Interesting article at bottom on a startup company with an intrusive app and loan system for EVs in India. Of interest is the OCGFC profile of the main investor Pierre Morad Omidyar. And Pierre is also involved in a digital ID system for Africa aligned with Bill Gates and George Soros, so a name to be familiar with.
Pierre Morad Omidyar (born Parviz Morad Omidyar, June 21, 1967) is a French-born Iranian-American billionaire. A technology entrepreneur, software engineer, and philanthropist,[6] he is the founder of eBay, where he served as chairman from 1998 to 2015.[7][6] Omidyar and his wife Pamela founded Omidyar Network in 2004. As of 2023, Forbes ranked Omidyar as the 245th-richest person in the world with an estimated net worth of $8.7 billion.[8]
Omidyar is a long-term Democratic Party donor.[9] Since 2010, he has been involved in online journalism as the head of investigative reporting and public affairs news service Honolulu Civil Beat.[10] In 2013, he announced that he would create and finance First Look Media, a journalism venture to include Glenn Greenwald, Laura Poitras, and Jeremy Scahill.[11][12][13]
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Omidyar and his wife Pamela own properties in Henderson, Nevada,[49] and Honolulu, Hawaii.[50] According to Forbes, his net worth was US$13.1 billion as of January 2019.[32] He is a major donor to Democratic Party candidates and organizations.[51] Omidyar is a follower of the Dalai Lama.[52] In 2010, he joined Bill Gates and Warren Buffett as a signatory of The Giving Pledge, and has declared his intention to give away most of his wealth during his lifetime.[53] In 2019, he donated approximately $500 million to charitable causes.[54]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pierre_Omidyar
The philanthropic investment outfit Omidyar Network has taken a keen interest in the development of ID systems in Africa. It invested in the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (UNECA) to work with the African Union in the sector, and has been formulating and promoting the concept of ‘Good ID’. Omidyar Network sponsored the ID4Africa 2019 conference as a foundation partner along with the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and Open Society Foundations. Biometric Update caught up with Omidyar Network’s investment partner and digital identity specialist Magdi Amin at the event.
https://www.biometricupdate.com/201907/omidyar-network-hopes-to-ensure-african-digital-id-is-good-id
https://www.biometricupdate.com/202401/biometrics-and-psychometrics-used-in-loan-management-for-evs
By Bianca Gonzalez
RevFin, an Indian fintech company that uses biometrics and psychometrics in loan underwriting and management for electric vehicles, has received $14 million in funding led by Omidyar Network to continue expanding. The company says it is “building India’s largest lending company.”
RevFin uses an alternative underwriting technique that mixes psychometric and biometric “tests” to predict the likelihood that someone will pay back a loan.
The company uses a low touch digital model and uses an app to verify a customer’s identity. It uses biometrics to compare a video of an individual to the face on their ID document.
The app determines the customer’s honesty by having them respond to a series of questions about themselves referring to information that is already available in the public domain. RevFin also pulls phone SMSes and other data based on a customer’s documents, according to Inc42. It compares this information to determine if the customer is being honest.
Next, the customer will answer a series of questions that have no right or wrong answer, but reveal insight into the personality and behaviors that is believed to correlate with their likelihood to pay back a loan. It also may use data from a person’s social network to make inferences about a customer’s performance based on that of their network.
RevFin partnered with Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur to develop the psychometric testing method, Indian IT publication Dataquest reports. The company also plans to add voice-based authentication and sentiment determination in the future.
By using alternative methods to determine risk, the process facilitates auto loan access for Tier 2, 3 and 4 customers who may not have an established credit history, which will ultimately expand access to EVs.
“We are solving the problem for 44 percent of Indians who are financially excluded and cannot get a loan for buying an income-generating vehicle,” says Aggarwal in an interview with Your Story.
“We are trying to solve for financial inclusion as India has a huge credit gap driven by lack of education, geography, language barriers, and credit footprint,” he continues.
Philanthropic investor Omidyar Network, as well as the Asian Development Bank, Companion Capital Limited, a number of angel investors, and existing investors participated in the series B funding round.
Omidyar’s contributions to financial inclusion efforts also include support for ID4Africa and the Smart Africa project.
The company partners with local manufacturers and has already issued loans for over 34,000 EVs. It is set on financing 2 million more in the next five years.