Tala, a US-based microfinance provider backed by internet technology group Alphabet, secured more than $30m yesterday in a series B round led by venture capital and growth equity firm IVP.
IVP, previously known as Institutional Venture Partners, invested alongside Ribbit Capital. Lowercase Capital, Data Collective, Collaborative Fund and Female Founders Fund.
Founded in 2011 as InVenture, Tala provides 30-day microloans to customers in underbanked areas in East Africa and Southeast Asia. It has built an app that enables it to create a credit score from scratch by utilising some 10,000 data points on each customer’s smartphone.
The company has so far issued more than $50m in loans to a total of more than a million customers.
In addition to hiring and product development, the financing will support an expansion into new markets in South Asia and Latin America, Tala CEO Shivani Siroya told Fortune. The company has raised $44m altogether, according to Fortune.
GV, the Alphabet unit then known as Google Ventures, invested as part of a $1.2m round led by Lowercase Capital in 2013 that included Collaborative Fund and Mesa+, and which took the company’s overall funding to $2.1m.
Collaborative Fund then led a $10m series A round in 2015 that also featured Google Ventures, Lowercase Capital and Mesa Ventures, the firm that manages the Mesa+ fund.