By Pooja Thakur

March 5 (Bloomberg) — Morgan Stanley’s former country head for India, Narayan Ramachandran, was named a director at Janalakshmi Financial Services, a microfinance company that aims to extend financial services to the nation’s urban poor.

Ramachandran will also buy a minority stake in the microfinance company in its next round of fund-raising, Janalakshmi said in a statement yesterday. He remains a senior adviser to Morgan Stanley’s Indian operations after deciding to step down as managing director in January.

The former banker plans to work with non-governmental organizations in the South Asian nation and seek to influence public policy to ensure financial services are made available to more people, he said in January. Only 30,000 of the 600,000 towns and villages in the country have access to banking services, the central bank has said.

Ramachandran joined the U.S. company in 1996 in New York, and headed Morgan Stanley Investment Management’s global emerging markets and asset allocation businesses during his tenure there. He took the helm at the Indian unit in October 2007. He started his banking career at Goldman Sachs Group Inc.