R EA L ESTATE & FINANCE SH I VA NI SI ROYA
[SANTA MONICA]
CREDIT WHERE CREDIT IS DUE Shivani Siroya’s fintech brainchild InVenture is harnessing cellphone data to empower emerging markets BY VALERIE HARTMAN
T
wo-point-five billion. It’s a big number, and one that is top of mind for InVenture CEO and Founder Shivani Siroya. This is how many people across the world don’t have a credit score or access to formal markets or formal financial systems, and it’s this number that Siroya and her Santa Monica–based company are working to chip away at each day, with efforts currently focused on the emerging markets of East Africa and Southeast Asia. Founded in 2012, InVenture is a mobile technology startup that has developed software providing these very people with
a real-time financial identity, providing a credit score as well as loans to people in emerging markets who would never have been provided access otherwise. Its founder Siroya, 32, originally from India and raised in the U.S., always knew she wanted to do something with emerging markets. After finishing grad school studying econometrics at Columbia, she headed to the world of investment banking, where she got a firsthand education on how formal markets worked. She also learned where there was a gap. Banks and institutions have not created credit products for populations in developing countries, as people in these countries are perceived to be risky since there is no record of their financial history. This is because everything they spend is in cash, in a system based on trust. So Siroya set out on a mission while working at the UN Population Fund: She was going to try to understand what was happening in terms of the movement of money in these markets. “I became a walking QuickBooks,” she says, shadowing people from morning to night to see how much they were spending each day, and what they were spending it on. It’s a reoccurring theme with Siroya; exhaustive, extensive research fueled by passion.
Real Estate & Finance Profile (Siroya)
LinkedIn to a Solution
Photo: Neil
Starting a company was never Siroya’s goal. “I didn’t do this to start a company. I did this to solve a problem.” Her approach was to learn as much about this problem as she possibly could, which began with sending 1,500 messages on LinkedIn.
SHIVANI SIROYA Founder, CEO, InVenture
Photo: Neil G.Photo: Philips Neil G. Philips
AGE 32 EDUCATION Wesleyan (B.A.,
- 64 -
CSQ.COM / SPRING 2016 - Q2
government and international relations), Columbia (M.P.H., finance and health econometrics RESIDENCE Santa Monica FAMILY Husband, Chet NETWORKS / ORGANIZATIONS
The Stellar Development Foundation, TuesdayNights
INVENTURE
FOUNDED 2012 HQ Santa Monica OFFICES Manila, and Nairobi EMPLOYEES 35 INVESTED $11M