Jia is a blockchain-based fintech organization that offers small businesses and emerging markets the loans they need to operate and stay afloat. In recent news, the company announced that it had secured more than $4 million in seed funding, while another $1 million (for a total of $5 million) was delivered to assist its commitment to on-chain liquidity.

What Will Jia Do with the Money?

The funding round featured the participation of well-known blockchain and crypto firms including Block Tower, TCG Crypto, Hashed Emergent, Saison Capital, and Global Coin Research. In addition to the companies, several individual angel investors – including Packy McCormick, the founder of Not Boring, and Anand Lyer of Canonical Crypto – also donated funds to help the company move forward.

Jia says it will use the money to boost its operations in many up-and-coming or third-world nations like Kenya and the Philippines. It will also explore a wide array of new markets in regions such as Asia, Latin America, and West Africa. The idea is that many of these areas have seen their standard financial arenas suffer in recent years, and blockchain can assist them greatly.

The company was founded by Zach Marks, Ivan Orone, Yuting Wang, and Cheng Cheng. All previously worked at a firm called Tala and got to know each other in their previous positions. The company works to garner decentralized finance loans, which are then sent to borrowers.

Granted they repay the loans within certain timeframes they’re rewarded with special token offerings. These tokens can then be redeemed at rates based on Jia’s profits. CEO and co-founder Marks said in a recent interview:

The idea is to provide affordable financing for micro-businesses, and when they repay, they become owners by getting token rewards… The loans range in size from $200 up to $5,000… They are competitively priced. We charge about a third the interest rate of the typical consumer fintech lender.

How It Gets Customers

The way Jia finds partners and customers is by utilizing their local apps. Among the many customers the firm currently serves is Ilara Health, a medical inventory company that works with over 2,000 small clinics. Marks said:

Ilara’s focus is on helping clinics grow by selling medicine [and] low-cost diagnostic devices. They don’t want to deal with credit risk[s] on their balance sheet, so we stepped in to finance an inventory financing program for them. We get access to proprietary data on these clinics, which helps us underwrite in a way that banks and other lenders can’t… What is exciting in what we’re doing is opening the world’s capital to MSMEs so they can receive affordable financing. Jia is not just providing financing. We are providing a path to economic resilience and this opportunity to build wealth in a new way that hasn’t been done before.

Tags: blockchain, Jia, Zach Marks

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• Source: https://www.livebitcoinnews.com/blockchain-firm-jia-raises-more-than-5-million-in-new-funding/