Named as one of the top ideas in 2006 by the New York Times Magazine, Kiva (www.kiva.org) is the world’s first person-to-person lending marketplace for the poor. Kiva's mission is to reduce global poverty by letting consumers lend to specific developing world entrepreneurs online. These loans help low income entrepreneurs create their own path towards economic self sufficiency. In a little over a year, Kiva has rapidly grown to become the most trafficked site in microfinance with over 70,000 internet lenders supporting thousands of entrepreneurs in 30 developing countries. Kiva has also received wide acclaim from the blogosphere (+10,000 blogs), mainstream media (NPR, BBC, CNN, Wall Street Journal, etc) and development experts (featured at the 2006 Clinton Global Initiative and 2006 Global Microcredit Summit). Headquartered in San Francisco, Kiva is a 501(c)3 non-profit and aspires to be a major internet public good (like Wikipedia).

Prior to Kiva.org, Premal was a Principal Product Manager at PayPal, an eBay company. During his 6 year career at PayPal, Premal drove a number of key initiatives including a year long project defining eBay's role in economically empowering the global working poor. A number of corporate initiatives have come out of this effort, including PayPal's support of Kiva.org. Prior to PayPal, Premal was a strategy consultant at Mercer Management Consulting in New York. Premal has had a long standing interest in microfinance. In 1997, he was awarded a grant from Stanford University to research microfinance in Gujarat, India. More recently Premal co-founded the Silicon Valley Microfinance Network and spent 2 months in India working to refine / validate Kiva.org's model. In 2006, Premal was a featured speaker at the Clinton Global Initiative and Global Microcredit Summit. Premal graduated with a B.A. in Economics from Stanford University.

• John Metcalf June 21, 2007

  great work, Premal.
• Jimmy Wu May 28, 2007

  This is a noble idea and I think the key to making this succeed will be Kiva’s ability to screen truly qualified entrepreneurs. I think I may have gotten the impression that this is more of a charity rather than a money lending exchange when the word poverty was used in the pitch. That gave me the impression that the borrowers have very little creditworthiness, so maybe talking more about the screening process would help. All in all, a great idea with good intentions for a noteworthy cause.
• Bambi Francisco Roizen May 26, 2007

  Nice pitch. It covered everything and leaves the viewer with a sense of what the company is about and what it's accomplished. It's the eBay for microcredit. Can this be the next "Internet public good" like Wikipedia.org? It has a chance. The idea of no-interest lending also recalls the days when many cultures frowned on interest payments. Aristotle said this: “The most hated sort [of wealth getting], and with the greatest reason, is usury, which makes a gain out of money itself and not from the natural object of it. For money was intended to be used in exchange but not to increase at interest. And this term interest [tokos], which means the birth of money from money, is applied to the breeding of money because the offspring resembles the parent. Whereof of all modes of getting wealth, this is the most unnatural.”