Siroya personally lent to hundreds to manually test behavioral underwriting
Shivani Siroya · HIBT Lab! Tala: Shivani Siroya · Nov 17, 2022 · at 10:11
Shivani Siroya, founder of Tala, recounts how she began directly lending her own money to thin-file informal entrepreneurs while working on microfinance projects for the UN.
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“I decided to become the lender and I lent to SEMA. I started lending to hundreds of other people as well in the community and essentially came up with what I thought the risk calculation would be based on that firsthand or in-person data that I was seeing.”
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