Fireside Chat featuring Firdavs Mayunusov (Co-founder and General Director, MDO Humo) and Taejun Shin (Founder & CEO, Gojo & Company), moderated by Arnaud Ventura (Managing Partner, Gojo & Company) was held on the 14th April 2022. The one-hour event focused on the Ukraine crisis effect on Humo and their management of the crisis. The informative session was supported by the active engagement from the audience.
We were able to deep dive into the crisis situation including specific topics as below.
Impact of the crisis on Tajikistan’s macroeconomics: GDP growth and inflation
Impact on Humo’s loan portfolio’s credit quality and hedging cost
How the impact on remittance flow would influence Humo’s business
Impact on deposit
Product focus: Agriculture, Government employees
Plan on green finance
3 top challenges under the crisis
Gojo’s position (as a shareholder and an investing company)
To watch or rewatch the webinar, the recording is available here, while the slideshow used by the speakers can be downloaded here.
If you are interested in learning more about Gojo and receiving invitations to our future webinars, subscribe to our newsletter at the bottom of this page.
Why governance matters for Gojo is clear — Because Gojo aims to operate in 50 countries by 2030, which means Gojo will have to manage at least 50 different group companies as a holding company by then.
This is a message from Kohei Katada, Gojo's CFO and devoted teamplayer.
A formation of elephants I met in Kenya. “If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together.”
Me and teamwork
Working together as a team and winning a game has always been an important part of my life.
Since I started working, it has become difficult for me to make time for team sports, so I mainly enjoy individual sports (triathlons, marathons, and recently, kickboxing). However, teamwork has always been an important part of my life as I have played various team sports such as soccer, basketball, and lacrosse since my childhood.
Recently, Taejun, our founder, recommended that I watch “The Playbook”, a documentary series on various sports coaches on Netflix. In this blog, I would like to write about my thoughts on teamwork at work.
What is teamwork
When I think back to some of the most memorable projects I’ve had, they have always involved teamwork with wonderfully talented people. When I was in investment banking, M&A advisory work required collaboration with clients, supervisors, colleagues, and external stakeholders such as lawyers and tax accountants. Preparing for the IPO of LIFENET INSURANCE also required close cooperation with the management team, a securities firm, and leaders from different departments. At Gojo, we have overcome many challenges as a team, such as raising funds for the Series D round and implementation of IFRS across group companies.
What is teamwork in the first place? I personally found the following definition by Andrew Carnegie, the Steel Magnate, to be the most convincing (I was a little happy to learn that the term “teamwork” existed over 100 years ago, even in Carnegie’s time!):
“Teamwork is the ability to work together toward a common vision. The ability to direct individual accomplishments toward organizational objectives. It is the fuel that allows common people to attain uncommon results.”
Mr. Deguchi, the founder of LIFENET INSURANCE, where I used to serve as CFO, had this to say about people and teamwork:
“People are all different and imperfect. By combining uneven members with different strengths, you can build a team like a strong stone wall and achieve great results.”
There is also a famous African proverb that goes like this:
“If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together.”
Essentials of teamwork
So, what do we need to work effectively as a team in a diverse, low-context environment like Gojo?
My hypothesis, which is still under development, is that the following elements are necessary.
Three prerequisites:
(from “Team Geek” by Brian W. Fitzpatrick, Ben Collins-Sussman)
Humility: No one on the team is perfect, and no one knows the right answer alone.
Respect: A sincere concern for the people you work with. Treating members as individuals and fairly evaluating their abilities and achievements.
Trust: Belief that every other team member is capable and will do the right thing.
Team Geek also has the following statement, which I agree with 100%.
“Almost every social conflict can ultimately be traced back to a lack of humility, respect or trust.”
Three key elements:
Shared Purpose/Goals: Each team member must share the purpose and goals with strong ownership.
Communication: Sharing information is the basis for good decision-making. High-frequency communication is essential for mutual trust and psychological safety.
Feedback: Based on the belief that everyone can grow, support each other’s growth and development through mutual feedback.
Our team
When I joined Gojo in 2019, I wrote the following in my personal blog.
“I’m committed to devoting myself to everything I must/want to do to bring Gojo closer to its vision. However, it would be impossible for me to do this on my own, so I want to gather the best people I can find and steadily build up step by step to move forward.”
Two and a half years have passed since I joined Gojo. The road has not been smooth, with the Covid-19 pandemic and the coup d'état in Myanmar…etc., however, my desire to build the best team in the industry with the best people has not changed from day 1.
In order to share our purpose as a team, we discussed and created our team’s mission statement during a workshop in 2020 and have been brushing it up every now and then. Below is the latest version of the statement.
Enhance the credibility of Gojo and its Partners (group companies) as an investment destination through transparent communication and amplify the financial inclusion around the world
Enable internal stakeholders within Gojo and Partners to make high-quality decisions and to achieve our mission, by delivering reliable financial information and thoughtful risk/opportunity analyses in a timely manner
Explore and implement an optimal and resilient capital structure that supports dynamic resource allocation in collaboration with Partners
Photo from the finance team workshop in January 2022
Inch by inch
I’d like to conclude this post by writing about “winning” as a team.
I mentioned the documentary “The Playbook — A Coach’s Rules For Life” at the beginning of this post. It was indeed great and I would recommend it to everyone, especially if you have ever played a team sport.
Personally, I’d recommend Episode 1: Doc Rivers, who is currently the head coach of the Philadelphia 76ers (The documentary is mostly about his days with the Boston Celtics and Los Angeles Clippers). I was particularly impressed by the following two statements by him.
“A person is a person through other people. I can’t be all I can be unless you are all you can be. (…) I can never be threatened by you because you’re good, because the better you are, the better I am.” (Rule No. 3: UBUNTU IS A WAY OF LIFE)
“Champions get hit over, and over, and over. You know, it’s just that the champion is the one that decides to keep moving forward” (Rule No. 5: CHAMPIONS KEEP MOVING FORWARD)
The second quote is about the 2008 NBA Finals, in which the Boston Celtics defied all expectations to win against the L.A. Lakers and become NBA champions for the first time in 24 years.
One last thing. Let me quote here my favorite speech Al Pacino from the movie “Any Given Sunday”.
“You find out that life is just a game of inches. So is football. Because in either game — life or football — the margin for error is so small. I mean one half step too late or too early and you don’t quite make it. One-half second too slow or too fast and you don’t quite catch it. The inches we need are everywhere around us. They are in every break of the game every minute, every second.
On this team, we fight for that inch. On this team, we tear ourselves and everyone else around us to pieces for that inch. We claw with our fingernails for that inch. Because we know when we add up all those inches that’s gonna make the f****** difference between WINNING and LOSING, between LIVING and DYING!”
Our long-term goal is to enable the provision of high-quality affordable financial services for 100+ million unserved and underserved people in 50+ countries by 2030. There have been and I believe there will be so many unexpected things happening. However, let’s work together as a team and move forward one step at a time, inch by inch, until we win.
Kohei Katada is Gojo’s CFO. He leads Gojo’s fundraising, finance and admin teams. Prior to joining Gojo, Kohei served as the Senior Vice President of Finance at SmartNews and as CFO at LIFENET INSURANCE COMPANY.
As a contribution to the post-COVID recovery, GOJO’s Operations will post a series of posts related to effective delinquency management practices, which could be helpful for the readers. This is the first blog post with more posts to follow.
Microfinance Institutions (MFIs) were long evolving on the correct idea that poor people can pull themselves out of poverty by borrowing small amounts of money. Before the widespread adoption of mobile phones, loan officers delivered these loans directly to small groups of women or individual borrowers. As loan officers were working and living in the neighborhood, they would initiate peer pressure to encourage the repayment of the loan1.
In recent years the digital transformation in the financial sector has taken the delivery of small loans to a very new level. As smartphones have taken over the world and cost per 1GB of data continued to decrease in most places, fully digital microfinance players started to gain market presence and pose competitive pressure on traditional players. Their model does not rely on the judgment of loan officers or group members but the metadata from the borrower’s smartphone. The advanced R&D, IT, and behavior-based scoring have become keys for the success of this newly rising business model in the microfinance sector.
Thus, as these business models would require different drivers for effective operations, the critical business elements of each model also differ:
TRADITIONAL MICROFINANCE PLAYER
FULLY DIGITAL PLAYER
- Branches/Proximity - Loan officers
- Algorithms - Software engineers
Note that it is generally very difficult to have all parts of this equation in one institution. Traditional MFIs usually don’t have adequate resources for the successful R&D needed to develop practical metadata-based scoring, and most digital MFIs are not interested in the investment in branches and loan officers because they fear it would drive all California-based hi-tech investors out of them. (One of the aims of Gojo Group MFIs in their digital transformation journey is to achieve that difficult balance of “Tech & Touch” that leverages the efficiency of digital processes while keeping the trust-worthiness and inclusivity of in-person interactions, but that’s already the topic of other posts on this blog.)
A manager from Maxima Microfinance talking with a client in Cambodia.
No matter which of the two approaches you lean towards, in 2020 players of both kinds have faced a very new enemy. This enemy didn’t care much about the scoring model MFIs would use. The hit of COVID-19 had an astonishing effect on both digital and traditional players, bringing the delinquency levels in the microfinance sector to levels no one could imagine possible.
In some countries, the virus outbreak has interflowed with other predicaments changing the situation from bad to worse. In Myanmar, the COVID-19 epidemic, intensified by the civil war after the well-known coup d'état, has affected the PAR>30 levels in the microfinance sector to a staggering 90%. Suddenly, traditional MFIs, which have always enjoyed a PAR>302 at about 1%, were left with staff and systems not trained to manage the avalanche of cases needing restructuring and rescheduling. And the digital MFIs were simply left with nothing but relying on countless SMSs and calls from out-of-country call centers.
But as the dust gradually began to settle, the level of PAR>30 among MFIs of Myanmar began to differ. Data from August 2021 shows that while some institutions were able to reach the relatively suitable level of portfolio quality, a significant number of other MFIs continued to struggle with very high delinquency rates.
As most Myanmar MFIs have relatively similar products, systems, and personnel capacity, the critical differentiator here was the readiness and the efficiency of the deployment of delinquency management systems. MFIs that were more efficient in reaching out to customers with new, tailor-made offers to deal with sudden repayment difficulties ended up in a much better state and continue to widen their advantage.
The situation in Myanmar substantiated that no matter what type of MFI you are running, traditional or digital, the new reality will force you to consider the investment in developing a new element in your business model:
TRADITIONAL MICROFINANCE PLAYER
FULLY DIGITAL PLAYER
- Branches/proximity - Loan officers - Delinquency management system
- Scoring algorithms - Software engineers - Delinquency management system
Of course, the overall impact of COVID-19 on the microfinance industry has yet to be fully understood. Still, effective delinquency management systems will become essential parts of the competitive advantage of modern MFIs. The MFIs that will deliver the best-in-class efficiency in delinquency management will come out as winners in major contemporary existential crises in the microfinance industry caused by COVID-19. In the following posts, we will discuss the instruments and approaches that proved effective in addressing this task.
1. Gojo and its Partners specifically focus on eliminating pressure practices. 2. Portfolio At Risk (PAR) is the percentage of gross loan portfolio that is at risk. So, PAR 30 is the percentage of the gross loan portfolio for all open loans that is overdue by more than 30 days.
Elchin Abdullayev is part of Gojo's Operations Team, and focuses on financial product development and strategic operation initiatives with Gojo's partners.
On 20th January 2022, we held a webinar to share how Humo, our newest partner company, has established Humo Lab to spearhead digitalization and innovation. At Humo Lab, several products have been developed and launched, including mobile banking apps, payment apps, kiosks, and more. The webinar focused on Humo’s introduction, sharing best practices on how microfinance institutions can do better to extend financial inclusion.
The one-hour event featured Taejun Shin (Founder & CEO, Gojo & Company), Firdavs Mayunusov (Co-founder and General Director, MDO Humo), Firdavs Nuriddinzoda (Director of HumoLab, MDO Humo), moderated by Arnaud Ventura (Managing Partner, Gojo & Company). The webinar consisted of four parts: Introduction of Gojo & Company, Introduction of Humo, Introduction of Humo Lab, and Panel Discussion.
In the first part, Taejun shared what financial inclusion is, what Gojo strives to achieve and how Gojo operates in many parts of the world with its newest footprint being Tajikistan. It was followed by a talk from Firdavs M. covering the history and evolution of Humo, the story of how Humo Lab was established, and how the collaboration between tech and business teams allows disruptive thinking. Firdavs N. continued the presentation to introduce user-friendly services of Humo Lab and strategies behind their provision. The last 20 minutes was a panel discussion answering questions from audience, including topics such as synergies between Gojo and Humo.
The webinar was a great success, attended by over 150 people from 22 countries. The webinar was followed by an Ask Me Anything session where the audiences enjoyed direct interaction with the panelists.
To watch or rewatch the webinar, the recording is available here:
If you are interested in learning more about Gojo and receiving invitations to our future webinars, subscribe to our newsletter at the bottom of this page.
Day 1 of my paternity leave. We didn’t know where to place her, so we made a pop-up bed in our living room, and the dining table became her first bed.
Gojo recently developed its leave policy by which everyone is entitled to 14 weeks maternity and paternity, 100% paid by the company up to a certain amount. According to our study, it is the most generous of this kind. I became the second person inside the organization to use it, and I was away from the office from late September until late October (I wish I could make it longer!). I am not alone — during the pandemic period, Gojo members are seeing a baby boom, and some more will take it soon.
Let me write about why we developed this policy and the things I hadn't realized before taking the leave.
A good parental leave policy is essential for pursuing gender parity in society. The gender pay gap is insignificant when both men and women don't have kids. The gap conspicuously widens after they become parents. In many countries, only women take maternity leave and look after the newborn babies, and their role tends to remain fixed even after the end of the maternity leave. Thus the gender gap widens. To prevent this from happening, both men and women should take ma/paternity leave.
Not only that. A strong leave policy makes the organization more sustainable. Che Guevara used to say something like, "no one is irreplaceable." Organizations should be able to run just as well even when key people are absent, including the founder CEO.
However, after taking my paternity leave, I learned a few more things.
First, I learned that it is an extreme joy to spend time with a newborn baby. Her face changes literally every day (I took a photo every single day, so I am sure). I learn something new about her every day, and vice versa. I felt that every input I gave to her impacted her development. It is a fantastic experience that all parents ought to enjoy.
Second, it makes a happy family. Especially under covid, even husbands are not allowed to spend the first several days with the neonatal baby. These days generate a significant “parental IQ” gap between women and men. If men don't take paternity leave, it is almost impossible to catch up. The result would be that wives always look after all kids-related matters, and husbands cannot be involved (some are deliberately not involved). The grudge gets larger every month. In the worst-case scenario, husbands become isolated from their family members. Some Japanese men told me things like, "after I became a father, my wife started focusing on kids only, and I felt like I became an ATM." In Japan, many old-age divorces are due to kids-related matters. It is a sad thing — they loved each other to the point of getting married, and the result of the marriage becomes the cause of divorce.
If you take paternity leave and actively join kids-raising, you will not experience this problem. At the very least, my relationship with my wife got even better after having a baby.
Third, after skipping the company's Executive Committee for 5 consecutive times, I confirmed that even without me, the organization would get going. I read the meeting minutes and watched the meeting videos, realizing that all the key problems are raised and analyzed well, and all the required solutions are executed.
The experience made me think about what is my raison d'etre. As the founder CEO, I am here to bring about non-linear change to the organization, delivering something the other colleagues cannot do. Following my period of leave, my work time allocation changed considerably, and I see some positive results already.
We are always looking for talent. If you are interested, please visit our website! https://gojo.co/join-us
Taejun is the co-founder and CEO of Gojo. He is passionate about equality of opportunity. Prior to founding Gojo, Taejun worked in investment banking and founded Living in Peace, an NGO.
In this post Haruna, a member of Gojo's Corporate Planning Team, shares her career journey until she joined Gojo, and what she learned in the process. Enjoy!
Some members of Gojo's Tokyo office during a party. Haruna is the left-most person in the front row.
What does “work” mean to you? It means a lot to me — as someone once said, more than half of your time awake is time spent at work, so it should bring joy. I fully agree with this statement. In my view, it should not just bring joy, but also be meaningful. Today I will share my journey on how I built up my career, what my struggles and lessons learned were, and how I eventually decided to shift my career to pursue my original hope of serving the developing countries. I hope it will be interesting to those who are thinking about shifting their career, especially in a more “social” direction.
When I graduated from university, I questioned myself, “what do I want to spend my time on?” I wanted to make sure I spent time on something I thought was important, and to me, at that time, working to improve the life of poor people in developing countries felt much more impactful than spending time to bring marginal value to already somewhat-fulfilled people in Japan. So I started looking for a government job to support developing countries. However, I could not get an offer and, when I got my first offer from a consulting company, I stopped searching. At that time, I wanted to focus on my university orchestra activities and wasn’t thinking very seriously about my career and future, so I ended up starting my career as a strategy consultant.
The experience was terrible. Very long working hours, no proper training, a bad relationship with the manager all piled up to become a lot of stress. I started getting both mental and physical issues, and had to take leave of absence. I went back to work after 3 months, but was asked to leave the company at the end of my third year.
I quickly searched for a new job. Luckily, because of my “strategy consultant” background, I got a lot of offers. I chose to go to a company called Rakuten, a Japan-based e-commerce company, which was trying to go global at that time — including developing countries in Asia and Africa. I thought that maybe this job could connect one day to my original wish of serving the developing countries.
This job change turned out to be a success. I worked closely with the CEO and had a chance to see the company from his view, which was a whole new experience for me — it definitely pushed me up to a different level. I started to enjoy work for the first time in my life, and started to feel that I was making a difference. I increased my presence within the company and was soon promoted to become one of the youngest business heads. I had a lot of struggles there too, but really enjoyed growing the business supported by a great team. Moreover, I loved the people at Rakuten. Everywhere, there was the culture of moving fast, getting things done.
However, even though my career at Rakuten was successful, I started to question myself again, the same question I asked myself when I had first started my career: “what did I really want to spend my time on?” I hadn’t forgotten my initial aspiration of contributing to the people in developing countries. I tried to chase this dream within Rakuten by raising my hand to meet startups in India, visiting Africa to find business opportunities etc. I also started looking outside to find things to do outside work to fulfill my wish — I joined a network of professionals supporting social startups, and I started to volunteer for an NGO supporting children in Africa. I even started a similar kind of program within Rakuten, an accelerator to support social startups by Rakuten employees.
I could have continued like this, but once I experienced the deep sense of achievement and fulfillment by putting my energy into something to which I was really committed, it was hard for me to fully focus on my assigned job at Rakuten. I decided to shift my career to pursue my original mission — to support developing countries and reduce poverty. It was a tough decision. I had to leave behind 10 years worth of social credit I had built, a good salary, a stable job which I knew how to run, a managerial position — basically a successful career. People said I should continue at Rakuten, especially as I had just given birth to my second child, and I was already going through a lot of changes in life. I could understand this argument, but one day I asked myself: if I died today, would I have any regrets or not? The answer was clear: I would regret not having spent my work time on something I thought was meaningful.
So here I am at Gojo & Company, a startup with a mission to extend financial inclusion to everyone, so that people can determine their own future. The mission resonates with my personal values, and so far my 6 months at Gojo have been great. Of course, there are pros and cons, and there never is a “perfect job”. My salary went down significantly, and I need to work more. Lots of new things to learn, a new culture to get used to, new people to get to know — all of this requires hard work. Having said that, the best thing here is that there are like-minded people around me who take social impact seriously. There are so many things which I can tackle that seem interesting and important — the kind of things I really pushed for at Rakuten but never got management attention can easily become an important project here at Gojo. Although it might be too early to tell, I think I managed to make a successful transition.
Aligning your personal mission with the company’s mission may not matter so much if you think about your day to day work. Having a good relationship with your colleagues, working on a fun yet challenging job, and having good work-life balance matters more in the short run. But if you stop and look back on what you have achieved, and see that it is exactly the impact you wanted to make on the world, there is a deep sense of satisfaction. So, I want to encourage those who are hesitating — “it is never too late to pursue your mission!”
Haruna Tanaka works for the Corporate Planning Department at Gojo & Company. She works on various projects at Gojo, including corporate governance, social performance management, stakeholder impact management, client impact measurement and R&D.
As I was getting involved in microfinance in the late 90s, it was mainly operated by 2 types of players: Non-Profit Organisations (such as NGOs and International NGOs) and Cooperatives. Most countries had not yet set up regulations to allow commercial microfinance banks to operate.
I remember the significant opposition against commercial microfinance by many players in the microfinance sector. Many donor representatives but also a large number of practitioners did not feel comfortable with the commercial model. The cooperative movement was perceived by many as the “ideal” model, allowing the end beneficiaries to be part of the governance of the microfinance banks to decide on their services. Cooperative systems were perceived as superior models.
Beyond the governance, it is also clear that private ownership in microfinance was not accepted for another reason. The idea that private interest could generate profits from “poor people” was unacceptable to most.
As I co-founded PlaNet Finance in 1998 with the support of Jacques Attali and Muhammed Yunus (Chairman of the Advisory Board) and started providing independent rating & evaluations in the sector, as well as other services (consulting and funding), we started evaluating and financing many MFIs.
As we were doing so, in the early 2000s, we witnessed many cooperatives failing. In West Africa but also in Latin America and other parts of the world, large cooperatives were bankrupt or nearly bankrupt, only being saved by governments and development agencies providing them every year with the funds they needed to survive. At this time, I got involved with PlaNet Finance & PlaNet Rating in many programmes with cooperatives, either to try to support / save some of those cooperative microfinance banks by providing them with technical assistance (such as in Mexico for instance) or to rate and evaluate them and allow governments or donors to design programmes to support them (such as in West Africa).
A shopkeeper in a transaction with a client in Madagascar / Arnaud Ventura
For years (mainly in the late 80s and 90s), a number of international cooperative movements such as Desjardins International, Crédit Mutuel International, WOCCU, were promoting the models that had worked in their home countries internationally by supporting local microfinance cooperatives with expertise and funding.
However, during the 2000s decade, commercial microfinance emerged and started growing at an accelerated pace, to become during the 2010s the main player in the microfinance sector.
How come commercial microfinance was able in less than 10 years to thrive while cooperatives did not manage in the previous 30 years?
There are probably many reasons behind this factor but I would like to highlight 2 of the reasons which I believe are fundamentally behind the success1 of commercial and the failure of cooperatives models in microfinance:
The efficiency of commercial microfinance. This efficiency is largely the result of efficient decision making which private companies with simple and aligned shareholding bases and clear decision makers excel at doing. Cooperative microfinance banks are often struggling with complex governance, many hundreds of owners (the clients) with different and sometimes conflicting agenda which makes decision making much more complicated and sometimes impossible. In specific situations, a strong leader is able to make this governance structure work and can, thanks to his/her natural authority and/or his legitimacy, accelerate decision making. This was for instance the case at Grameen Bank, a cooperative bank with a strong charismatic leader, the founder: Muhammed Yunus. However, unfortunately too few cooperative microfinance banks could benefit from such a charismatic leader.
The strength of commercial capital: as was expected in the early 2000s, as soon as commercial investors realized that microfinance was a new asset class they could benefit from, with potentially good profitability, commercial capital started to flow significantly into the sector. And commercial capital was invested primarily into commercial microfinance rather than cooperatives, not only because of the reason above but also because of legal & regulatory limitations (much easier to invest in a private company than in a cooperative company). As a reminder, in 2020 more than 150 million people have access to microfinance with a total loan portfolio above 140 billion USD, while in the early 2000s, microfinance was reaching fewer than 20 million people for a portfolio below 20 billion USD. Commercial capital is largely responsible for this huge growth in the last 20 years.
I think this story around Efficiency, commercial and cooperative decision making can be applied beyond the cooperative sector (for instance the public sector or government-owned businesses, etc.). I would argue that the key to efficiency is alignment. An organization is efficient if the key stakeholders are fully aligned so that decisions can be made quickly and implemented efficiently. There are many ways to reach alignment in an organisation but the most efficient ways are probably those highlighted above:
One, or a limited number, of charismatic leaders followed by their teams,
A simple governance with very few owners aligned on the same goals.
As many microfinance banks are now facing serious challenges to face digital disruption and to meet clients’ expectations, quick decision making and alignment are going to be key success factors in upcoming digital transformation, so it is time for every organisation to learn from history and improve their governance & organisation to become more efficient in decision making.
Arnaud Ventura is a Managing Partner of Gojo & Company. As Managing Partner, Arnaud oversees strategy, business performance & development. He also leads the development of Gojo & Company in Africa.
Prior to joining Gojo, Arnaud founded and led two of the leading financial inclusion group worldwide. From 1998 to 2008 Arnaud cofounded and led with Mr Attali & Mr YunusPlaNet Finance, one of the global and most successful European Financial Inclusion Group. From 2008 to 2019, Arnaudfounded & led Baobab (formerly MicroCred), the leading Micro&SME digital bank in Africa & China.Additionally, Arnaud has been appointed Young Global Leader of the World Economic Forum in 2013 and he cofounded the French China Foundation the leading network of Young Leaders between French and China and Share Africa, a platform to support African youth.
In order to speed up loan approval processes, many banks and microfinance institutions use computer algorithms to calculate credit scores. I'm sure many of you are familiar with seeing a numerical credit score like '700'.
Credit scoring collects various pieces of information about a loan applicant and maps them to a single number. Based on the applicant’s loan repayment history, their use of other financial services, and other factors, the algorithm calculates a score such as '670 for this applicant', '740 for that applicant', and so on. And if the score is lower than the predefined threshold, the loan will not be approved.
Here, I would like to introduce a little theorem that makes up a part of Gojo's credit scoring approach.
Whether or not you can repay a loan without issues depends to a large extent on the size of the loan. For example, if I take a loan of $1 million, and spend it all at once without thinking, I will probably have a problem repaying it later. However, if I take a loan of $1, and use it to pay for some expenses, I will probably not have a problem repaying it later. In other words, credit scoring, which measures my ability to repay the loan, should be a function of the loan size.
Now, let's extend this view just a little bit more. The larger the loan size, the higher the credit score that should be required for the borrower, and therefore the higher the hurdle. The smaller the loan size, the lower the credit score that should be required for the borrower, and the lower the hurdle.
If that is the case, then for any given borrower, there should be a loan size that represents a manageable hurdle. For any kind of borrower, if we keep reducing the loan size, we will eventually find an amount that matches the maximum credit score they can achieve.
Maxima’s MBela team with an MBela agent at her house after a community gathering. / Koh Terai
The above paragraphs outlinea little theorem about credit scoring, which is my favorite. Of course, we can take a further step to consider how we might apply it in practice.
Why don't we just look for the (maximum) loan size we believe a borrower can handle, and use that as their credit score? Rather than producing a score like '670' or '740', it would be easier for everyone to understand that $500 is the maximum possible amount they would be allowed to borrow. If the amount is clear, borrowers can plan their investment.
We are actually applying this approach in a loan product currently being offered by Maxima, our partner in Cambodia. Their small digital loans project (also known as MBela) uses an automated assessment process to provide a credit score in the form of the maximum amount each person can borrow. The resulting credit score is easy for both the agent and borrower to understand.
Gojo wants to provide services that are innovative in their simplicity.
Yoshinari Noguchi is a researcher at Gojo and Company. He works in Gojo’s R&D team, and is currently looking into new ways to understand and support money management for low-income people, as well as analysis of data from the Hrishipara diaries and Gojo’s own financial diary projects.
Typically, when we set out to measure the impact of a loan on someone’s life, we tend to look at what happens after they take the loan— for instance, whether their income increases, whether they are able to spend more on education, or whether they acquire more assets. However, there are a couple of limitations to this approach:
Outcomes data taken following a loan tends to be a snapshot of a certain point in time, and is usually collected at a time pre-determined by the service provider, rather than at a time that makes sense for the borrower in terms of when they expect to see results from the loan
Changes in income and increased spending on education can be influenced by many different factors in a person’s life, not just their access to finance. For instance, we see in financial diary research that unexpected events happen more often than we might think, such as accidents, sudden medical needs, new opportunities, and other events which may disrupt the original plans a borrower had for their loan
While outcomes data is useful, it cannot give us the full picture of the utility provided by a loan or other financial service. What if, in addition to outcomes data, we considered the impact of a financial service from a cash flow perspective? In other words, what if we could see how loans or savings fit with clients’ real cash flows and affect their day-to-day money management?
Using data from Stuart Rutherford’s Hrishipara Daily Diaries project, we would like to introduce a new impact measure which looks at how financial services either reduce or add to the volatility of a person’s cash flows. Our working assumption is that services which increase cash flow volatility generally make money harder to manage, and vice versa. We call this measure of impact on volatility the Fit Factor.
Read our paper setting out the concept, its applications as an impact measure, and its limitations here.
Yoshinari Noguchi is a researcher at Gojo and Company. He works in Gojo’s R&D team, and is currently looking into new ways to understand and support money management for low-income people, as well as analysis of data from the Hrishipara diaries and Gojo’s own financial diary projects.
Cheriel Neo leads impact measurement at Gojo and is also a member of Gojo’s R&D team. She is setting up and running Gojo’s financial diary projects in Cambodia and Sri Lanka, and is interested in using data to better understand Gojo’s current and target clients.
Cheriel works on initiatives to measure and learn from the impact of Gojo’s partners’ products and services on our clients’ lives. She has a BA (Hons.) in History and English from Exeter College, Oxford University, and an MSc. in Translation Studies from the University of Edinburgh. Cheriel got started in the world of social impact during her time in Oxford, where she ran a homeless outreach, and helped found what would become a national student-led charity for social justice.
After graduating, she joined Social Finance, a social investment financial intermediary, where she designed Impact Bonds in the UK, Cameroon and the West Bank, and helped create an app to track young people’s outcomes after leaving state care. She is a founding director of Proof Bakery, a social enterprise training and employing refugee women in the UK.
In her spare time, Cheriel enjoys reading, snacking, and exploring her neighbourhood. She is an accomplished knitter and an avid home cook.
Ryo is a Certified Public Accountant and works at Gojo as a head of Accounting and FP&A. Ryo has a bachelor’s degree in Economics from Keio University. While at university he passed the CPA exam, the youngest to do so that year. He did an internship at Ernst & Young Philippines, where one of his clients was a microfinance institution, and was impressed with the purpose of microfinance and its business model.
After graduating, he joined Ernst & Young in Tokyo, where he engaged in financial audits, internal control audits, operations/financial management advisory and financial due diligence for potential M&A. He also spent 2 years on secondment at the EY Los Angeles office, where he was in charge of supporting a unicorn startup company headquartered in the United States. He has experience auditing under IFRS, US-GAAP and J-GAAP.
Ryo is very fond of traveling, reading books, watching soccer and going to the sauna.
佐竹 亮
Head of Accounting & FP&A
2020年8月より五常・アンド・カンパニーに所属。同社でHead of Accounting and FP&Aを担当している。
数社の起業を経験の後、マッキンゼー・アンド・カンパニーの日本およびドイツを拠点に主に海外企業の経営支援に従事。その後、オックスフォード大学に移籍し、経営学の優等修士号と博士号を取得。立命館大学経営学部を経て、2016年より現職。専門は、経営戦略、国際経営、および、制度と組織の関係。慶應義塾大学政策・メディア研究科委員、上場企業を含む複数のスタートアップの社外役員を兼務。著書に『STARTUP優れた経営者は何を考え、どう行動したか』、『経営戦略原論』、『領域を超える経営学』、分担著に『Japanese Management in Evolution』などがある。
Haruna Tanaka
Head of Corporate Planning & PMI
Haruna is a professional with expertise in strategy, business development and incubation. She is the Head of Corporate Planning and PMI of Gojo, working on strategy development, post merger integration, corporate governance, social performance management, impact measurement, stakeholder impact management and any other projects that are needed to further enhance Gojo’s work.
Prior to Gojo, she worked for Rakuten, a Japanese internet services company for 10 years. As a member of the CEO’s office, she worked on special projects and other items on the CEO’s agenda, including acquisition of overseas companies, enrollment of Englishnization at Rakuten, strategy development of Rakuten Mobile and more. Amongst other things, she also led Rakuten’s ebook business as business manager in Japan and Taiwan, Asian business development, and innovation activities, including internal and external accelerator programs. Before Rakuten, she was a strategy consultant at Booz and Company. She graduated from Tokyo University majoring in Economics. She has lived 3 years in UK and a year in US in her childhood and is fluent in Japanese and English.
Outside of work, Haruna is a partner and board member of Social Venture Partners Tokyo, an NPO supporting seed stage social entrepreneurs to succeed. She is also a mother of 2 children, and enjoys reading and playing the flute.
Sohil Shah
Principal/Head of VC
Sohil graduated from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, with a Masters in Finance and completed his under graduation in Electronics Engineering from the University of Mumbai. Before joining Gojo, Sohil was a part of the Aavishkaar-Intellecap Group where he led Intellecap Impact Investment Network, an early-stage angel network focused on making investments in social impact start-ups. In his five years with the group, he led around 35 investments in India and East Africa of which they exited from 6 companies and another 15 companies raised follow-on round of investment.
An Investment Banking professional with over six years of experience in India and US, Sohil previously worked as a Senior Analyst at Bank of America. He was part of the Global Investment Banking team, with a key focus on the healthcare sector, where he was a part of a few billion-dollar M&A transactions. Prior to that, he worked with the investment banking teams at Fortune Financial Services (India) Ltd and Crucible Capital Group in New York.
Apart from being an avid brewer, Sohil is an angel investor in his personal capacity as well. He lives in Pune with his family.
Gürol Michael Sari
Chief Operating Officer
Gürol Sari joined Gojo in June 2020 as our Chief Operating Officer, and oversees the strategic and operational development of our partner institutions. Gürol has extensive leadership experience in retail banking, SME finance, microfinance & financial digitalization, as well as experience in turnarounds of several institutions. He has worked in the banking sector for over 30 years in many countries, including Germany, Austria, Myanmar, Turkey, Albania, Russia, Australia, and Tanzania.
From the start of his career, his interest was drawn towards innovation and impact: Gürol created the first fully automated online credit solution in Germany, easyCredit, which is ranked No.1 today in Germany. Prior to joining Gojo, Gürol worked as Chief Operating Officer of Vision Fund Myanmar, where he developed and implemented a fully digitized microfinance system that provided over 300,000 clients in extreme poverty with access to credit, savings, and education. He currently advises several international banks on digitization and change processes.
Gürol has a creative spirit and is always active. He is passionate about architecture, gardening, handicraft (particularly remodeling houses), and loves to bike and to play tennis. He dreams of sailing with his wife once his two children are independent.
Takao Takahashi
Chief People & Inclusion Officer
At Gojo, Takao leads corporate planning and HR. Before joining Gojo, Takao was an Investment Officer at International Finance Corporation (IFC), the private sector arm of the World Bank Group, based in both Washington DC and Jakarta. In his 7 years with IFC, he led investments in microfinance institutions, banks and fintech startups in emerging markets. Before IFC, Takao worked as the Bhutan Prime Minister’s Fellow, developing microfinance regulations and financial inclusion policy to contribute to Bhutan’s Gross National Happiness (GNH). He also worked for 4 years as a management consultant with McKinsey & Company based in Frankfurt and Tokyo.
Takao graduated from Georgetown University, USA, with a Master of Science in Foreign Service and completed his Bachelor of Laws from Kyoto University, Japan.
Takao loves singing, both opera and karaoke. Tennis is his favorite sport. He has authored a book in Japanese, the English translation of the title being; ‘What is true happiness? Thoughts from Bhutan’
Kohei Katada
Managing Partner & CFO
Prior to joining Gojo, Kohei has served as Senior Vice President of Finance at SmartNews, Inc., a developer of a news discovery app. As its 7th employee and part of its management team, he led $80 million of equity financing and undertook a wide range of responsibilities including financial control, accounting, recruiting, people operations, legal, and investor relations.
As one of the founding members and as Chief Financial Officer at LIFENET INSURANCE COMPANY, a leading online life insurer in Japan, Kohei led it’s successful $100 million Initial Public Offering in 2012, and also setup a joint venture in Korea.
Kohei started his career at Morgan Stanley in its Investment Banking Division, where he was involved in multiple cross-border M&A transactions. In 2005, he moved to Hong Kong and joined Och-Ziff Capital Management, a global asset management company.
Kohei has a B.A. in Law from the University of Tokyo. While at school, he did an internship at a local NGO in Bangladesh where he was inspired by the power of microfinance that can unlock the potential of micro-entrepreneurs.
Kohei enjoys playing with his two boys over the weekends. He loves sports and has successfully finished the long-distance triathlon.
Arnaud Ventura
Managing Partner
Arnaud has founded and led two of the leading European financial inclusion groups active in Micro and SME finance, as well as digital finance.
Between 1998 and 2008, Arnaud cofounded and led PlaNet Finance with the support of Jacques Attali (Chairman) and Muhammed Yunus (Chairman Advisory Board). It was one of the most successful European financial inclusion groups, providing mainly advisory services in the sector. Between 2008 and 2019, Arnaud founded & led Baobab (formerly MicroCred), the leading Micro&SME digital bank in Africa & China. In 2019 alone, Baobab lent $1 billion to 1 million clients, generating around $200 million total revenues and more than $40 million pre-tax profit.
Arnaud is a Young Global Leader of the World Economic Forum. He also cofounded the French China Foundation, the leading network of Young Leaders between France and China, and Share Africa, a platform to promote Africa’s innovation and creativity. Arnaud graduated from EFREI, Paris, in Computer Science, and La Sorbonne in Philosophy. He speaks French, English and Spanish fluently and loves reading history & philosophy. He loves skiing and hiking in the mountains (particularly in the South of France), and has 2 young boys.
Akira Kawashiro
Outside Director
Akira Kawashiro is an attorney qualified to practice both Japanese law and Illinois law, currently serving as a Partner at Southgate, a law firm in Tokyo. His practice primarily focuses on domestic and cross-border mergers and acquisitions (M&A), venture capital investments, and securities regulations. He has also been seconded to the Tokyo Stock Exchange, and has a deep knowledge of disclosure regulations.
Akira began his career in 2013 at Mori Hamada & Matsumoto, where he engaged in domestic and cross-border M&A and antitrust matters. At Gojo, Akira monitors management from an independent standpoint through board and committee meetings as an Outside Director.
Taejun Shin
Founder, Managing Partner & CEO
Taejun cofounded Gojo in 2014 and has led the company’s growth until today as the CEO. Before Gojo, Taejun worked as an investment professional at Morgan Stanley and Unison Capital. To deal with an enormous number of investment projects, Taejun studied programming and automated many financial models, some of which are used even today.
While working in the sector, Taejun founded Living in Peace, an NGO, in 2007 and created the first microfinance investment fund in Japan. Taejun has been involved in Japan’s child foster care for more than a decade and co-established Japan Office for Standards on Children Services in 2021 to conduct third-party inspections on the local authority children services in Japan.
Taejun is the Young Global Leader of the World Economic Forum and is the youngest founding board member of Endeavor Japan. He is an author of 10 books, a finisher of the 1648 km ultra-marathon, and a Karate black-belt holder (he just recently started Brazilian Jiu-jitsu and owns a blue belt as of 2022). Taejun is fluent in Japanese, Korean, and English. He plays drums and loves shooting street photos of the world.
Masahiro Kotosaka
Outside Director
Masahiro Kotosaka is Professor at Keio University, an Associate Fellow of Saïd Business School, University of Oxford, and a non-executive director of Gojo & Company since March 2017. He is an expert in Internationalization strategy and early stage business development, and advisor/non-executive director of several start-up/multinational companies.
Before moving to Keio, he was an associate professor of multinational management at Ritsumeikan University, a teaching & research associate at the University of Oxford, and a consultant at McKinsey & Company based in Frankfurt and Tokyo. As a practitioner, he worked for strategy/marketing projects with sixteen client organizations across nine industries and nine countries and spent four years running three profitable IT/Retail businesses before joining McKinsey.
He graduated from the University of Oxford with D.Phil. (Ph.D) in Management Studies and MSc in Management Research with Distinction. His recent publication includes STARTUP (Co-authored, NewsPicks Publishing, 2020), The Element of Strategic Management (Toyo Keizai, 2018), and The Japanese Business in Evolution (Co-authored, Routledge, 2017).
Royanne Doi
Outside Director
Royanne Doi is the former Corporate Chief Ethics Officer of Prudential Financial Inc., and former Advisor for Global Legal, Ethics & Compliance to Yamaha Corporation.
Prior to Yamaha, Royanne held senior legal positions with major global financial institutions. At one point, she managed 200+ staff around the world, with business experience in North and South America, Asia, and Europe. During her tenure as a global ethics officer, Prudential Financial received Ethisphere’s designation as one of the World’s Most Ethical Companies for the first time in 2015, and multiple times thereafter. As a member of Gojo’s board, she will further accelerate the strengthening of internal audit and corporate governance to enable the sustainable growth of Gojo group.
Royanne has an undergraduate degree in Philosophy, from Washington University in St. Louis, graduating Magna Cum Laude, Phi Beta Kappa. She earned her Juris Doctorate from UCLA School of Law. She is married to her law school sweetheart and has lived in Japan since 1994. She has three passions: economic empowerment for women, Asia with an emphasis on Japan, and the intersection between neuroscience and behavioral ethics.
投資銀行業務の専門家。以前はBank of Americaにシニアアナリストとして勤務していた。グローバル投資銀行チームに所属し、ヘルスケア分野に重点を置き、数十億ドル規模のM&A取引に関与。それ以前は、インドのFortune Financial Services LtdとNYのCrucible Capital Groupの投資銀行チームに所属していた。
キャリアをスタートさせた当初から、イノベーションとインパクトに関心があり、現在ドイツ1位にランクインする初の完全自動化オンラインクレジットソリューション、easyCreditを開発。五常入社以前は、Vision Fund MyanmarのCOOとして、完全デジタル化されたマイクロファイナンスシステムを開発・導入し、貧困顧客30万人以上にローン、預金、教育へのアクセスを提供。現在は、デジタル化と変革のプロセスについて、いくつかの銀行にアドバイスをしている。
Jacques Attaliとムハマド・ユヌスの支援を受け、プラネットファイナンスを共同設立し、世界中でアドバイザリーサービスを提供。またアフリカ9カ国と中国でBaobab（旧MicroCred）を設立・CEOとして主導。退職前の2019年にBaobabは100万人の顧客に10億ドルを貸し出し、約2億ドルの総収益と4000万ドル以上の経常利益を創出。
世界経済フォーラムのヤング・グローバル・リーダーであり、the French China FoundationとShare Africaの共同設立者でもある。パリのEFREIでコンピュータサイエンスを、La Sorbonneで哲学を学んだ。フランス語、英語、スペイン語を流暢に話し、歴史と哲学を愛する。スキーとハイキングが好きな二児の父。
堅田 航平
執行役CFO
大学在学中にバングラデシュのNGOにおけるリサーチ・インターンを通じて、マイクロファイナンスの可能性と課題を認識。大学卒業後、インドの英文校正スタートアップの立ち上げに関与したのち、モルガン・スタンレー証券 投資銀行本部においてM&Aアドバイザリー業務に従事。Och-Ziff Capital Management(Hong Kong)を経て、2008年にライフネット生命保険に入社し、経営管理、事業開発、組織開発、韓国におけるJV設立などを担当。IPO準備の責任者として同社を東証マザーズ上場に導き、執行役員CFOに就任。
ミレーナは、スタートアップ向けアドバイザーのTherion Advisersの共同創業者兼Managing Partner、気候変動の課題解決に取り組む革新的なソリューションに投資するグローバル・ベンチャーキャピタルであるAera VCのVenture Partner、ベンチャーキャピタルAntlerのVenture Partnerを務めています。以前はロンドンでUBSグループ投資銀行部門のExecutive Director、シンガポールのウェルスマネジメントのコンサルタントを歴任。慈善活動にも力を注いでおり、複数のNGOの創設者やパートナー。米国証券アナリスト。London School of EconomicsでInternational Accounting and Financeの修士号を取得。
金融機関で働くかたわら、2007年にLiving in Peaceを設立し(2017年に理事長退任)、日本初のマイクロファイナンス投資ファンドを企画した。過去15年以上にわたり社会的養育を受ける子どもの支援に携わっており、2021年に日本児童相談業務評価機関を共同設立した。
単著は10冊。日本縦断1648kmウルトラマラソン完走。空手黒帯、ブラジリアン柔術青帯(2022年時点)。世界経済フォーラムのYoung Global Leader 2018選出。朝鮮大学校法律学科、早稲田大学大学院ファイナンス研究科卒。趣味はストリート写真を撮ること。時々バンドでドラムを叩く。
Haruna’s Story
Why did you join Gojo? Since the beginning of my career I had wanted to spend my time on supporting people in developing countries. However, I ended up starting my career as a strategy consultant. After 3 years, I joined Rakuten, a Japan-based internet services company, where I worked mainly at the CEO office as an internal consultant. There were many interesting projects and I really enjoyed my time there, but I couldn’t give up on my original aspiration. After spending 10 years at Rakuten I decided to shift my career to pursue my personal mission. You can read more about my career here.
What does a day in your life look like? A typical day will be like this: 0700-0900 : Time with kids – breakfast, send them off to school, dish washing, laundry etc 0930-1200 : Start working at home. Morning is usually more quiet and I get time to do analysis, write / read reports etc. (if I’m lucky) 1200-1300 : Lunch 1300-1800 : Meetings with Gojo team members, group company counterparts, executive committees and board meetings 1800-2000 : Time with kids – dinner, bath, homework etc 2000-2200 : Not everyday but sometimes late night meetings, some additional work to be done
What do you find challenging and rewarding about your job? The best part is the people you work with. It is amazing to work with really talented people who share the same values and the goal to achieve a social mission. Everyone is very kind and empathetic, while being super professional. I also like the flat and open culture – you are encouraged to dissent without fear, almost all information is disclosed to everyone so transparency is quite high, very little hierachy. The challenges are workload management and distance with the clients. Being a startup there is always so much work that needs to be done, while as a working mother there is only limited time I can spend, so it sometimes becomes difficult. Being in Japan, it is sometimes difficult to provide effective support to clients in a timely manner. Having said that I feel that the challenges are possible to overcome with the great team members.
A word for prospective team members I think it was one of my best decisions I made in my life to come to Gojo. I am sure you will feel the same too.
Why did you join Gojo? Prior to joining Gojo, I worked with one of India’s largest impact investing groups covering many sectors like healthcare, financial services, agriculture, education etc. After 5 years, I felt the need to build deep expertise in a particular area so as to make a meaningful contribution. With financial inclusion as its core theme, Gojo not only gave me an opportunity to work directly on the field but also think about how I can make real impact.
What does a day in your life look like? Even after a few years at Gojo, my days are still intellectually stimulating! Typically I have a bunch of calls/meetings on various issues – building investment pipelines, negotiating new investments, managing group companies, etc. Initially it did look overwhelming, but I like the fact that it gives me an opportunity to cover multiple facets related to building a strong foundation for the group. There are also a lot of casual chats with colleagues between meetings which make for a fun day!
What do you find challenging and rewarding about your job? The only challenge I see at Gojo is our remote style of working. Throughout my career, I have worked with colleagues co-located in a physical office so this was definitely new to me. But the rewards outweigh the challenges and make it all worthwhile. The opportunity to understand the hardships of our clients, experience their lives, and constantly strive to make them better keeps me going. You feel that you’re making a dent in the universe, in your own small way, and that feeling has been very satisfying for me.
A word for prospective team members Despite the large scale, Gojo still operates like a start-up. If you want to make a difference to the society while working in a flat organization with a high level of ownership, then this is the place for you!
Why did you join Gojo? I’ve always been passionate about working at the intersection of social impact and business, so impact investing felt like a natural starting point for my career. What drew me specifically to Gojo was its hands-on involvement with its group companies. This allows Gojo to go beyond financial returns and actively extend its impact to reach more people, which really resonated with me.
What does a day in your life look like? Everyday is always different! I usually head to the Tokyo office in the morning to catch up on emails, Slack messages, and conduct analysis work. In the afternoon-evening, when colleagues in India, Europe, and our group companies start their workday, I shift to meetings. One of the perks of being in the office is the chance to have coffee breaks with the Tokyo team between tasks
What do you find challenging and rewarding about your job? The fast-paced environment is both the most challenging and most rewarding part of the job. Every day brings new developments across different teams and group companies. What truly makes it rewarding though, is hearing firsthand from clients about how Gojo’s services have made a difference in their lives.
A word for prospective team members If you are someone who wants to grow while contributing to something bigger than yourself, I am sure you will enjoy your time at Gojo as much as I do.
Milena has over 25 years of finance experience spanning across investment banking, wealth management, venture capital investing and startup advisory. She is a strong believer that directing capital for impact can be a powerful force for good without compromising financial returns.
Milena is Partner at Antares Ventures, an early-stage venture capital firm taking a strategic approach to investing globally in breakthrough innovations that address sustainability challenges in Asia’s Growth Markets. She is co-chair of the Climate Solutions Committee at the Singapore Venture & Private Capital Association. She is also involved in several philanthropic initiatives and is a Member of the Board of Trustees of the Clean Air Fund, a leading non-profit at the intersection of climate and health.
Prior to that she was Partner at Aera VC and focused on investing in transformative technologies to reverse climate change. In her earlier career as Executive Director at UBS Investment Bank in London, Milena advised leading financial institutions on mergers, acquisitions, and IPOs with over $10bn in deal value. In Singapore, she worked in UBS wealth management, advising ultra-high-net-worth individuals on asset allocation, wealth planning, and corporate structuring.
Milena holds a MSc Degree in International Accounting and Finance from the London School of Economics.
Kshama Fernandes
Outside Director
Kshama has three decades of experience in Capital Markets, Risk Management and Structured Finance, with the last 15 years focussed on the financial inclusion space in India. Respected for her knowledge and commitment towards the cause of unleashing the power of finance for the greater good, Kshama has been a member of various High Powered Committees setup by the Government of India and has worked on consulting assignments for the World Bank, the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, Ministry of Finance, Government of India, and NSEIT. Through her innovative and pioneering work, she has been instrumental in creating and developing the market for debt for the underbanked in India. Kshama is recognised as a leading figure in the Indian financial markets, and in the world of impact investing. She is also the Vice Chairperson of the Northern Arc Group, a leading finance company in India that invests and connects underbanked institutions and businesses to capital markets investors.
She has a bachelors in Mathematics, a Masters in Management and a Ph.D. in Finance. An adventure sports enthusiast, Kshama is a trained mountaineer, sailor, sky diver and an ardent biker.
Almira Zejnilagic
Outside Director
Almira has two decades of experience in risk and crisis strategy management, having worked as an advisor, board member and management, as well as having extensive Investment Committee experience. Most recently she was a senior executive in a global, fast-growing Web 3 financial services business and previously a Partner at FTI Consulting where she spent a decade and helped build and ran Global Risk and Investigation Practic in Europe, Central Asia and Africa.
During her formative years, as a Bosnian refugee, Almira experienced challenges relating to remittances and access to finance, which later shaped her keen interest in finacial inclusion and digital finance as well as broader issues of social justice.
Almira is a Young Global Leader of the World Economic Forum. She speaks English, Serbo-Croatian and Russian (as well as some basic Tajik). She enjoys reading and cooking with her family.
Ignacio Mas-Ribo
Outside Director
Ignacio is a non-executive director at Gojo & Company, Senior Fellow at the Fletcher School’s Council on Emerging Market Enterprises at Tufts University, and an independent consultant.
During 2015-2020, Ignacio was co-founder and executive director at the Digital Frontiers Institute, a not-for-profit that develops professional development training courses around digital money and payments. Previously, he was Deputy Director in the Financial Services for the Poor program at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and Senior Advisor at the Technology Program at CGAP. I have been Director of Global Business Strategy at Vodafone Group, Executive VP of Marketing and Account Management at DoCoMo interTouch, and Senior Manager responsible for telecoms investments in Europe for Intel Capital.
Ignacio has undergraduate degrees in maths and economics from MIT and a PhD in economics from Harvard University. He has been Adjunct Professor at the Booth School of Business at the University of Chicago.
Sanjay Gandhi
Co-founder, Managing Partner & CIO
Sanjay co-founded Gojo in 2014 as Gojo’s Chief Investment Officer and has led the Investment Division since then. Apart from recommending the investments to be made by Gojo, he also represents Gojo on the Board and Committees of the partner entities and contributes actively towards strengthening the governance at the partner level.
Sanjay qualified as a Chartered Accountant (CPA) before graduating from Delhi University. After his first job as an Audit Manager in India in early 1990s, he led the Corporate Banking (North India) team for a Finance company.
Sanjay joined the microfinance industry in 2003 and has been part of it ever since: conducted about 125 MFI ratings & assessments in 29 countries; approved more than 400 MFI Rating reports. Some of the assignments were for the World Bank, ADB, UNDP, Cordaid and Mercy Corps. After his CEO assignment at a Cambodian MFI in 2013, Sanjay and Taejun got together to set up Gojo, where Sanjay’s extensive experience in the microfinance sector has been invaluable.
Sanjay operates from India, where he stays with his wife and two daughters. He speaks English, Hindi, and Punjabi. Loves reading; movies; and music. “The Beatles” is his all-time favourite music band.
Customers
Our key focus is our net positive impact on our clients through financial inclusion, something enshrined in our corporate mission. This continuous effort is reflected in our score in the “Customers” category, by far the highest in our assessment with 50.6 points overall, out of a maximum of 80. We are not satisfied yet: our work to further improve how we serve and support our clients is detailed in the impact reports we publish every year.
Kannan
Respondent Kannan, aged 30, married, a fisherman who lives with his family. He sends his children to private schools. He had lived on small-sized informal loans in 2022 during the economic crisis, when Sri Lanka experienced a significant currency depreciation and sharp price increases.
In early 2023, he repaired his fishing boat and purchased fishing nets through a local microfinance institution. He shares that the fishing nets need to be changed twice or thrice per year and the financial services help in his business continuity. He is also a participant of ROSCA (Rotating Savings and Credit Association) and his income has seen an increase since mid-2023. He faces financial setbacks when his boat engine fails and he depends on his relatives for immediate cash to meet the household needs in times of emergencies.
In the photo, Kannan stands beside his boat and fishing nets.
Jessy
Respondent Jessy, aged 37, is divorced and a mother of two children. She lives in her mother’s house and earns through tailoring where the sewing machine and other tailoring equipment were purchased through a local microfinance institution.
She manages her household needs through occasional alimony from her ex-husband, Samurdhi government benefits and support from close relatives. She keeps monthly shop credit for basic food and grocery expenses and repays the following month. She wants to earn more and focuses on her tailoring skills. Jessy desires to build her own house in the future.
In the photo, Jessy sits next to her newly purchased sewing machine.
We counted the monthly income for each household in the Cambodia Diaries and aggregated the frequencies based on magnitude. The leftmost bar represents the number of months with no recorded income. Levels ranging from less than USD 10 to around USD 70 were the most frequently observed income levels. We can also see that as income increases, its frequency decreases.
This graph shows how the diarists borrow from financial institutions like microfinance institutions and banks for larger loan sizes and in less frequency, and how they borrow from relatives and individual lenders for smaller sized loans.
This is the total number and cumulative amount of all transactions recorded in the Cambodia Diaries. All transactions have been categorised into four quadrants. You can see various sources of income and expenses, as well as the inflows and outflows from financial or asset transactions.
This graph represents the count of expenses for each household in the Cambodia Diaries for over a monthly period, aggregated by magnitude. There were no instances of zero expenses over a month. Levels ranging from less than USD 50 to around USD 90 were the most common expense levels. Compared to the income distribution, the distribution of expenses is more skewed. It suggests that expenses are necessary even when there is no income; in cases of substantial income, some of it is saved instead of spent.
Respondent Prema, aged 33, a housewife and a mother of 3 children, lives with her spouse. Her spouse is a driver and her 13-year-old helps record daily cash flow in the financial diary.
The household purchased a piece of land through a local institution and has done house repairs in phases by pawning gold goods. The loan repayments, utility bills, school and tuition fees are the recurring high expenditures in 2023. In January 2024, they invested in a small business towards fragrant agarwood plants. The household aims towards varied objectives balancing monthly income and expenditures.
In the photo, Prema stands on her purchased land with construction materials.
Chandri
Respondent Chandri, a housewife, aged 33, lives with her spouse, two children and parents. Her spouse is a carpenter and she participates in ‘Equipment Seettu’ where regular deposits are made to a shop and by the end of the stipulated period, she receives household goods. Seettu is a group saving method practiced among Sinhalese men and women, and it operates through friends and social circles in the community. In this case, it is probably in collaboration with the seller of these pots.
She has a children’s bank account where she tries to save, though not regularly. The household had utilized small-sized loans from welfare societies and local lenders for the consumption / purchase of household goods. Chandri shares that managing the medical expenses of the parents is hard to get by, yet the financial diary helps to cut unnecessary expenses and save for emergencies.
In the photo, Chandri carries her new cooking utensils (equipment seettu).
