Solaris Offgrid Recognised as Inclusive Fintech 50 2021 Award Winner

We’re proud to unveil that Solaris Offgrid has been selected as a winner in the 2021 cohort of the Inclusive Fintech 50 Awards, alongside 49 other early-stage organisations in the Fintech sphere that are making an impact to drive the financial inclusion of underserved communities across the globe.

Sponsored by Visa, MetLife Foundation, and Jersey Overseas Aid & Comic Relief, and with support from Accion and the International Finance Corporation (IFC), the Inclusive Fintech 50 initiative leverages a competitive process led by an independent judging panel of experts to identify 50 early-stage fintechs from among hundreds of applicants each year that are driving financial inclusion and resilience. The competition is aimed at supporting early-stage fintechs in advanced or emerging markets who offer a solution among credit, insurance, payments & remittances, savings & personal financial management, or infrastructure addressing special challenges of underserved customer segments.

The award comes at the perfect time for Solaris Offgrid, who recently launched the pilot of a groundbreaking True Receivables Finance Mechanism, as the first step of the newly announced three Fintech initiatives to resolve the bottlenecks in last-mile financing and scale the Paygo business model.

“We’ve made our utmost mission to engineer the inclusive Fintech solutions of tomorrow to ultimately provide access to life-changing products and services for the 2 billion unbanked worldwide. Being recognised by such a prestigious award among startups that are innovating and making financial inclusion their driving force is a true honour for us. This acknowledges that our initiatives are going in the right direction and have the potential to further contribute to the Paygo industry”, Siten Mandalia, CEO and co-founder of Solaris Offgrid.

Building on the renowned PaygOps software and keeping up with their strengths in IT infrastructure, Solaris Offgrid is now focusing on streamlining the flow of credit to last-mile customers by allowing debt investors to directly participate in pools of receivables from last-mile distributors, thus securing new investment opportunities for the former, and instant liquidity for the latter so they can scale and provide greater access to essential products and services for the unbanked.

The global pandemic has underscored the importance of having access to financial services, which act as a stabilising force for low-income households and businesses. Fintechs play an important role in expanding access to these vulnerable populations, but these types of startups need access to capital and connections. Inclusive Fintech 50 makes such startups more visible to investors and partners who can help them reach more of the 3 billion financially underserved people.

Inclusive Fintech 50 elevates promising early-stage fintechs driving financial inclusion and resilience around the globe through a competitive process led by an independent panel of judges from venture capital, technology, and financial services. Applicants are assessed on the degree to which their target market includes underserved people or businesses, and whether their innovation offers a new value proposition, shows early-stage traction, and can have a noticeable impact on the more than 2 billion financially underserved people globally.

Full profiles of the fintechs can be viewed at www.inclusivefintech50.com/2021-cohort