HN user
Preventing a company from offering a free product in no way serves the consumer.
In a general context, a company practicing 'predatory pricing' may do so to drive the other competitors out of business. Once that happens, it's free to raise prices to monopolistic levels which would end up hurting consumers eventually.
Interest rate is basically the price of money. In a developing economy like India, growing at 8-10% the demand for money is greater as a result, it's price is also greater.
If you make a term/fixed deposit in India for a year it attracts an interest rate of 8-9%. Education, Car and Home Loans for credit-worthy individuals from established banks range from 12-18%. Personal Loans, not backed by a security range from 20-24%. So a micro-finance institution lending at 24% p.a to 'non-professionals' in rural areas with no known credit history is not bad at all considering the risk that they take up and the cost of funds that they incur(as pointed out by someone else)
In fact you can make out not only the number of characters blurred but also some of the characters themselves just by zooming in.