New Field Partner in Indonesia, now fundraising:
http://www.kiva.org/lend/417997
"Pak Hotlan": This how people in his neighborhood know him. He lives in a suburb outside Jakarta. Hotlan owns a shop that sells items from food and drinks to airtime. With this business, he calls himself an entrepreneur. He's married and has three children, aged 12, 16, and 19.
At this point, he wants to expand his business throughout the family and the neighborhood. That is why he decided to become an agent for Loket Ruma. He believes that by becoming a "payment point," he can generate money from this informal business. But the main reason he is joining this Ruma program is that the demand among people around him to have a payment point is very high. He sees that people need to have an easy way to pay their bills. He hopes that people will come to him (or, even, he will go door-to-door to the customers' houses) to pay monthly electricity bills or buy prepaid electricity vouchers. Another payment that people are seeking to make through him is for their landline phone bills.
He is looking forward to starting this Loket Ruma service from his modest shop and seeing how it will work. This loan will serve as a damage deposit for an electronic data capture (EDC) device that as an agent, Pak Martin will use to enter payments and print receipts for customers.
PT Ruma's core business is not microfinance. Accordingly, there is some additional risk for lenders as this Field Partner expands its business model to include lending. Because PT Ruma’s business model differs from standard microfinance models, it is not assigned a risk rating on Kiva. Key risks and further information about making loans to borrowers through PT Ruma can be found on the organization’s partner page. http://www.kiva.org/partners/219
