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Tala Opens First Engineering Hub in IndiaBANGALORE, June 20, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- The company, one of the fastest growing FinTech startups in the world, plans to tap into the premier tech talent pool and build a team of 40 employees by 2018 Tala, a global mobile technology and data science company that is broadening access to credit and financial services by harnessing non-traditional data, announced the launch of its first engineering hub in Bangalore. A social mission-driven company, Tala was founded by Shivani Siroya, an Indian-origin entrepreneur in 2012. Headquartered in Santa Monica, California, Tala's proprietary credit model leverages alternative data and state-of-the-art machine learning techniques to assess the creditworthiness of thin-file customers. Tala's platform analyses unique digital data points including behavioural data, merchant transactions, SMS receipts as a proxy for traditional financial data. Tala will offer a suite of local, customized short-term credit products through a smartphone app that will be available across the country. According to Tala's Chief Technology Officer, Johnny Lee, "Bangalore has an exceptional pool of technology and engineering talent, and we couldn't be more excited to set up Tala's Engineering Hub here, in the IT capital of India. Engineers here will have the opportunity to work closely with Tala's existing global offices to develop and launch localized lending products to address the needs of over 700 million financially underserved people in India." Globally, Tala's technical leadership boasts a wealth of experience, having held key position at leading technology players such as Apple, Uber and PayTM. Tala plans to build India as the hub for its Asian operations, and the Bangalore team will play an integral role in executing Tala's vision for the market in the region. The company will invest to attract highly-skilled, best-in-class software engineers, product managers, designers and support staff. The company offers a unique learning opportunity for engineers, product managers and allows them to work with one the industry's fastest growing, diverse, and equitable teams. Tala aims to expand its Bangalore team to 40 engineers by the end of the year. The Bangalore team's mandate provides substantial autonomy to focus on developing high impact, cutting-edge products, right from the conceptualization stage. Currently, Tala operates in Kenya, Tanzania, Mexico and the Philippines, where it has broadened credit access to 1.4 million customers and disbursed more than $350 million. The company's recent Series C round brings Tala's total financing to more than $105 million. Check out Tala's open positions to find where you could thrive on tala.co/careers. About Tala Established in 2012, Tala is a mobile technology and data science company that is changing the way credit scoring and financial services work around the world. Tala's smartphone app instantly evaluates customers for credit using only the data on their devices and delivers customized loans in minutes. Tala is headquartered in Santa Monica with additional offices in Mumbai, Bangalore, Nairobi, Dar Es Salaam, Manila and Mexico City. Tala currently employs over 250 people across its offices. The company began building credit scores manually through an SMS reporting tool. Tala's current product - a smartphone application - was launched in Kenya in 2014. After building and refining Tala's product in Kenya, the company launched in early 2017 in the Philippines and Tanzania. The company has disbursed upwards of $350 million in credit to over 1,400,000 borrowers in Kenya, Tanzania and the Philippines. Tala is now expanding into India and Mexico. In 2018, Forbes named Tala as one of the top 50 FinTech companies in the world, and Tala's work has been highlighted by the New York Times, the Financial Times, the Wall Street Journal, TED, and TechCrunch, among others. Tala has raised $105 million from leading venture and impact investors including Revolution (Series C Lead), IVP (Series B Lead), Ribbit Capital, Lowercase Capital (Chris Sacca - Seed Round Lead), Data Collective (Series A Lead), Collaborative Fund and Female Founders Fund.
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