It was at a conference in Nairobi that Nadia Sood made the initial introduction to an organisation with – wait for it – 70 million members.
The CEO and co-founder of CreditEnable, a fintech company based in London and Mumbai, had been invited to address the conference on the problems small and medium-sized businesses (SMEs) have in gaining access to affordable debt.
It’s an issue worth tackling. SMEs in high-income countries provide 62% of jobs and 64% of GDP compared to 45% and 33% for developing economies, according to a report by the International Finance Corporation (IFC), a division of the World Bank.
If that gap was to be closed only a few percentage points by providing SMEs with the means to modernise and expand, the impact on jobs and wealth would be enormous.