Firgun

With the elevate prize I could run my organizations activities as it is now for 2 years without the need of going through a funding process. Another part of the money prize would go to straight to our main cause: financial inclusion to low income entrepreneurs. It would be part of a social fund aimed exclusive to finance social minorities and low income entrepreneurs. We could finance at first 300 small businesses owners and many more in the next years. Most of them women and black/brown people. We beleave that microfinance is a powerful tool to fight inequality. The benefits help generate jobs, increase family household earnings and improve quality of life. The opportunity of participating in mentorships and enhace our social impact network is also very important. We are currently in a scaling process and it is in our roadmap to start activities in other latin american countries such as Argentina and Paraguay. We are certain thar the Elevate Prize would connect us to key people that could help us in these challenges. 

I am from a jewish family. My grandparents came to Brazil as war refugees and started a small business by selling fabrics from door to door. The business grew to give the family good quality of life. I grew up in a family that valorizes voluntary work. I knew I wanted to work with social impact from a young age. I have always had interest in finance so I started to persue uniting these two passions and found out about microfance. I knew the struggle of small business and the potential they have to change lives so I helped found Firgun. Firgun is a social fintech aimed exclusively to finance low income and social minority entrepreneurs. We do it by giving microcredit oporunities through a tech solution which is our platform. All processes of profile and finance analisys are made online, including funding and training. The loans have low incomWe started in 2017 as a P2P lending platform. In addition to that we started comercializing our services so that other organizations can have their own microcredit program. This have significantly contributed to our revenue and impact growth. 

We are taclinkg the difficulty of fair credit access to low-income entrepreneurs. Brazil has the second largest bank spread in the world, a bureaucracy that generates costs and social barriers such as racism and classism. There is a lack of financial products coherent with the reality of poor people, historically excluded from the traditional financial system. There are more than 30 million small entrepreneurs in Brazil. The number of entrpreneur that earn less than R$ 500 per month rose from 2% to 37% during the pandemic. Access to credit and quality information are the biggest problems of this group. In Latin America the problems are of similar proportions. Firgun acts in a humanized way, generating cheap and uncomplicated credit opportunities for those who need it most. To date, we have lent more than R$1,2 million to almost 400 entrepreneurs across the country. Most of the beneficiaries are women and black/brown. We started doing microcredit through a P2P lending platform and expanded, creating direct microcredit through social funds. We promote access to microcredit and create digital microfinance solutions for interested organizations. We do credit analysis, collection, cash flow and social impact measurement and fund modeling.

By law, microcredit must be done in a productive and oriented manner. To meet the second requirement, traditional organizations use employees on the spot, which makes scale difficult. At Firgun, we work with digital solutions and partner organizations that train entrepreneurs across the country. Those without guidance must undergo online training with a certificate. There is no other P2P lending platform in Brazil working exclusively for low-income entrepreneurs. We create digital financial solutions for companies and NGOs that want to have their own social microcredit programs. As a social fintech, we developed our theory of change and social impact measurement processes, in partnership with the Oxford University. The credit score has two stages: financial profile analysis through a psychometric test and business financial analysis. The loan amount will always be in accordance with the borrower's financial reality. That is, to prevent microcredit from becoming a problem rather than a solution. Firgun is a hub that connects training organizations, companies, microentrepreneurs and social impact investors. We lend to the most vulnerable: informal, bad scored and without colaterals. Default is low compared to the industry average. Firgun, hebrew word, means to be happy simply because something good has happened to someone.

The social impact of microcredit is on the growth of the supported business. We increase the chances of it generating jobs and increasing the entrepreneur's income. This leads to an improvement in the quality of life of the benefited family. To increase the impact and scale our activities, we started to operate in a B2B logic, carrying out projects with organizations that bring the necessary funds to lend. Along this path, we initiated an investment fundraising project through the issuance of a R$ 30 million debenture, financed by professional investors and social organizations. In this way, we have the possibility of creating direct microcredit lines, without the need for collective investment fundraising. This means a faster source of credit, which makes all the difference in a pandemic context. In addition, our microcredit solutions bring transparency to the operation, security and important data for generating social impact reports.