Founded in 2011 by Shivani Siroya, Tala provides small businesses and individuals access to financial services and working capital, to help them start and expand their businesses, and manage basic needs. In 2014, the company launched its mobile application to offer credit and collateral-free loans to consumers in Kenya and has since extended its services to the Philippines, Mexico, and India. Currently, Tala has more than 6 million users across these four markets, and the company claims to have lent $2.7 billion to its customers since its inception. The users, Tala said, “have used over 680,000 access points and mobile agents to cash out and repay, and have spent more than 108,000 hours reading over 156 educational articles in its app.”
According to Tala, 12,000 new users sign up every day to access credit. The company, realizing the need, wants to make credit more accessible, and with the new fund, plans to broaden its offerings, which will include crypto services. “We’ll use this investment to provide those services and accelerate the rollout of our new financial account experience, which provides fresh new tools to grow, save, and manage your money. We’ll also work to develop one of the first mass-market crypto products for emerging markets to help make crypto solutions more affordable and equitable for those who need them most,” Tala said.
Tala plans to use blockchain-based finance to improve its capital market strategy and connect investors and borrowers to its platform. Its partnership with Upstart and the Stellar Development Foundation (SDF)— two investors in the round, is critical in actualizing this goal.
With its artificial intelligence lending platform, Upstart has assisted banks and credit unions originate more than $13 billion worth of loans. As such, Upstart is expected to help Tala become even better in terms of its credit offerings. At the same time, The Stellar Development Foundation leverages interoperability with the world’s existing financial systems, and Tala will use the company’s know-how to leverage crypto to take its platform to the next level. Following the latest fundraise, Paul Gu and Denelle Dixon, the Co-founder of Upstart and the Chief Executive Officer of the Stellar Development Foundation respectively, will join Tala’s board of directors.
In addition to broadening its offerings, Tala plans to expand its team across the four markets it operates, and the United States, where it is based. The company also mentioned that it has plans to enter new markets, but did not specifically state which markets.
To provide the best experiences, we use technologies like cookies to store and/or access device information. Consenting to these technologies will allow us to process data such as browsing behaviour or unique IDs on this site. Not consenting or withdrawing consent, may adversely affect certain features and functions.
Functional
Always active
The technical storage or access is strictly necessary for the legitimate purpose of enabling the use of a specific service explicitly requested by the subscriber or user, or for the sole purpose of carrying out the transmission of a communication over an electronic communications network.
Preferences
The technical storage or access is necessary for the legitimate purpose of storing preferences that are not requested by the subscriber or user.
Statistics
The technical storage or access that is used exclusively for statistical purposes.The technical storage or access that is used exclusively for anonymous statistical purposes. Without a subpoena, voluntary compliance on the part of your Internet Service Provider, or additional records from a third party, information stored or retrieved for this purpose alone cannot usually be used to identify you.
Marketing
The technical storage or access is required to create user profiles to send advertising, or to track the user on a website or across several websites for similar marketing purposes.
