Bridging the trade financing gap for Sri Lankan small businesses, with Lakshan De Silva (iLoan)

How to Lend Money to Strangers

Brendan le Grange

Credit, Fintech, Management, Lending, Banking, Business, Careers

5 • 2.6K Ratings

🗓️ 7 June 2023

⏱️ 23 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Recycling is a good thing, right? Well, in that case, let me recycle this from yesterday’s show notes. Most consumers borrow to manage expenses. It’s different for SMEs, though, who often borrow to drive income. As such, being denied credit is not just about having their lifestyle curtailed, it’s about having the business growth, and sometimes even their business survival, put at risk.

“When iloan launched back in 2018, the lending market in Sri Lanka was $5 billion, almost 40% was which was raised from loan sharks and individuals who have very dubious practices of charging excessive interest rates, as well as very unpleasant collection methods”. Lakshan da Silva is a Sri Lankan serial entrepreneur whose goal is to fix this for mom and pop stores around the island.

Lakshan is very approachable on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lakshan-de-silva-a9b11328/

Or you can look into his many ventures:

iLoan is at https://www.iloan.lk/

HyperGlase is at https://hyperglade.com/

Spectrify is at http://www.spectrifyai.com/

Also, and I really hate to link this, but if you’re interested in the terrible cricket game in question, you can see the drama here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TKeOX9AAJXg (I hate-watched it, and was just reminded that poor old Lance Klusener was involved again, that guy deserved better)

You can learn more about myself, Brendan le Grange, on my LinkedIn page (feel free to connect), my action-adventure novels are on Amazon, some versions even for free, and my work with ConfirmU and our gamified psychometric scores is at https://confirmu.com/ and on episode 24 of this very show https://www.howtolendmoneytostrangers.show/episodes/episode-24

If you have any feedback, questions, or if you would like to participate in the show, please feel free to reach out to me via the contact page on this site.

And finally, if you’re in need of more banking podcasts, you can find related content at https://blog.feedspot.com/banking_podcasts/

Regards, Brendan

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	When you were a job painting, do you ever get the feeling that the feeling that the
0:07.0	painting is talking to you on a higher level, that the exquisite velvet matte finish on
0:10.6	the wall provides a sense of self-fulfillment that's simply lacking in other paints.
0:14.6	And although inanimate, it feels like it's dancing in front of your eyes, and opening
0:18.0	the signapses in your mind.
0:19.6	I was actually going to ask you if you ever get the feeling that you're being watched
0:24.2	by one of the owner's pets or something.
0:27.8	Heritage by G-Lux, it's a feeling.
0:30.2	80 FHV have back accounts, but only about 20% of them actually used them back.
0:38.4	They rely on other forms to meet their financing needs.
0:42.9	These guys don't have access to credit, as a startup would be launched back in 2018.
0:47.7	The lending market in Sri Lanka was $5 billion.
0:50.3	And what we understood is from this five-billion-bid climate, almost 40% was relied on loan
0:56.1	tropes and individuals who have very dubious practices of charging excess of interest rates
1:02.7	as well as very unpleasant collection methods.
1:11.6	CK Praha Lads, the fortune at the bottom of the pyramid, came out while I was doing my
1:16.2	MBA, and it really shaped my thinking.
1:19.4	It's part of the reason I'm proud of the work we're doing at ConfirmU to facilitate access
1:24.5	to credit for the underbanked.
1:26.3	Now let me not climb on any high horses.
1:28.7	The vast majority of my career has been spent helping high street banks lend to high street
1:33.3	customers, but back to the matred hat.
	...

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