Social Lender, a lending solution based on social reputation on mobile, online and social media platforms and major players in Nigerian fintech ecosystem, has been selected as a regional finalist for the Massachusetts Institute of Technology [MIT] Inclusive Innovation Challenge (IIC).
The Nigerian fintech firm is the only Nigerian start-up that made the Africa regional finalist for the challenge.
Other finalists are Forasna, a Cairo-based platform for blue-collar jobs; Farmline, a Ghana based agrictech startup that distributes content to farmers and 10 other technology startups companies in Africa.
Social Lenders and other finalists will proceed to regional events in five regions, which include US and Canada, Latin America, Europe, Africa, and Asia where they will pitch their solutions to a selection panel of regional innovation experts.
According to a statement from MIT, four winners from each region will proceed to the Global Grand Prize Gala at MIT on November 21, where $250,000 will be awarded to each of four grand prize winners.
“We have awarded over one million dollars in prizes to the future of work entrepreneurs in four categories that holistically represent the solution types that are necessary to build an economy that works for all in the digital era,” co-founder, MIT Inclusive challenge, Andrew McAfee, said.
Commenting on the feat achieved by the company, CEO of Social Lender, Faith Adesemowo, said the company emerged finalist on the strength of its service to the people.
“We have been solving real problems for real people. We provide a way of accessing formal credit to users using their social reputation score,” she said.
Adesemowo added that Social Lender used its own proprietary algorithm to perform a social audit of the users on social media, online and other related platforms and gives a social reputation score to users.
