AVPN hosted Nadia Widjaja, Principal Manager of Industry Engagement at Accion Venture Lab for a webinar on financial inclusion, specifically The Role of Fintech in Expanding Access to Finance for Underserved Segments.
Nancy shared with us some of Venture Lab’s work and took participants through many examples of portfolio companies that are bringing financial inclusion via financial technology to communities in all parts of the world.
Accion Venture Labs focuses on startups in emerging markets at the seed capital phase – investments are generally equity and quasi-equity in the range $100k USD – $500k USD. They offer a Capital Plus solution, where they leverage the expertise and networks of their organization to help portfolio companies. They rigorously Impact stress-test their investments, and have accepted around 2% of applicants (24 companies) since launch in 2012.
Examples of promising startups
DemystData in the US, firstaccess in East Africa, DESTACAME.cl in Chile are all working on credit scoring solutions for thin file customers. Revolution Credit & Aire are providing digital platforms for customer engagement and empowerment. Konfio and Tienda Pago are looking specifically at small business credit provision and facilitation. In India, AYE is focused on customer acquisition for cottage industry clusters while Varthana lends to affordable private schools. While these are more tech-light solutions, they offer exciting business model innovation.
Please watch to the video recording below for more details on the the webinar.
