How This Fintech Founder Succeeds by Taking the 'First Risk'
In international finance, banks take as few risks as possible on customers. If Shivani Siroya wanted her microfinance startup to truly disrupt the model, she'd have to embrace risk-taking first. Shivani Siroya had built her Los Angeles-based small-business lending platform Tala methodically. The founder and CEO created a mobile platform for unbanked individuals--i.e., those without formal credit histories--that analyzes their likelihood of repaying their loans, which vary between $10 and $500. In 2013 and 2014, the business successfully expanded throughout Kenya. But customers weren't happy. Siroya had a realization: "I don't think I'm having the impact I want us to be having," she told Inc.'s What I Know podcast. It was her startup's partnership with traditional banks that was slowing down communications with and lending to customers--and the banks weren't always taking Tala's advice to re-lend to existing customers, Siroya says. They were s