10 Startups Fighting Poverty

Holding hands.

Here at Startup Savant, we love startup culture. What’s more, we really like it when those startups are helping to solve real-world problems like poverty. From rugged routers to farming by SMS — these are the most innovative poverty-fighting startups to put your conscience and dollars behind.

Companies Tackling Poverty

The best businesses don’t just serve to empower consumerism, they help to make the world a better place too. According to WorldVision, globally, 689 million people live in conditions of extreme poverty. So, if you’re thinking of following or investing in a startup, why not make it one that helps fight poverty?

Disclaimer: With so many exciting startups launching and growing worldwide, we aren’t able to cover them all. Furthermore, the startups that are listed below are not officially ranked and are listed in no particular order.

1. Tala 

  • Location: Santa Monica, California 
  • Founder(s): Shivani Siroya 
  • Founded In: 2011
  • Funding: Series E, $372 Million 
  • Investors Include: Victory Park Capital, PayPal Ventures, Lowercase Capital 

Tala is a fintech startup that aims to expand financial access for underserved populations in developing countries. The company uses alternative data and machine learning (ML) algorithms to assess creditworthiness, allowing it to provide microloans to individuals who lack traditional credit histories. Through its mobile app, Tala offers instant credit decisions and disbursements, enabling users to build their financial identities and access a range of financial services. Since its founding in 2011, Tala has expanded its operations to several countries, including Kenya, Mexico, the Philippines, and India, to serve millions of customers and help drive financial inclusion in emerging markets.

2. Andela

  • Location: New York, New York
  • Founder(s): Brice Nkengsa, Christina Sass, Ian Carnevale, Iyinoluwa Aboyeji, Jeremy Johnson, Nadayar Enegesi
  • Founded In: 2014
  • Funding: Series E, $381 Million 
  • Investors Include: SoftBank Vision Fund, Spark Capital, Social Impact Capital 

Andela is a technology company that identifies and develops software engineers in Africa, connecting them with global employment opportunities. Founded in 2014, the company operates a unique model where it recruits talented individuals, provides them with intensive training in software development, and then places them in remote positions with international tech companies. 

Andela’s approach not only creates high-quality tech jobs in Africa, but also helps address the global shortage of software developers while promoting diversity in the tech industry. The company has expanded its operations across more than 135 countries and has partnered with numerous Fortune 500 companies and startups worldwide.

3. Kiva

  • Location: San Francisco, California
  • Founder(s): Jessica Flannery, Matt Flannery
  • Founded In: 2005 
  • Funding: Grant, $11.8 Million
  • Investors Include: Alphamundi, Reid Hoffman, Women’s Global Development and Prosperity Initiative 

Kiva is a peer-to-peer lending platform for entrepreneurs. Lenders earn no interest on the loans they provide but get to follow the progress of the person they’ve assisted, and the payoff is knowing they’ve done a good deed. This startup is currently listed as a nonprofit, but the concept is certainly monetizable for the greater good in the future.

4. UpEnergy

  • Location: Kampala, Uganda
  • Founder(s): Erik Wurster, Kristian Bruning, Nicole Ballin, Matt Evans, Alex Rau Ph.D
  • Founded In: 2011
  • Funding: Debt Financing, $2.82 Million
  • Investors Include: Climate Wedge, Miller Center for Social Entrepreneurship, Finnish Fund for Industrial Cooperation

UpEnergy is a Ugandan startup that aims to improve the levels of accessibility to clean drinking water while also educating people on safe methods of cooking and fire ignition. Its current projects include the creation and distribution of high-efficiency water purification systems, stoves, and solar lights in an attempt to reduce the number of deaths per year caused by unsafe practices. The startup prioritizes the use of locally-sourced materials and cooperation at the grassroots community level to help empower local artisans and simultaneously provide life-saving services.

5. Unhoused.org

  • Location: London, England 
  • Founder(s): Anisha Seth, Varun Bhanot
  • Founded In: 2018 
  • Funding: Undisclosed

Unhoused.org is the world’s first online store working to aid homeless people. The London-based social impact startup was founded in 2019 and sells men’s and women’s clothing, sanitary items, dental kits, and even haircuts to the public. For every item purchased, the same item gets donated to a local organization serving the homeless community. The clothes sold on Unhoused are manufactured in a sustainable fashion and are self-cleaning through a technology called “FreshTech” to prevent the infiltration of dirt, liquid, and perspiration. 

6. Wagestream

  • Location: London, England
  • Founder(s): Peter Briffett, Portman Wills
  • Founded In: 2018 
  • Funding: Series C, $281 Million
  • Investors Include: British Patient Capital, Northzone, Lombard Odier Investment Managers 

Wagestream is a poverty-fighting startup that aims to strike at one of the main causes of employed-person poverty—crippling debt. As the economy across the world has struggled to overcome one hit after the next, loan shark companies have sprung up, offering over-indebted people payday loans at exorbitant interest rates. These loans, however, only serve to perpetuate the cycle of poverty, and this is what Wagestream hopes to target. The company gives workers access to their wages throughout the month (as they are earned) to accommodate ongoing needs. The startup has seen significant investment from the finance community as well as individuals such as Jeff Bezos.

7. BanQu

  • Location: Minneapolis, Minnesota
  • Founder(s): Ashish Gadnis, Hamse Warfe, Jeff Keiser
  • Founded In: 2016
  • Funding: Series B, $11 Million
  • Investors Include: Brick Street Capital, ZX Ventures, Raptor Group

BanQu is a Minneapolis-based tech startup that has set out to help fight global poverty by supplying a mobile, democratic economic identity to some of the world’s poorest people. Founder and CEO Ashish Gadnis explains that the patent-pending app will help people with the most basic of economic identity assets — birth certificates, identity books, a piece of inherited land — to make that identity portable via the blockchain so that, no matter where they are in the world, they will have access to financial services. The founder also emphasizes that the startup is, and always will be, a for-profit business that simultaneously makes a positive difference in the world.

8. DOT Glasses

  • Location: Brno, Czech Republic
  • Founder(s): Philip Staehelin
  • Founded In: 2014
  • Funding: Seed, $1 Million
  • Investors Include: Tilia Impact Ventures, Nation 1

DOT Glasses is a startup that has recognized that poverty is often a vicious circle, particularly when it comes to the cost of medical care, including optometry. When the children of under-resourced families are not able to get access to eyeglasses, their education inevitably suffers, resulting in them having fewer opportunities as adults. For adults in the same position, this may limit their chances of employment. The startup distributes eyeglasses through various channels, including nonprofit organizations, micro-entrepreneurs, and government organizations.

9. FreeWater

FreeWater is a social startup on a mission to provide access to water wells for people in need by giving water away for free. By selling advertisements on their paper bottles, FreeWater is able to charge nothing for their product while giving 10% back to charity for every bottle.

10. Vula Mobile

  • Location: Cape Town, South Africa
  • Founder(s): Ferdinand Redelinghuys, James Lawrenson, William Mapham
  • Founded In: 2014
  • Funding: Seed, $926,000
  • Investors Include: KSF Impact, South Summit, e4e

Vula Mobile is a South African startup focusing on the healthcare sector, specifically in rural areas where there are so few resources available. The company’s product is an app that helps to connect health care workers in the most far-flung areas with specialists based in hospitals in the city via a mobile app.