Flexible smartphone financing in Bangladesh, with Rafsun Faiz (SahajMobile)
How to Lend Money to Strangers
Brendan le Grange
4.9 • 43 Ratings
🗓️ 4 June 2026
⏱️ 51 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Rafsun Faiz is a former structured finance and credit investor, now turned fintech founder with SahajMobile - a smartphone financing platform that is expanding access to credit in South Asia. The world gets more digital every day, and that's as true in Dhaka as it is in DC, so SahajMobile's mission is to provide affordable access to cutting-edge smartphone technology for everyone in Bangladesh (and they're hiring, too, at https://www.sahajmobile.org/careers).
Sahaj Mobile is at home on the internet at https://www.sahajmobile.org/
Or find them on LinkedIn at https://www.linkedin.com/company/sahajmobile/ and on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/SahajMobileBD
You can reach out to Rafsun directly on LinkedIn using https://www.linkedin.com/in/rafsunfaiz/
I'm on LinkedIn, too, at https://www.linkedin.com/in/brendanlegrange/
And if you want to get a sneak peek at some of what I'm working on, my website is currently being refreshed (even as some of the projects it mentions lag behind): https://www.brendanlegrange.com/
Other friends of the show include:
https://www.ogmara.com/ (customised risk management and analytic consulting)
https://www.ontap.co.za/pages/hoedspruit-store-details (for all your Hoedspruit-based bathroom needs)
https://flatwhiteorfoff.com/ (ask for anything other than a flat white, the answer is in the name)
https://www.joinhumoni.com/ (helping international students find accommodation, work, and financial services on day one)
https://www.haboomoney.com/ (making collections personalised, flexible and intelligent)
https://beetlesense.ai (AI-powered day one pest detection for forestry)
And since you like podcasts, I also co-create HAIghtened Senses with Christo van Zyl, which looks at the intersection between human senses and technology (and this week, flying cars)
Keep well, Brendan
This is an interview I set up while at Money20/20 Asia, but they have shows around the world. If you want to make similar connections, you can get tickets at https://www.money2020.com/
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | We're the first company to do this in Bangladesh. I didn't see any other centralized player here. |
| 0:07.1 | People tried to do this, like MBFI, non-bank financial institution. They have tried to do this. |
| 0:12.5 | But what they ended up doing is, okay, if you want to take this thing without a credit card, bring your salary statement. |
| 0:19.7 | You know, bring your bank account statement. I don't |
| 0:21.7 | have any of this, right? So we just, we honestly just had a first mover advantage. Second, |
| 0:26.6 | it's our customer acquisition cost is basically zero. The merchants, they do all the marketing. |
| 0:33.3 | They bring people into the shop. Our rejection ratio is around like 60%. The demand is not the issue here, |
| 0:40.3 | right? We have TikTok, Facebook, and Instagram influencers, and the shop managers pay those |
| 0:46.7 | influencers to make the video. And now we don't even have to like pay the influencers because |
| 0:51.3 | the shops itself are so motivated to sell. It's a capitalist |
| 0:55.7 | country, right? So each sell, they're making a margin. So they're very highly, highly |
| 1:00.0 | incentivized to just like increase the foot traffic for their stores. |
| 1:08.3 | Back in high school, my good friend Kevin Tuffin returned from a schoolboy cricket tournament |
| 1:13.2 | with news of an incredible young bassman he'd seen playing for Northans, Jacques Rudolph. |
| 1:19.0 | And while Kevin has not yet got on to fulfill his childhood dream of becoming a cricket commentator, |
| 1:24.6 | he definitely had an astute eye for talent. |
| 1:26.7 | Because Jacques climbed the ranks |
| 1:28.3 | until seven or eight years later, he made his test debut for South Africa. With my inflated |
| 1:34.3 | sense of acquaintance, I watched that game with great interest. And he didn't just make his debut. |
| 1:39.7 | He made it big, scoring 22 not out against Bangladesh. In those days, Bangladesh were the proverbial |
| 1:46.9 | whipping boys of international cricket, and based on the footage and stories surrounding the game, |
| 1:52.7 | the same could probably be said of their position in the global economy. Has this changed since 2003? |
... |
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