In Today’s episode we speak with Tiffany, CEO and Co-Founder of Aloi, a multi-award winning FinTech in Nepal. Aloi is enabling climate financing for grassroots entrepreneurs through real-time loan journey insights. They have a cashless-financing platform offering 3 features to track a full loan cycle for informal sector business loans: monitor loan usage, loan repayments, and payments.

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Let’s dive into it!

👉 You can find Tiffany here

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tong-tiffany/
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/aloiglobal/
• Website: https://www.linkedin.com/company/aloiglobal/

👉 And you can find Monica here:

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/monicamillares/
• YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@moni_millares
• TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@moni_millares
• Website: https://moni-millares.mystrikingly.com/

If you enjoy this pod, please follow and leave a 5 star rating on Spotify and a review on Apple podcasts

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Production and marketing by Monica Millares. For inquiries about being in the show, coaching, consulting, creative collabs, sponsoring the podcast or creating or editing your podcast email [email protected]

Disclaimer: This episode does not constitute professional nor financial advice and does not represent the opinion nor views of my current, past or future employers. The guest has agreed to record and release our conversation for the use of this podcast and promotion in social media.

tiffany,_aloi

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Introduction to Green Inclusive Finance

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LO's purpose is to make sure that green inclusive finance is truly green and truly inclusive. Like, how do we really make that financing go to the last mile, being able to support the green microentrepreneurs that are working in the informal sector, servicing clients at the last mile. We are building technology to make sure that this financing can skip a lot of the layers in the middle and then be monitored directly and then given microentrepreneurs.

Welcome Back, Tiffany!

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Monica: Hello, Tiffany, welcome to the show, or I should say, welcome back to the show.

Tiffany: It's so nice to be back. Thank you for inviting me back.

Monica: Thank you. Thank you. The pleasure is mine because like for basically for full disclosure, Tiffany and I met three, four years ago in an accelerator, you guys were just getting started, it was a UN accelerator.

Monica: Yeah. It was like very, early days. And then it was very early days of my podcast too. And that's why I say welcome back because back then we had a conversation, but now it's three, four years have passed, you've grown and it's amazing to have you have to have you back and listen to the full story.

Tiffany: Thank you so much. Yeah, we have grown a lot. It's crazy to just think back to it.

Purpose-Driven Fintech: Building a Better Future

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Monica: So to get things started this podcast is purpose driven fintech. So first question is how do we build more purposeful, purpose driven fintech fintechs?

Tiffany: Yeah, definitely. And I think there's more and more purpose driven syntax, right?

So it's not focused on finance or, focused on technology even, right? It's really about how do you bring different, very different people together to work together.

Monica: Yeah, definitely. So tell me a little bit about Adlai and what's your purpose.

Tiffany: Yeah, Aloe's purpose is to make sure that green inclusive finance is truly green and truly inclusive, like, how do we really make that financing go to the last mile, being able to support the green micro entrepreneurs that are working in the informal sector, servicing clients at the last mile.

We are building technology to make sure that this financing can. Skip a lot of the layers in the middle and then be monitored directly and then given directly and lynched directly to my partners.

Understanding Green and Inclusive Finance

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Tiffany: Yeah, green finance is related to sectors that are generally climate related these days, or making sure that we grow the green economy and make sure that we produce products that are reusable, right? Circular economy. While it's a little bit of a vague term, it's very much needed to make sure that our world going forward is sustainable and that sustainable businesses can be supported by financial investments.

Monica: Good. And then what's. The second part of that was green inclusive finance. What's inclusive finance?

Tiffany: Inclusive finance is making sure those who are investable and deserving of finance can actually access financing. And right now, because a lot of the financing historically has relied on credit histories relied on collateral that people have, that means the vast majority of the world is excluded.

Challenges and Opportunities in Nepal

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Monica: Yeah, and then to go deeper like you are operating in Nepal, right? Yeah, just wanted to double check that it's like it makes in my I haven't been to Nepal I would love to go to Nepal go hiking with you But in my mind and I may be wrong it comes Like the word green inclusive finance and Nepal is like it comes with a whole package.

Tiffany: Yeah, absolutely. Nepal and most countries actually have so much investment potential in terms of encouraging the green economy to grow. Whether that is bringing in green technologies so that access to those green technologies and can build businesses around them businesses that are future oriented really right?

Monica: Beautiful.

Impact and Innovation in Fintech

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So what is your take on how What do we need to do as FinTechers today, such that we can have 10 times impact in five years time?

Tiffany: Yeah, that's a great question, really. And that's something we, people who work in social enterprises then, and especially technology, social enterprises think about all the time.

For us, it's really looking at where the future is going for the rest of the world, and then looking at. If we continue on the same trajectory right now, the people we work with, really the informal sector micro entrepreneurs. Will they be reaching that state? And the obvious answer is no. So how do we get there?

Financial services, honestly, if you grow up in a place where it's very prevalent to everyone, then you probably have access to that. But for us, where we work, you don't even have basic access to that. So it's building that access that is really the main problem.

Monica: Yes. Can you expand a little bit deeper? I know your business model, right?

Many people come to podcasts and say, paraphrasing what you said, they say, Hey, let's create better user experience. And I don't want the, what you just said, I don't want it to get translated into, let's create better user experience. Can you then go deeper and explain what Alloy is doing when it comes to putting the experience layer on that technology?

Tiffany: Absolutely.

The Role of Technology in Financial Inclusion

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So for example, traditionally loans are given out based on credit histories. They're based on how much you have, what you have done to prove it already. But I'll always model really is. Lending based on actions, what you're going to do in the future, right? So our technology tracks three main things. One is how loans are being used.

So for example, a loan that is lent to a dairy farmer can only be used at dairy farmer related vendors. So where do this is livestock insurance or cattle feed or veterinarian services or medicine. They can only use it in that ecosystem, but nowhere else, meaning that they are proving they are credit worthy by using the loan in the right way and allowing that to be monitored.

And so nobody knows how much income they're actually getting. So our system helps digitize this payment from the buyer through the dairy cooperatives to the farmers so that they're not, they now have an individual credit history instead of just a cooperative level credit history. And then the last part is building on that.

We also are able to capture some of the loan repayment through these daily transactions or weekly transactions. When the dairy trader comes and buys the milk from the farmer, their loan can be daily deducted. The repayment can be deducted from this. So this means that we are building models where your repayments are much more frequent.

Monica: Yeah, I love that as an example of when we say 10 times impact, I'm like, that is what 10 times impact looks like, which is amazing.

So just to build on that concept of having 10 times impact, not only you, but like us as an industry. Let's assume that we do have 10 times more impact in five years time. How do we measure it? How do we look back and say, yeah, we did it.

Tiffany: Yeah, that's also measurement is another really, good question, but I think right now what's not being measured is a lot of the impacts are not directly related to income or related to investment amounts, right?

And whoever is selling to that. What we really would like for there to be more measurement is these softer forms of impact. I would say that are harder to measure and might have much more of a ripple effect throughout communities.

Monica: Cool. And all of these, of course, needs to be done in a sustainable manner, right?

Tiffany: Yeah honestly, it's it's something I feel has been argued for over 30, 40 years.

And I'm not sure we're getting really closer to an answer. But for our purposes, the sustainability is that if we can build an economy that is based on renewable energies, based on renewable resources, and have equality and inclusion in that economy. Then it will be much more sustainable and it can grow to accommodate the needs in that economy.

Monica: Beautiful. And of course, whether it's sustainability, impact, purpose we cannot talk about purpose driven fintechs without talking about people and leadership as such.

Empowering Women Entrepreneurs

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Monica: So Adoi is a female founded business. To women, what advice would you give to women looking to start a business? I think

You just have to start and you cannot be scared about every step and yeah You can't think through every single step. You just have to start and If we really do not change anything in the world, this is actually, it's, I'm more scared of this statistic than I'm more, I'm more scared of this. I'm more scared of this.

Monica: Don't worry.

Tiffany: There's one data point that I really love. And that is if nothing changes right now in terms of our actions gender parity in the world will take another 300 years. At the best case scenario. So that data point is something that I drives me every single day, because I am more scared of that data point than I am scared of failing, to be honest.

So even if we fail, even if not every step is a full step or successful, it still means we still need to take that micro step, right? That really drives us in building this business.

Monica: I love it because exactly 300 years is not, it's not that it's just not acceptable. It's just. It's not an option. It's,

Tiffany: yeah none of us will be around in 300 years.

Monica: The next generation or the next generation. So exactly.

Monica: a very good point.

It's a everyday micro wins and actions. Yeah. Beautiful.

Aloy's Journey and Vision

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Monica: So now coming back to Aloy, who is a two female founded business again. So we said at the beginning, you're based in Nepal for anyone who has not been to Nepal. Can you bring it to life to us?

Tiffany: Yeah, Nepal is a really beautiful country and it's filled with gigantic mountains, of course, as everyone knows and also has a lot of potential in terms of growth and in terms of bringing in a green economy, bringing in really new technologies to it.

And. That means almost all of them have trouble accessing the right level of financing for them, right? They might be able to access a little bit of financing, but if they really want to grow and make a big investment in their business, they don't have the ability to get the right level of financing.

Monica: Let me paraphrase that. Basically, you're saying, hey, they, your customers take home, let's say, 300 a month, but they have a lending gap of 3, 000?

Tiffany: Yeah, or more, depending on the types of business assets they want to buy, right?

If you want to buy a substantial electric vehicle, then that would cost a lot more. It is a big gap in terms of compared to the income, how much their.

Monica: Yeah, so can you go a little bit deeper into that problem? You said they don't have access. To this financing, why, yeah

Tiffany: there's different levels of financing, right?

And then they might be able to go to microfinances, but then it's a group loan model. They have to build up a credit history for a very long time. And also they still require collateral for this level of financing if they are even able to get that much from a microfinance institution. There's also savings cooperatives that are very local organizations, built by a group of members.

But again, here the requirements are even higher and the interest rates are even higher. So there's really no middle ground. And even if you start out at savings cooperatives and go to microfinances to make that jump between a microfinance and a commercial bank is almost impossible.

Monica: It sounds like the, how you paint it, It sounds hard.

Monica: So usually who, could be your customers? How did you segment them?

Tiffany: Yeah, so we work in the electric vehicle sector and we also work in the agriculture sector and in those we work with specific vehicle types like E scooters or E rickshaws and, Safa temples, which are electric mini buses are in have been around for years.

So, we work in these different sectors and each sector is characteristic and also in terms of locations. So we work with that and in agriculture, we focus on some main commodities. Dairy, coffee and soon tea are one of our focuses. Making sure that we work within value chains that are more established, but also have more growth oriented entrepreneurs that really want to invest in their businesses and grow.

Monica: Yeah. So they are also established businesses. It's not me baking or doing something as a solopreneur, I might say, but it's, I'm a. I've taken the step to say, Hey, this is a business and I'm going to invest in it.

Tiffany: Yeah. So you could be a solo entrepreneur, but you really want to grow your team to five people or 10 people, right?

Like you want to triple your output. That's the level of investment. Of course it's completely fine if you want your business to stay the way it is, but there are entrepreneurs that really want to grow, but cannot demonstrate this. Right now, they cannot demonstrate that they have the attitude and they have the ability and they're investable.

Tiffany: Yeah, so we assess them in two different ways.

One is pre loan. So sometimes we already start by tracking the income, especially if they're part of a cooperative, right? So we start by tracking that and seeing how consistent they are. And then we also have our own credit scoring process, although that is not our main technology unique point, but we do have our own credit scoring process.

It's both sides that we're able to work.

Monica: Amazing. And then coming back to the origins basically of the company as such, we talked about that you used to do loan monitoring and now the software is also used to do payments to platforms and micro repayments of loans. Can you tell us for this evolution, how did you go from only lending to now payments?

Tiffany: Yeah we were listening to our customers really and customers on that side, it's the banks and the lenders, right? So we kept hearing that your product is great in terms of one side of it, but there is a whole loan cycle, right? The loan goes out, you monitor it, but then how does it come back? And we took that feedback very seriously and we started figuring out what is actually possible.

Monica: perfect.

And then at some point you also mentioned, Oh, when we were chatting the other day, you talked about transparency. Yeah, that basically your payment system gives transparency on how basically that money was used to buy those specific goods. Can you talk to us more about that use case?

Tiffany: Yeah, for sure. In terms of price transparency and in value chains, that's mostly in agriculture and specific commodity crops.

And of course, they perform a very essential function, and she wasn't looking to take them out of the equation. What she was looking at was Understanding if each farmer really is being paid fairly and the reason for that is not just because of price transparency, but because she wants the farmers to really be loyal and sell her the best coffee, right?

Sell her more coffee and sell her the best coffee. And then, of course, if using that data, we can help them access loans and increase their production even better so that she can buy more and export more. So, that's how we started with karma coffee. So we started using our same system and digitizing the payment from the buyer to the aggregation points and then on tracking to the farmers level.

Blockchain and Transparency in Agriculture

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Tiffany: Are you using blockchain technology? Yes. Our technology is backed by blockchain. So we're on the Hyperledger Fabric Network blockchain. Whether the client specifically wants to use that or not is up to them.

So we have that integrated and we also have smart contracts and functions integrated. So that is definitely an option if there's more automation within the process. Awesome.

Monica: I want to stop there. And then for anyone who's listening and it's a I'm not, I Know about blockchain, but don't know about blockchain.

Can you explain to us like why the blockchain enables these transparency? Because this is a beautiful use case.

In addition to that, I think going forward, what's really important is to build that foundation so that the data can be easily Shared within different systems, right? And so that's also 1 of the motivations to make sure we build for that future.

Monica: But how about the smart contracts that you said that you're using?

How do you put them in place?

Tiffany: Yeah, so it's a, it's part of the blockchain technology that we're using smart contracts are possible and for example, what we're exploring right now is insurance payouts. So we're working with insurance companies and they want to automate some of those payouts if in the case of let's say weather disasters and the payout emissions can be automated.

So you can have a chain of tracking of that whole disbursement of insurance payouts.

Monica: Yes. And that's what I love about your business. It's not that it is purpose driven and because this is the thing, and it is very tech driven as well. It's not old legacy tech. It is like blockchain based smart contract, purpose driven.

It's a good, I'm like good on you guys. And since the beginning, you like when we spoke three, four years ago, you were already on the blockchain back then. It was not like, Oh, we've made a decision to change.

Tiffany: No, yeah, from very start, we knew this is, again, that philosophy seeing where the future is going, and we don't want to build something that's only useful today.

Monica: Yes, and you use the word value chain a bit ago, can you then expand and you also mentioned the dairy industry and that it's big in Nepal.

Can you expand on the use case that you have within these value chain within the dairy industry?

Tiffany: Yes, absolutely. Dairy is the second largest agriculture industry in Nepal. Actually, if you come here, you'll notice that every street corner has a small shop selling their fresh milk dairy products, paneer cheese, ghee.

That level of investment. So we work with this umbrella organization of all the dairy cooperatives across the country. It's called CDCAN, and they have over 700, 000 farmers under their umbrella who are growing producing milk and selling milk every day. We work with them and through them work with these specific cooperatives so that we can.

Help first implement the tracking system for their income, and then when their date, when there is enough data and there is enough loan requests, we bring that whole bundle to a bank so that they can lend directly to the farmers, but through these cooperatives. Making sure that the farmers are getting better interest rates and larger access to loans, but still managed through existing systems that they know we're not trying to replace anyone, right?

A lot of them want to buy more actually. So they want to help increase production. And so we're digitizing their payments to the dairy farmers so that they can get more loans to increase that production.

Monica: Love it. I'm like, I love your business. Every time that I speak with you, I'm like, Oh, I love that business.

It's really, cool. So what is your, what's your big mission?

Tiffany: Our big vision is really going back to green inclusive finance, right? Understanding where that can go and how that can go. And so we think of ourselves as a digital sandbox. We have built technology that can easily collect data to test out new loan types and new sectors and new ways to lend to informal sector entrepreneurs.

What we're saying is let us use our technology to help de risk sectors that you are interested in entering. And once we have enough data, then let's lend together and we can still use our technology to monitor. So that's our biggest goal. Partnership play. Exactly. Yeah. And that's, I think similar with the dairy sector, right?

Again, we're not trying to replace anyone. What we see is there are structures that work very specific things, and they're good for that. So why don't we use technology to fill in the parts that are not good and then connect? And that has always been values like in terms of our values of how we work with our customers.

Monica: Amazing.

Resilience and Leadership in Entrepreneurship

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Like, how have you managed that roller coaster?

Tiffany: Yeah, that's a really good summary, I think, of entrepreneurs. And sometimes I think we forget how crazy we are, because everyone around us is crazy. And we're like, we're just normal but yeah, it does take a lot of resilience and determination.

There is that roller coaster, but as long as you keep taking those steps and you're self compassionate about it, and you're happy with where you are happy with where you're going. And if things go wrong, still okay with it then that's how you build resilience.

Monica: I love it because yeah it's, a long term game.

Tiffany: Yeah, absolutely. It's very much a long term gain. And not just in terms of the company, look, like things like start all over for us, come and go. They really can. Anything can happen. COVID can happen again, and we're gone tomorrow. It really can happen, but I think the resilience and the self compassion and the confidence in your own skills that you're building every single day, that will never leave you.

And even if it's not this company, it will be something else in the future. So that I think is the most important lesson.

Tiffany: Yeah. Oh, I think I'm most appreciative of my co founder. It really is, such a, such a. I don't know, luck, if you can call it that it's a fake coincidence that we were able to meet at the right time, build a company in the right time and also find supporters of us and work together, work through problems, work on communication work on building all of that together.

I think that really is the biggest lesson and I'm sure lots of people do it on their own, but I am unbelievably thankful that I have my co founder.

Tiffany: Thank you.

Monica: Good. Okay.

Final Thoughts and Farewell

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Monica: So as we approach towards the end of the episode, two more questions. What keeps you, what's the strategic question in your mind that keeps coming up and coming up keeps you awake?

Tiffany: Yeah, that's a really good question. I think strategy in terms of how to balance growth external and internal, right?

It's always almost always a catch 22, right? Because you, need to grow. It's a chicken and egg. Basically, right? You, grow externally and then you have to grow internally in terms of the team. And then you grow internally, and then you're pushing the external growth also. So it's a balance between essentially that how much can we push and how much can our team handle and how much do we bring on.

Monica: Yeah. So if there was one thing, only one thing that you could change that could make the lives of.

FinTechers, customers and investors better. What could that be?

Tiffany: That's a really good question. I don't know why there's so many things I would love to change. But I would truly think it's more voices around the table. We talked about women involvement. But I really think it's also involvement of, let's say, grassroots entrepreneurs that we work with, right?

Monica: I'm like beautiful way to end.

Tiffany, it's been an absolute pleasure having you in the show. Hopefully I'll see you again, face to face in KL or somewhere here in Asia.

Tiffany: Absolutely. Asia's not that big. So definitely you're very welcome to Nepal anytime and such an honor to be on your podcast again and best of luck for everything.

Monica: Thank you. The honor is absolutely mine. Okey dokey, everyone. Thank you so much. See you next week. Ciao. Ciao.