Artoo

Artoo is an impact-driven FinTech dedicated to bringing technology to those who need it the most—the entrepreneurial poor. Artoo does this through its Intelligent Lending Platform—a digital loan origination system, that is an AI-first tech solution tailor-made for lending to micro-enterprises.

With the segment populated with borrowers who often lack financial literacy or credit history, Artoo’s platform goes right up to to borrower’s doorstep to capture all possible data—traditional (i.e. documented), self-reported (i.e. what the borrower contributes in conversation), and alternate (i.e. mobile data, for example). As the data moves through the platform’s peer comparison model, built using principles of machine learning, the platform enables the lender to make loan decisions with increased confidence and minimised risk—the borrower now becomes ‘data rich’. In addition, the platform learns from each loan disbursed, becoming faster and smarter—enabling loan decisions and disbursal in 40 minutes, within a single visit, at the borrower’s doorstep.

Unlike traditional loan origination systems that are heavily manual in process, or alternate credit scoring systems that are entirely digital, Artoo’s technology is built around a core strategy of synergy between the human and the digital—high tech meets high touch. The technology empowers, rather than erases the field agent, by making processes faster and easier, thus allowing space for the agent to contribute where only the human can—intuition. Artoo recognises the value of this, and so its technology is further built to codify ‘good agent’ intuition, allowing the system to learn, and assist other users, in making better decisions. The platform has helped disburse $300 million to over 900,000 micro-enterprises over the last 3 years, bringing in a revenue of $373,000 to the company itself within the last financial year.

Artoo’s thirty-strong team of mostly-engineers is one that shares a common drive—to innovate in India, for India and the developing world. Fiercely committed to a core ideology based on values of creativity, compassion, authenticity, and effectiveness, the Artoo family works towards improving access to finance for the underserved, and dreams of a world where the playing field of opportunity is level for all.