Meet the Last Mile Money Accelerator 2023 Cohort

Introducing the five innovative startups we’re partnering with this year

At IDEO Last Mile Money, we’re excited to announce the cohort of our third program, the 2023 Last Mile Money Accelerator. This year, we will be working with five innovative companies who are creating change at the last mile, with a specific focus on underserved women: Dvara SmartGold, Jigyasa Rurban, Leja, Oraan, and Wagely.

Each of these companies will receive high quality design support to further our mission of bringing world-class financial services to millions of last-mile users in emerging markets, especially women.

Criteria

At IDEO Last Mile Money, our mission is to improve access to financial services to millions of last-mile users in emerging markets. Today, this quickly-growing market is largely underserved by current digital financial ventures. The challenge is especially significant when it comes to women — nearly one billion women do not have financial access or use formal financial services.

For this year’s accelerator cohort, we specifically chose companies that:

• See women at the last mile as a key demographic to focus on for future growth
• Enable emerging women entrepreneurs to participate in digital financial services
• Boost the income of mobile money agents and micro-merchants

Meet the 2023 cohort

After evaluating over 300 applications, we’re excited to announce the five startups joining this year’s Last Mile Money Accelerator.

Dvara SmartGold

Dvara SmartGold provides gold-based micro-savings and loans to people in rural India — 90% of whom are women. They do this through MFI (Microfinance) distribution partners, with a reach of 25M+ last mile users. Agents help users at the last mile get onboarded and make deposits via doorstep delivery, a key feature that fits into women’s lives. Dvara SmartGold also provides doorstep services for assaying gold for loans which helps users access credit in a discrete and safe way.

With LMM, Dvara SmartGold plans to:

• Design an agent skilling and training program for agents to improve onboarding success rates
• Prototype ways in which Dvara can build a direct relationship with end users, and help agents engage with them more effectively

Jigyasa Rurban

Jigyasa Rurban provides interest free buy now, pay later loans (BNPL) for grocery purchases in rural India, with the goal of helping families living in rural India buy high quality groceries at affordable prices. 100% of their users are women, and they leverage the strengths of the self-help group model that women have familiarity with. Jigyasa Rurban is currently active in 500 villages, with a focus on reaching small, rural villages in some of India’s poorest states — Madhya Pradesh now, Rajastan next.

With LMM, Jigyasa Rurban plans to create and test a pathway for women within the buyer groups to become agents who process orders for the group and collect repayments. The goal is to develop confidence in a women community agent model by:

• Finding the right tools to improve the success in the moment of placing an order
• Designing the right training and incentive structures to ensure their continued participation

Leja

Leja is a record-keeping digital ledger for merchants that has now grown into a full stack merchant operations toolkit, which includes a float liquidity mobilisation feature for agents, and a working capital solution that is backed by a first loss default guarantee from an insurance provider. Additionally, Leja’s wallet is significantly cheaper and more accessible than existing alternates. Today, 60% of Leja’s users are women and most of their existing users are both merchants and agents.

With LMM, Leja plans to improve the Leja app experience to boost the digital and financial confidence of multiple different merchant groups on Leja, especially women agents and merchants.

Oraan

Focused on women customers, Oraan offers a mobile application that allows women to apply for a ROSCA (a digital savings and loan group) and manage their money portfolio. Oraan is enabling financial freedom and mobility for Pakistani women and their households by giving them access to savings and credit tools through digital ROSCAs. With a focus on simplicity, affordability, and security, Oraan reduces the barriers to financial participation, catering to diverse women users across literacy levels and geographies.

With LMM, Oraan plans to:

• Design an onboarding approach to increase trust and willingness among women customers to share their documents, for KYC
• Strengthen the digital community around Oraan’s women customers

Wagely

Currently based in Asia with a focus on Indonesia and Bangladesh, Wagely helps blue collar workers access earned wages before their pay day, providing a significantly cheaper alternative to payday loans — a 2% one-time transaction fee compared with up to 300% interest on informal payday loans. 40% of their users are women. Their long term vision is to be a digital bank for 1B+ factory workers in Asia — providing payments, insurance, savings tools, lending, and more for workers around the globe.

With LMM, Wagely plans to:

• To improve women’s financial literacy and understanding through the product
• Support field agents by driving user literacy during onboarding and creating a service blueprint for them

What’s next

Stay in the loop as we share updates over the course of the accelerator. Subscribe to our Substack or follow us on LinkedIn. For further inquiries, please contact LastMileMoney@ideo.com.

The 2023 Last Mile Money Accelerator team includes Becca Carrol, John Won, Kanika Kumar, Mira J and Hayden Simmons, with design support from Anukriti Kedia, Tolu Odusanya, and Sarah Asif.