“Technology is the core reason we exist — it’s key to everything we do,” says Karthik Chandrasekaran, the chief growth officer for our portfolio company CreditMantri in Chennai. CreditMantri’s motto is “credit healthy to credit wealthy” — a mission that resonates with Karthik. With a decade of banking experience under his belt, he found that inclusive finance was the perfect fit for him to pursue social innovation.
CreditMantri uses government and proprietary data sources, as well as data from social media and tech giants to construct credit profiles of potential borrowers. For Karthik, this is the most exciting part of his job — identifying new types of data to help create more robust credit profiles. These credit profiles help them evaluate people who have no formal credit history, and they can use the same data and tech to identify the right product for each customer.
For CreditMantri, using data better also means ensuring that customers can understand their own data. Traditional credit reports are intended for loan officers to read, not customers, Karthik points out. CreditMantri simplifies their reports for the customer. This lets customers better understand and take charge of their credit profile.
Before starting his role at CreditMantri, Karthik always wanted to work in a startup using technology to change people’s lives. With each customer who gets access to high-quality financial tools for the first time in their life thanks to CreditMantri, Karthik gets to see his career aspirations come true.