I made a list of people who needed just a little bit of money. And when the list was complete, there were 42 names. The total amount of money they needed was $27. I was shocked.

Business is about problem-solving, but it does not always have to be about maximizing profit. When I went into business, my interest was to figure out how to solve problems I see in front of me. That's why I looked at the poverty issue. I got involved in lots of things to address it, and one of them was money lending with loans and credits and savings accounts, and in the process I created Grameen Bank. So you can also have social objectives. Ask yourself these questions: Who are you? What kind of world do you want?

My vision for the future? Two things: to make credit a human right so that each individual human being will have the opportunity to take loans and implement his or her ideas so that self-exploration becomes possible. And second: that it will lead to a world where nobody has to suffer from poverty - a world completely free from poverty.

In the future the question will not be, "Are people credit-worthy", but rather, "Are banks people-worthy?"

The moment you say microfinance everybody wants to help you.

I was teaching in one of the universities while the country was suffering from a severe famine. People were dying of hunger, and I felt very helpless. As an economist, I had no tool in my tool box to fix that kind of situation.

Today, the concept of business is to make money. Making money is the name of the business.