Andi Taufan Garuda Putra is Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Amartha, an impact-driven fintech providing capital access to the underserved womenpreneurs in rural communities across Indonesia that aims to drive prosperity and increase wealth. Andi Taufan grew the company from its inception to the organization it is today with over 3,000 employees.

With a clear mission of “Prosperity for Everyone” through applying the Grameen model, Amartha has a strong commitment to empowering women and unbanked individuals in rural areas by providing capital access to start and develop their own businesses and pursue their dreams.

For Andi Taufan, the Grameen model is considered the best to help those most economically challenged in society and those who are traditionally overlooked by conventional banks. Moreover, Andi Taufan also carries a joint-responsibility system in assisting micro-entrepreneurs in those hard-to-reach rural areas.

In the process of building the company, Andi Taufan faced challenges in terms of raising capital to be distributed, and therefore in 2016, the company transformed into a microfinance marketplace that adopts digitalization for raising and distributing venture capital to maintain its mission to provide equitable prosperity. From here, Amartha began to open a channel, both for retail and institutional lenders such as the banking sector and international organizations.

In addition, Andi Taufan applies a profit-sharing approach for lenders. Together with the team, he developed a proprietary risk algorithm that allows for making credit scoring based on behavioural and transaction data to assess the risk profile of potential borrowers.

For his commitment to building the Indonesian economy from the bottom of the pyramid, Andi Taufan has won various awards including Young Changemaker (2010), Ashoka Laureate Global Fellow (2013), International Youth Foundation: Entrepreneur of the Year Finalist (2018), Growth Stage Impact Ventures SDG Finance Geneva Summit (2019), and EY: The Fintech 250 (2020).

Currently, Andi Taufan has succeeded in bringing the company into the Top 3 of fintech lending in the country. Amartha, through its access to capital services, has reached more than 1 million ‘CEO MSME’ partners spread across more than 35,000 villages and disbursed more than IDR6,5 trillion ($400 mn) capital loan.

Prior to Amartha, Andi Taufan was a former consultant at IBM. He holds an MPA from Harvard Kennedy School where he was an Edward S. Mason Fellow and bachelor’s degree in business from Institut Teknologi Bandung.

Andi Taufan and Amartha are committed to reaching millions of other women through inclusive financial services beyond lending, as well as transforming rural Indonesia into Digital Villages by providing access to technology and micro-enterprise assistance.