Rukula (Pvt) Ltd announced recently, their selection as a Catalyst Fund company, and in doing so establishing itself as one of the first Sri Lankan companies to become part of this global inclusive fintech initiative.
Rukula is a three-year-old start-up, founded by Reeza Zarook, who inspired Sri Lanka’s e-commerce industry by launching Anything.lk and WOW.lk.
Catalyst Fund (www.catalyst-fund.org) is a philanthropic grant fund providing capital and tailored advisory engagements to fintech companies, with the support of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and JPMorgan Chase & Co, with Rockefeller Philanthropy Associates as fiscal sponsor. Catalyst Fund looks for early-stage startups that have the potential to scale innovative approaches to financial inclusion, and seeks to share lessons from its direct work with fintech companies.
The Catalyst Fund is managed by BFA, a global consulting firm specialized in using finance to create solutions for low-income populations. To date, 10 companies have been included in the programme, of which only 2 previously have been in India.
“Rukula is the first company in our portfolio from Sri Lanka and we’re excited about bringing machine learning and artificial intelligence to their credit scoring process,” said David del Ser, Catalyst Fund program director, “Rukula scaled a business in three years without external funding, and in the process garnered real data on 17,000 customers. These rich datasets will lead to insights on scaling fintech approaches in emerging markets.”