Business
How can you trust if someone will repay a loan? Look at their smartphone.
By replacing traditional credit scores with mobile phone data, entrepreneur Shivani Siroya has pioneered an innovative way to think about trust.
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Shivani Siroya created a tool that allows anyone with a cell phone to build a financial track record.
Why you should listen
Shivani Siroya is the CEO & Founder of Tala, a company that facilitates financial access to small businesses owners around the world by providing mobile financial tracking tools and direct flexible financing in order to help these businesses and their communities lift themselves out of poverty. She was selected as a TED Fellow in 2013.
Siroya has a wide array of professional experiences in global health, micro-finance and investment banking. Prior to Tala, she worked health costing at UNFPA and Mergers & Acquisitions at Health Net and Citigroup.
Siroya is a 2011 Echoing Green Fellow and 2011Unreasonable Institute Fellow. She is also a blogger for the Huffington Post and has written on Microfinance 2.0 as well as small business growth in the U.S. She is also on the board of ReWork and Young Women Social Entrepreneurs.
Siroya holds a M.P.H in Health Economics and International Policy from Columbia University and a B.A. in International Relations from Wesleyan University.
Shivani Siroya’s TED talk
More news and ideas from Shivani Siroya
Global Issues
Awesome new video: A cell phone tool to help micro-entrepreneurs get loans
In the developing world, would-be entrepreneurs are easily able to get microloans. But getting access to formal financial institutions — the kind that give large-scale loans — well, that’s much more difficult. Because 70% of those who start small businesses simply don’t have a financial identity. TED Fellow Shivani Siroya has created a tool to […]
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