Lenddo

History

Founded in 2011 by co-founders Jeffrey Stewart and Richard Eldridge, Lenddo initially operated an online lending operation in three countries: the Philippines (since 2011), Colombia (since 2012) and Mexico (since 2013). The company started when Stewart and Eldridge were running technology companies in the Philippines and several other emerging markets. "Their skilled young staff often asked for loans... With repayment rates in microfinance as high as 98% in multiple regions, the opportunity seemed obvious." By January 2011 the company was launched, and by March they had issued their first loan.

Lenddo closed a Series A round of funding in venture capital in May 2012 from investors including Accel Partners, Blumberg Capital, Inovia Capital and Omidyar Network. In 2013, Lenddo received an additional $6 million funding from investors including Kickstart Ventures, Golden Gate Ventures and the co-founder of Skype, Toivo Annus, to fund its planned expansion across Southeast Asia.

In January 2015, Lenddo announced expanding its credit scoring and identity verification solutions to third parties globally. By October 2015, the company raised capital in series B1 and by January 2016, confirmed its international exposure by opening offices in India. At the peak of its global operations, the company had an extended presence across Latin America, South Asia and Southeast Asia and had onboarded more than 200,000 applicants every month.

In October 2017, Lenddo merged with the Boston-headquartered startup Entrepreneurial Finance Lab (EFL).The merged entity was known as LenddoEFL. Lenddo CEO Richard Eldridge continued on as the CEO of the company.

A year following the merger, in April 2019, a new CEO was appointed, Paolo Montessori with founder Richard Eldridge stepping down to a non-executive role. This new regime led to scandal for LenddoEFL as a news article published in TechinAsia in June 2020 hinted at culture clashes with former EFL employees, organizational structure and funding issues and the connection of Nordaq company to Paul L Devine, formerly the CEO of NordAq Energy Inc (NordAq). Paul L Devine had, just two years prior been embroiled in court litigation with NordAq over allegations of fraud. The charges were subsequently dismissed with prejudice in early 2019. The news article cited Paul L Devine as being actively involved in the internal operations of LenddoEFL as CFO, leading employees to not receive compensation for several months, for vendors not to be paid, and for numerous lay offs including closure of offices in other countries.