Mumbai: Financial services major Citi India will provide $1.5 million to Hyderabad-based Indian School of Business (ISB) to study and recommend measures to promote financial inclusion and improve capital market's access to small investors and enterprises.

Announcing this here Thursday, Citi India chief executive officer Sanjay Nayar said that the grant would be provided through Citi Foundation and the study would be undertaken by the Centre for Analytical Finance (CAF) at the ISB.

The time span for the research project would be three years.

Nayar said that the primary objective of this programme "is to find out the changes needed that will have a positive impact on emerging financial markets and participants, including small investors, SMEs (small and medium enterprises) and micro entrepreneurs."

CAF will formulate recommendations to support regulators, practitioners, academics, and other opinion leaders to implement financial development in the country, Nayar said, adding that "the need of the hour is to extend financial inclusions to the two-thirds of our population, which are at present unconnected to the formal banking and financial system. The study is to find out the issues and the initiatives needed to bring about such inclusions."

The dean of ISB, M. Rammohan Rao, concurring with Nayyar, said: "If the economic growth has to be made more robust and inclusive then there is a critical need to ramp up financial growth in rural areas."