Organisation: The Entrepreneurial Finance Lab (EFL)
Country : INDIA
Website : www.eflglobal.com
Language: English
Email: samir.ghosh@eflglobal.com
The Entrepreneurial Finance Lab (EFL) has emerged out of the work of its co-founders Bailey Klinger, a fellow at Harvard’s Center for International Development and Asim Khwaja a professor at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University who realised the need to develop non-traditional credit scoring tools that would enable lenders to identify high potential MSME entrepreneurs especially in emerging markets who often lack detailed credit histories and other traditional documented metrics of credit-worthiness and consequently are denied access to much-needed finance to run and grow their businesses. In 2008, Asim and Bailey launched the ‘Entrepreneurial Finance Lab’ project within Harvard’s Center for International Development to pilot test alternative screening tools in a network of financial institutions across Africa and Latin America.
During the next two years, the EFL worked with the world’s leading psychometric firms and entrepreneurship researchers to assemble a prototype credit-scoring tool using a psychometric survey combined with readily available information. In 2010, the Entrepreneurial Finance Lab became an independent organization that has developed and rapidly scaled-up tools to identify high-potential entrepreneurs using non-traditional credit scoring. In 2013 EFL entered the Indian market in partnership with Janalakshmi Financial Services after recognising the relevance of and need for its product in the Indian market where 92% of MSME businesses are run on self-finance. Since April 2013, EFL’s India partners have administered more than 10,000 EFL surveys across 14 states in North, West, and South India, and have disbursed more than 5,000 loans.
Organisation: bKash Limited
Country : Bangladesh
Website : www.bkash.com
Language: English
Email: syed.dastagir@bkash.com
Launched in July 2011, bKash is a mobile based financial service provider in Bangladesh. Through bKash one can top up mobile airtime credit, make payments, receive remittance from abroad, cash out from ATMs, save money and earn interest, etc. Recognising that less than 16% of Bangladeshis are connected to the formal banking system whereas over 70% have access to a mobile phone, bKash seeks to allow access to formal financial services through mobile phones to the people of Bangladesh, especially those at the bottom of the pyramid and living in remote rural areas. It enables financial transactions instantly through a secure transaction platform and has a vast distribution network of more than 95,000 agents nationwide. It is operating under the jurisdiction of the Bangladesh Central Bank as a subsidiary of BRAC Bank, a local bank. Already the second largest MFS in the world (in terms of wallet numbers), bKash’s customer base has rapidly grown to more than 10 million in only two and a half years of operations.
bKash services are offered seamlessly through all major mobile networks (Grameenphone, Banglalink, Robi and Airel) and hence covers 96% of all mobile users and can be accessed in 99% of the geographic area of Bangladesh. According to statistics recently announced by the CGAP (Consultative Group to Assist the Poor), as of March 2014, bKash is one of the most affordable MFS service available globally. Today, there is not a single village in Bangladesh where a bKash community based agent is not available to serve the unbanked.
Organisation: Transerv Pvt ltd
Country : India
Website : www.transerv.co.in
Language: English
Email: aditya@transerv.co.in
Organisation: CRIF High Mark Credit Information Services Pvt Ltd
Country : India
Website : www.crifhighmark.com
Language: English
Email: Subhrangshu.chattopadhyay@crifhighmark.com