InVenture's mission is to facilitate financial access in emerging markets. We offer a set of tools and services to solve this problem. Our first product is InSight.

InSight is a simple mobile enable tool that works via SMS to help low-income individuals, households and businesses perform daily accounting and cash-management. Data collected through InSight combined with demographic data is compiled into unique credit scores and shared with lenders to help individuals qualify and access affordable financial services tailored to their needs (i.e personal, business home & education loans).The foundation and use case for InSight has been based on a “Rules of Thumb” methodology focused on the need to separate business and personal accounts. Account separation is a staple rule in developed country entrepreneurship and provides an easy way to monitor whether the business is self-sustainable and to estimate the profitability of the business. It also encourages the business owner not to over consume and deplete the working capital in the business.

InVenture's goal is to provide a standardized global credit score for each individual, thereby revolutionizing the financial services sector around the world. Through InSight, InVenture will be able to increase financial literacy rates as well as increase the total available capital by improving efficiency, reducing risk, and lowering interest rates, hence increasing overall financial inclusion within developing communities.

Problem

There are an estimated 500 million individuals in India alone that lack credit scores and access to formal financial services. This lack of transparency makes it inefficient, risky and costly for financial institutions to deploy capital. Additionally, recent studies have found a strong association between understanding financial concepts, better financial decisions and household well-being. It has even been shown that financial literacy can improve business growth and savings rates by 6%.

Solution

Because there are over 600 million mobile subscribers in India, InSight works via SMS to help low-income individuals, households and businesses perform daily accounting and cash-management. Data collected through InSight combined with demographic data is compiled into unique credit scores and shared with lenders to help individuals qualify and access affordable financial services tailored to their needs (i.e personal, business home & education loans).The foundation and use case for InSight has been based on a “Rules of Thumb” methodology focused on the need to separate business and personal accounts. Account separation is a staple rule in developed country entrepreneurship and provides an easy way to monitor whether the business is self-sustainable and to estimate the profitability of the business. It also encourages the business owner not to over consume and deplete the working capital in the business.

Example

InSight helps in three ways: End-users utilize InSight as a daily accounting tool to help them build a strong foundation of financial management skills. InSight data will be used to develop an alternative credit score that lenders will use to qualify individuals for loans and other financial products. Individuals who previously would not have qualified for these products, due to lack of a formal repayment history, will be able to access personal, business, home and education loan services that will improve the quality of their lives. InSight data will enable InVenture to help the financial services industry as a whole by improving efficiency, reducing risk and lowering interest rates - thereby increasing overall financial access.

Marketplace

Currently, there is no other organization providing this specific use case of financial literacy, accounting and credit scoring through SMS. The data captured by InSight is an innovative approach to understanding how bottom-of-the-pyramid (BoP) households and businesses manage money. Since InSight is compatible with all types of mobile phones with no additional technology required, it has the potential for easy adoption amongst MFIs and NGOs. Lastly, InSight is free to end-users and has been built for scale. It requires users to send in two SMS messages per day, costing less than Rs.1 per SMS. It is built on two platforms, Telerivet and Salesforce. Each have established infrastructures that are built to scale to a high number of users. We face 3 main challenges: 1. Status quo: Our goal is to instill the habit of daily accounting. It will be difficult to main a high retention and usage rates. We overcome this issue through making InSight simple and fun to use. And by working with partners who are already established within the community. 2. Lack of Financial Literacy: Most of our users currently lack financial literacy making it difficult to understand the need for accounting and record keeping. We overcome this through training sessions which incorporate engaging and simple financial exercises. 3. Global Standard: For InSight to be successful, we will need global and industry wide acceptance of InSight scores as an alternative to traditional methods.