Two African startups have been selected for the Fintech Innovation Challenge at Making Finance Work for Women (MFWW) Summit 2019 on October 22-23 in Singapore.
The African startups that will present their solutions designed to support unbanked and underserved women’s economic security and prosperity at Making Finance Work for Women Summit are Bloom Impact from Ghana and Pula from Kenya. They will be joined by two other startups from Colombia and India.
Meet the startups:
1.) Bloom Impact (Ghana)
Bloom Impact is a digital marketplace empowering small businesses to learn about and access credit and savings products through their mobile phone. Through their data-driven matching and scoring algorithms, Bloom Impact provides financial institutions with new, qualified customers, significantly reducing their customer acquisition costs, risks and turnaround times. Bloom Impact aims to democratize how unbanked and underserved micro and small businesses get financial services that best meet their needs.
2.) Pula (Kenya)
Pula provides accessible, scalable climate insurance solutions for smallholder farmers by bundling insurance with agricultural inputs like seed and fertilizer. Pula uses technology, like satellite imaging and yield data, to determine insurance payouts.
It also collects and analyzes farmer data to give advice on good farming practices that increase yields and farm profits. Its mission is to improve agricultural productivity by reducing farming risk and providing agronomy advice to the underserved market of 1.5 billion smallholder farmers worldwide. Since 2014, it has facilitated index insurance coverage for over 1 million smallholder farmers across 11 countries in Africa and Asia.
The four finalists will receive 1-year membership into the Women’s World Banking Network of Partners, and the winner(s) will have the exciting opportunity to move on as finalist(s) to Monetary Authority of Singapore’s (MAS) Global FinTech Hackcelerator Demo Day at Singapore FinTech Festival (powered by KPMG Digital Village).
