Grounded Insights: Shivani Siroya on Building Tala to $300M ARR (Founder & CEO)

Hello, everybody. Welcome to Grounded Insights powered by Ground AI. Today we have Shivani Siroya, the CEO and founder of Tala, the leading financial technology company in emerging markets. Grounded Insights is a series meant to promote lessons on business growth from leaders of today for the next generation of founders, CEOs, innovators, operators, While sharing what keeps them grounded. It is such a treat to be here with Shivani because the level of impact that she has had on the lives of people is immense. Millions of people have borrowed through Tala's smartphone app, which provides instant personalized credit to underserved customers in East Africa, South Asia, and Latin America. Forbes has named Tala as one of the top 50 fintech companies in the world, and Tala's work has been highlighted in the New York Times, the Financial Times, Wall Street Journal, TED, TechCrunch, and the list goes on. We're so excited. Shivani, thank you for being here with us.

Well, first of all, thank you so much for having me on. I really do hope that I I can be helpful as your growing ground and then also provide some advice from all of my learnings along the way to others that are listening today.

My first question is about impact, because when I think about the work that you have been spearheading for many years, that's the word that really comes to mind.

And I want to understand more about how you have been able to instill a growth mindset at Tala, personally, professionally. How do you think about that?

As I think about, you know, what do I do to push the organization, the first thing that I think I always start with is our mission. And I think being a very, I would say, you know, customer-centric organization, and so, As a result of that, you know, any problem that we're facing, anything we're thinking about as a challenge, we start with, okay, well, what's our goal here? And our goal is always to come back to that mission. And so for us, the goal is around how do we enable the global majority to be able to be true owners of their financial life, to be financial agents. And so that means giving our customers both access to a financial system, but also giving them the ability to choose products and also have that awareness and that control. And so I think because we simplify it back to the roots of the organization, we then can kind of look through, okay, is it capabilities that we're missing here? And so do we need to approach this from a, okay, a technical side and the tools or the capabilities our teams need to be able to solve the problem? Is it a trade-off? And in that sense, what are we looking to trade off between Again, mission, pricing, these different things. Ideally, we're always, again, ending up at a place where we're optimizing both. But because we start, again, from the pain point of the customer, and then how the business shows up to solve it, I think the team is able to kind of cut through noise very efficiently.

At the end of the day, the question that everyone asks themselves is, well, let's put the customer first. What does the customer need for us to either level up ourselves personally or level up the company.

Exactly. Because ultimately we believe the growth of Tala and the scale we can achieve both in our existing markets and globally will only come from solving the customer pain point. And so once you actually provide value to a customer, they're going to stay with you. They're going to continue to pay with you because, you know, you don't need to put in incentives or rewards and all these other things. To do that, you have to ultimately just focus on solving their problem and again delighting them along the way and removing that friction. And so for us, that's why we start there. I think the other thing that's unique about Tala is that as a result of being so close to our customers, we also have a tremendous amount of data that also enables us to again listen in a different way and to be very data-driven in how we choose which path is the best one to solve the customer's problem.

Tala is both data-driven, but there's also a lot of humanity in the way that you tackle those problems. Because being an active listener, also removing your ego and being able to ask yourself, well, what's, what's best for the customer, makes it so that way maybe even you personally can level yourself up to be able to meet the customer where they're at. And so that instills or inspires personal growth as well. And that, in turn, will lead to company growth.

Very well said. That's exactly it.

I'm just taking the words from you.

No, I totally— I think you said it really well, because I think that is how we show up as an organization and what our culture is, is that it is about being data-driven, not overly analytical just for the purpose of that, but again, To ensure that we are, we are meeting our customers where they are and solving the problem. And so, yes, it's data-driven with empathy.

Yes.

Okay. And as you think about being a leader in the world of consumer, because Tala is a consumer-facing company, what emerging trends, or I'd say developments, do you find most exciting for the future of the business, And as you continue to grow and scale?

So I think that the new paradigm that we're moving into around AI, as well as how we continue to leverage machine learning within financial services, is really exciting. You know, we've obviously been using machine learning throughout, you know, the last 9 years of Tala, which is how we do our proprietary credit models, servicing, all of the different aspects of kind of the product suite for our customers. But now I think, you know, as we see more of these shifts in technology around AI, I think it's really cool to think about, you know, how can we, how can we do more of that enablement for our small business owner? And how can we provide them, you know, products outside of financial services, such as, you know, how do we optimize their businesses for them? And start to give them guidance on pricing? How do we help, you know, the family money managers to think about which bills are correct, are first, you know, to be prioritized? How do we fill them? How do we help them fill out paperwork for other resources or services that they want to, you know, again, go access? We can do all of that for them much more seamlessly. And so it kind of as we all think about it, right, how AI can be leveraged for our lives and our businesses, in a way, we are really focused now on last-miling that technology for our customer base as well. Because otherwise, we do think that many segments of the population will get left behind. And because we already have that relationship with them and that channel to them, I'm really excited to see how we can leverage it and, again, You know, do the same thing for us as for them.

From the very early days, your proprietary model and the way that you thought as a team, as a business, about solving for financial access was very different. And nobody was, no, nobody was really thinking about proprietary models in the way that you guys were. And so it paid dividends from the very early days. It was a strategy, a foundation, And so short-term gain, but also long-term growth, right? Because you've continued to evolve the model. How do you think about those strategies today? How do you leverage technologies like AI or emerging technologies? What's a fad? What is not? How are you able to think about growth for the company in a way that takes into account those trade-offs, short-term, long-term?

I think I'd start out by saying, I think you've got to parallel path it, right? So, in some ways, as I think back to the very early days of Tala and the genesis of it, you know, I took a very data-informed approach, which is, again, is why the ethos of Tala in our core is data. You know, I did 3,500 customer interviews to really understand the problem, to really understand how customers make decisions around money, which is what then led to, again, the idea of where does this data exist and how can we leverage this kind of alternative data to create new models? And so I think one, starting from that approach of saying, okay, we're always going to take a data-driven approach, then it's actually bifurcating, I think, resource allocation within an organization. So on the, let's say, long-term side, we can use all of the data and the trends that we're already seeing within our markets, within our customer behavior preferences that can help us, you know, innovate solutions for the long term that are also bucketed into near-term impact to the P&L and then medium-term impact to the P&L. And that's how we think about roadmapping is saying, okay, are going to be some short-term bets that we see show up immediately within a quarter. And then there's going to be some medium-term bets that we think will create like a 3x impact to the P&L. But again, those should be identifiable through proof points, trends, as well as customer behavior that already exists. On the other side, we allocate and we constrain resourcing around seed bets. And these are things that are much more creative, out-of-the-box ideas, much more of an open playing field, new paradigm area where we're saying, okay, we're going to gate the amount of resourcing that goes to these things, but we think these things can have a 10x impact to the P&L. But ultimately, both approaches, seed bets as well as near and medium-term bets, have to actually create a P&L impact because our goal is, again, to be sustainable. We really want to be this true social enterprise that is mission-driven but is also profitable. And so I think it goes back to that piece of the key things are always going to be, you know, mission-first, data-driven, and then the outcome for us is sustainability.

That's incredibly thoughtful.

That's— And my question for you as a follow-up is, what stage of the business would you say that you were able to develop this framework? Because I also know that you advise many other companies across industries that are consumer-facing, and they may ask themselves, like, when should I be thinking about that? Is it really from day one to approach growth in that way? Thinking about the inputs, short-term, medium-term, and then the outputs, which are more long-term? Or is this just something that comes with time?

I think it comes with time and probably some level of scale around your initial seed bets. So I think ultimately, you know, some people call this, you know, investment horizons. You know, I like to think of it a little bit more simple, near, medium, long-term. And I think if you think about it, once your seed bets that you first start a company with get to some level of scale and provability, from there it's okay, well then how are you investing in your next S-curve, right? How are you thinking about the next order problems for your customers? And so it's probably 2 years in depending on how fast you grow in the early days. But from there, you always want to be ensuring that you've got an organization that is always creative, innovating, and not just focused on optimizing. Absolutely.

So Shivani, this is a question that we ask everyone on Grounded Insights. It also very much inspired the name Ground. As you know, building and innovating It comes with its share of very highs and very lows. And so how do you keep yourself grounded personally? Are there any mantras that you'd like to share or anything that you've kind of learned along the way?

I would say I've got 2 mantras I always come back to. First is, I'm probably gonna be like saying this over and over, but because, you know, it goes back to mission, but I think, and maybe it's the, it's the bigger one for me, which is do no harm. And so I, I go back to this one because I think, you know, there's always goals that we have personally, how our goals that we have for our businesses, you know, and some of those can be self-serving. And they're not hurting anyone, and that's fine. But really, when you think about it, if you can create goals for yourself as well as for your company that are actually helping everyone, I actually see us— I actually see just more success in that because people are going to show up to want to help you, and you're doing it in a way that is, I don't know, Attaching more to something that's better meant for everyone. And so I think the— at the minimum, what we have to do is really ensure that we are not doing any harm with the goals that we have and the approaches we're taking. And then the second one that I always come back to is you can always begin again. And I think that one is more about risk-taking and about trying new things or how you approach challenges. Because again, if we are doing things that are outside of our comfort zone, we may not do them correctly the first time, but we can always start again. And I think that comes with why you start a company. It comes with every pitch you make, all these different things. If we just approach it from a Let's just ensure that our intention is that we're trying our best. The outcome isn't what we really ultimately have to focus on. And we can always think of it as, this isn't my only chance. I think it gets rid of a little bit of that fear. I think the thing that comes to mind now, 9 years in, I would say, is focus on passion and fun along the way as well. So there's an aspect of, I think, the pressures and the comparison that come with continuing to grow the company, getting to a different level of scale, raising money, all of those things. But I think whenever I come back to remembering that I didn't think I was going to start a company, and I didn't think that there were going to be over 500 people at the company, and that we've now served over 10 million customers. You know, I think back to when I started and just this idea that I wanted to solve a problem, right? And that was what I was so obsessed and focused on. I go back to that feeling, and I think then it really again gives me the courage to keep going, but it also fuels me back into the direction of where I think I should put my energy within the company, or why I want to, in a meeting, say something that might be different or unexpected, right? There are some things that sometimes I think we put ourselves into archetypes of what a CEO or someone on the management team might look like at a scaled company. And I think we need to come back to a little bit of that naiveness and the reasons and the feelings that we had. in the very early days. And I think it gives you back that magical juju or the spirit of why you're there in the first place. And so that's fun. It's magic. It's naiveness. It's curiosity. And ultimately, it's passion and drive. Thank you so much, Shivani.

This has been not only inspiring, educational, but there's so much wisdom in everything that you share. As you mentioned, 9 years in the making. And it's always a reminder whenever I hear you speak, you share a lot of the— go back to that childlike wonder, go back to that naivete, because that's what's going to give you power instead of those archetypes boxing yourself in, thinking that it's your only chance. And, you know, that's a lot of the time, it's ego. And as we get older and as we get even more experienced in what we do, it takes precedence where The magic really lies in, in how you started and how you were scaling from the ground up. So thank you so much.

Thank you.