HDFC Bank has acquired a 10% stake in CSC Grameen e-Store, a special purpose vehicle run by the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology, for an undisclosed amount, the Economic Times reported. The partnership between the country's largest private bank and CSC Grameen aims to deliver and scale access to financial services and banking products to semi-urban and rural customers. CSCs, or Common Service Centres, are a government initiative to provide rural jobs to Village Level Entrepreneurs (VLE) who act as agents for enrolling citizens into government schemes. CSC Grameen is a subsidiary CSC e-Governance Services India Ltd across the country which provide e-commerce, banking and finance as well as government services entirely through digital means. Unlike traditional CSCs, which also have digital operations, CSC Grameen is a step up operation wherein these VLE doubles as an e-commerce and banking correspondent. "CSC Grameen eStore is a ground-breaking eCommerce initiative by CSC SPV to promote digital ordering and delivering safely to the consumer doorstep. That which started as a humble beginning to serve the community during the COVID-19 Crisis, is turning into a flourishing Grameen eCommerce revolution," the website says. It is important to remember that CSCs were an integral part of the Aadhaar project, as these centres were used to enroll a significant proportion of the population onto the national health ID. They are also enrolment points for other government schemes like the Awas Yojana (Housing), Ayushman Bharat (Health Insurance) and Jan Dhan (financial inclusion bank account). "We are working…
