Guillaume Desclée de Maredsous's Page

What is the name of your company, organization, or school?

IMPULSO - Online Micro Credit Organization

What is your job function?

Co-Founder / Executive Director

How did you find out about the Microfinance Network?

Surfing the web

What is your alma mater?

ESCP-EAP European School of Management

What is your website?

http://www.impulso.org.br (not online yet - wait Feb.2010) check ou...

Why are you here?

Find out information /Share experience & Knowledge

What are you currently working on?

I'm cofounder of IMPULSO: Online microcredit organization that connects low income entrepreneurs in Brazil with financers from all over the world.

The main difference between Impulso and other Microfinance websites such as Kiva is that IMPULSO is at the same time fundraising over the internet, and microfinance organizations who work directly with micro entrepreneurs. No other microfinance groups are performing these 2 actions at the same time. This allows IMPULSO to provide a unique proximity between Investors and Microentrepreneurs. From the website IMPULSO Financers have access to a full business description, videos and photos of entrepreneur and have the possibility to advice his entrepreneurs on specific problematic that the entrepreneur wants to share.

The website works in 3 steps:

1. Financer browses projects and selects a recipient to support.
2. Financer tracks the recipient’s progress and repayment through regular updates.
3. Once the contribution is 100% repaid financer can redistribute his contribution to a new entrepreneur

Please watch the 2min video to have a better understanding of our project:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=okJMnIC9R0w

Since the beginning (4years ago), Aliança Empreendedora (Mother organization) and IMPULSO supported more than 1.500 microentrepreneurs directly in 20 cities from 4 Brazilian states (expanding to 5 more in 2010), with an increase of 56% to 319% in the microentrepreneurs’ monthly income. For this work we received the support of McKinsey in 2009 for our expansion/strategic plan and had partners and acknowledgements from organizations such as Ashoka, AVINA, WalMart, UBS, Santander, Sebrae, Artemisia, among others. Our visibility among the Brazilian Medias has been sharply growing this year with press releases in newspapers and magazines such as Epoca Negocios, Epoca, Pequenas Empresas Grandes Negocios, Exame, Folha de São Paulo, Gazeta do Povo, etc