Earlier today I met Ami Gosalia who leads growth initiatives at InVenture. InVenture is the business behind Mkopo Rahisi, an innovative micro credit Android mobile app that enables users to access unsecured mobile money loans in emerging markets like Kenya and Tanzania.

Mkopo Rahisi has been in Kenya for a year and a half and it that time they have given out over 50,000 loans using Safaricom’s hugely popular M-Pesa mobile money platform. Incidentally, Mkopo Rahisi means ‘easy loan’ in Kiswahili.

Mkopo Rahisi loans are delivered in a matter of minutes from application to credit scoring and delivery via mobile money. In order to do so, Mkopo Rahisi relies on an algorithm that uses machine learning to score over 10,000 data points for would be borrowers using aspects such as their mobile money transactional history and social media. These data points create a profile of the borrower that computes their credit score before determining whether they are eligible for a loan or not.

At this time, Mkopo Rahisi approves approximately 50% of the loans applied for with a very low default rate. One can borrow a loan of between Kes. 2,000.00 and Kes. 4,000.00 with a three week repayment period and a variable interest rate from 5% to 11%. The plan is to increase the loan limit to Kes. 10,000.00 by the end of the year.

Since launching in Kenya and Tanzania, Mkopo Rahisi has largely leveraged digital marketing on platforms like Facebook to drive their customer acquisition efforts with great success. In addition, customer referrals have also been instrumental over the last few months as the business is growing at a rate of 25% month-on-month.

Ami was kind enough to let me do a video interview with her this morning as below where she shared insights on the current performance of Mkopo Rahisi, as well as their future plans, going forward: