deshpande

Senior Financial Sector Specialist

Rani Deshpande’s work with CGAP has focused on meaningful financial inclusion for youth and women, financial services for gig platform workers, and earlier in her career, pro-poor savings and money transfer services. Her consulting work spans applied research and analysis to inform the design of financial services and livelihoods programs for underserved populations, as well as policies conducive to their success.

Rani also has extensive experience in program management, serving as the Director of Save the Children’s $42M portfolio youth and off-farm livelihoods development work in over a dozen countries. Prior to that, she led YouthSave, an initiative that assisted over 150,000 teens to open tailored savings accounts and save over $1.2M. She has also served as a strategy consultant to US nonprofits at The Bridgespan Group, and provided direct technical assistance to MSMEs in India and West Africa.

Rani earned her undergraduate degree from Stanford University and a dual Master’s degree in International Affairs and Business from Columbia University. She is fluent in French and Marathi and speaks intermediate Spanish and basic Hindi.

By Rani Deshpande

Blog

Financial Services for Platform Workers: Lessons from Partnerships

Platforms in Kenya are partnering with licensed financial services providers to offer credit, insurance and savings to their workers. Here are some lessons emerging from these partnerships.
Blog

Financial Services for Gig Workers: An Intersection of Needs in Kenya

Gig workers in Kenya cite savings, loans and medical insurance as top financial services they would like to access via gig platforms. While platforms across Africa increasingly offer credit and insurance, savings appears to be under-supplied.
Blog

COVID-19 Exposes Risks and Opportunities in Kenya's Gig Economy

Gig workers in Kenya report major disruptions to business and depleted savings due to COVID-19 (coronavirus), while platforms signal eagerness to facilitate government-to-person payments or loans to hard-hit workers.
Blog

Paying Attention to the Financial Needs of Youth

Despite growing interest in youth financial services as a means to financial inclusion, until recently there has been precious little publicly available information on what youth in developing countries want from financial institutions.
Research

Country-Level Savings Assessment Tool

This Technical Guide explains the areas of analysis covered in a CLSA, the methodology used, and how the CLSA can be tailored to meet the needs of the commissioning agency.