Small-ticket finance in emerging markets

Viable small businesses and startups in emerging markets still can't raise the modest amounts of capital they need.

Currency risk, thin exit markets, political and macro shocks, and the cost of underwriting a small deal all push lenders and investors toward bigger, safer ones. Guarantees, blended finance and local-currency facilities exist to offset that, but these tools mostly go unused because using them is expensive and often inaccessible to small and medium enterprises. The interesting question is what changes when underwriting, currency management and guarantee reporting become cheap enough to automate.

I'm building and testing answers to that with lenders, founders, development finance institutions and people who invest back home. If any of that is your world, I'd love to hear from you.