ImpactAlpha, April 24 – Tala, based in Santa Monica, offers small loans of $10 to $500 to people worldwide with no or slim formal credit files. It uses mobile and behavioral data to review loan requests, and disburses the funds through a mobile wallet. Tala has originated $300 million in small loans to 1.3 million customers in Kenya, Tanzania and the Philippines.
- Growth capital… The $65 million Series C round was backed by Revolution Growth — the growth-capital fund of Steve Case’s Revolution Ventures — along with IVP, Data Collective, Lowercase Capital, Ribbit Capital and Female Founders Fund. The company has raised $105 million in total to date.
- New markets… Tala will expand to Mexico and India.
Tala says it is tapping the market of more than 3 billion people around the world for whom traditional credit-scoring is inadequate. The company is among the growing number of fintech firms using non-traditional data to assess creditworthiness.
