Microlender Kiva gets $3M grant from Google; Aims to tackle microfinance 2.0
Monday, December 16, 2013
Late last week Google’s philanthropic arm announced it had chosen to give online microlender Kiva a Global Impact Award, which comes with a grant of $3 million. Kiva President and cofounder Premal Shah says the funds will go to launch Kiva Labs, an effort to add more flexibility to microlending. “There are another 2.5 billion people who still don’t have access to capital. How do we reach the people who are truly at the end of the dirt roads?” Shah explained in a conversation late Friday afternoon.
Kiva has already crowdfunded $504 million in microloans from 1 million lenders since it was founded in 2005. Loans go to poor people in 73 countries and thus far Kiva says the repayment rate has been 99%.
Source: Forbes (link opens in a new window)
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