WHO’S WHO IN MICROFINANCE: A Little World

A Little World (ALW) is a company which creates technologies used in extending branchless banking services to the poor. While ALW is a for-profit corporation, its vision is to “touch a billion people through innovative technologies and alliances at the bottom of the pyramid for delivering multiple financial services at the lowest cost through mainstream financial institutions.” Currently, the company’s main project is the ZERO platform, which provides banking technologies via mobile phones.

The goal of the ZERO platform is to enable banking services without forcing users to travel to a physical branch location, which take a considerable amount of time in some rural areas. It also allows banks anf MFIs to reach rural areas without having to set up costly branches. The hub of the platform is the local Customer Service Point (CSP), which acts as the local outpost of the affiliated financial institutions. From this point, customers use biometric identification, voice commands and smart cards to process many different transactions. Some of these services, such as transfers between accounts, do not require interaction with third parties. Others, however, enable transactions between customers and local microfinance institutions or area merchants.

The Zero Microfinance and Savings Support Foundation (ZMF) is a nonprofit organization that is closely affiliated with ALW. This organization “creates the last mile operations network in villages.” In other words, it will help the banks perform the services enabled by the ZERO platform technology. Specifically the group will enroll customers, provide support and training to the CSP and collect cash on behalf of participating banks.

To provide these services, ALW has partnered with many different organizations. The company has close ties to the State Bank of India (SBI), which it works with on many levels. The company also works with Nokia, though the exact nature of their relationship was not immediately obvious from the company’s website.

The ZERO platform is not the first major undertaking by ALW. The company has completed at least two previous projects, which it sold to investors. MCHQ, which is now called mChek, is a mobile payment solution developed by ALW and sold in 2006. Go-Mumbai is an automatic fair collection mechanism, which employs smart cards. It is used in buses and railway stations. This technology was also sold in 2006, although ALW retains the right to use the technology in some contexts.

Both ALW and ZMF were founded by Anurag Gupta, who is also the current chief technical officer (CTO). The company’s chief executive officer is Sonjoy Mohanty who has previously worked for Kerala Ayurveda Limited, Bharti Airtel, Infotel Business, Escotel, Caltex and Asian Paints. He holds an MBA from IIM, Lucknow and an MA in Business Economics from Delhi University.

ALW recently finished a round of funding in which it raised a total of USD 6.3 million from the Bellwether Microfinance Fund, Legatum Ventures and the India Financial Inclusion Fund. Legatum also invested USD 2m in ALW in an earlier round of funding which also included Enam Financial. Further financial data was not available on the ALW website.

By Greg Casey, Research Assistant

Additional Resources:

A Little World: Home

ALW: Vision

ALW: Zero

ALW: ZMF

ALW: Partners

ALW: Track Record

ALW: Management

MicroCapital Story, September 18, 2008: A Little World (ALW) of India Closes Series of Financing Totaling $6.3m from Investors including the Bellwether Microfinance Fund, the India Financial Inclusion Fund and Legatum Ventures

MicroCapital Story, October 9, 2007: Indian Financial Inclusion Firm, A.Little.World, Offers Mobile Microfinance Banking and Draws Big Investors: Enam Financial and Legatum Capital

mChek: Home