In the closing months OF 2008, Surga Thilakan was involved with a $8-billion structured loan for a client at Goldman Sachs in the US. Shortly thereafter, she was in Bangalore at Ujjivan Financial Services, this time involved with a Rs 8,000 loan to a group of urban poor women. It was here that she, just 29 then, found her calling. "My job was intellectually challenging but not meaningful." This got her to re-locate to India and begin at Ujjivan, where she was involved in designing and launching innovative loan products for the urban poor. "Ujjivan familiarised me with urban poverty-related issued and gave me a first-hand feel of the core issues facing the poor." Later, she and her batchmate at Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad, and now her husband, Sreeraman Vaidyanathan, gradually began focusing on ensuring that the poor got regular income.