- Programme studied: Global Master's in Management (CEMS)
- Year of Graduation: 2017
- LinkedIn profile
Meet our August Alum of the Month, Nina Mohanty. Nina is the founder and CEO of Bloom Money, a technology platform to provide migrants with familiar financial services. She graduated from the Global Master's in Management in 2017 and pursued a career in FinTech working at Mastercard, Starling Bank, Bud, and Klarna.
What inspired you to study the Global Master’s in Management at LSE, and what impact has this had on your career journey?
Deciding to pursue the Global Master's in Management at LSE came from my innate curiosity about business, its wider context and its social impact. I was working at the US Embassy in London when I applied and received my acceptance to LSE. I wanted to explore the private sector but also to take a holistic approach to learning about management.
I can confidently say that being a graduate of the LSE GMiM has made a positive impact in my career. It changed the way I think about problems and how to go about solving them. It has encouraged me to dig deeper and be relentlessly curious, rerum cognoscere causas!
You have worked in a variety of Fintech roles across and have recently been listed on the Women in Fintech Powerlist. What are your priorities as a leader in this space?
It’s truly been a thrilling career in FinTech to date. What made me enamoured with FinTech from the start was the idea that we can use technology to better peoples’ financial lives and their financial health.
My priorities are to work towards greater financial inclusion and to empower women financially. Part of building a more inclusive financial system means building products with specific demographics in mind. This can mean accounting for things like faith - such as building products that are Sharia compliant. There are millions of Muslims in the UK and Western world who can’t get something as simple as a mortgage because it is not Sharia compliant, and this is important to their faith. This can also mean building products and businesses that tackle the gender pay gap straight on or work to close the gender investment or pension gap. The pension gap between men and women is 40.3% (compared to the pay gap of 17.3%).
I always strive to build inclusive products and services but now as a FinTech founder myself, this also means building environments where my team can thrive and grow and feel empowered to work towards our mission.
You have recently launched Bloom Money, a financial platform targeted at migrants and communities of colour. Tell us more about it and its impact.
I am a proud daughter of immigrants and I know that migrants have a positive impact on culture, the economy, and society more broadly wherever they go. One of the biggest fallacies I hear about financial exclusion is that it’s only a problem in developing countries.
What many people don’t realise is that financial exclusion is a big problem in developed countries too. There are millions of migrants in the UK who are currently financially underserved as well as at least a million adults who are unbanked, meaning they don’t have a basic bank account!
I founded Bloom Money to bridge this gap. Bloom provides the technology for migrant communities and communities of colour to safely and securely take part in community-led borrowing and saving. Our vision is to create the opportunity for everyone, regardless of where they come from, to build a prosperous financial life.
What is the greatest challenge you have had to overcome in your career and what lessons have you learned from it?
The greatest challenge I’ve had to overcome in my career is working through impostor syndrome, the idea that I do not deserve to be where I am or that people will “find me out.” As a woman of colour working in a predominantly white, male industry, it can be daunting to own my expertise and my authority. As a result, I used to work harder to prove my place at the table.
One thing I’ve learned is that many other people, particularly women, feel this. But the other thing I’ve learned is that a lot of people I worked with or thought would find me out didn’t have the expertise I had or the experience and perspective that I had.
What do you see as your greatest achievement?
To be honest, taking the leap to become a full-time FinTech founder was the riskiest and most fulfilling thing I’ve ever done. I have already learned so much and grown immensely from taking responsibility for not just myself, but also my team, and most importantly - the people I serve.
Before founding Bloom Money, I often pointed out the lack of female founders in FinTech (it is estimated that 7% of FinTech companies globally have a female founder) and the woeful funding that goes to female founders more broadly (in 2020, 2.3% of venture capital funding went to female-led businesses). Now as a founder living it every day, I am more determined than ever to succeed and build Bloom to equip all of us for a brighter future.
Fundraising has been a whole new experience and it has been challenging but rewarding to share the vision of Bloom and have people willing to invest in a future where everyone can prosper. There is a parallel story here in that I am actively seeking out a diverse set of investors in my business. By diversifying who invests in private businesses, the returns can then be reinvested into diverse founders building solutions to problems and challenges they come up against in their lives.
This year we are celebrating the 125th anniversary of LSE. What is your fondest memory whilst you were studying with us?
My fondest memories at LSE are all the people. Whether it was a GMiM Happy Hour meeting alumni or in the library discussing Agency Theory in preparation for our Foundations of Management exam, it was always my brilliant classmates and professors who made my two years at LSE unforgettable.
A group of us recently met up in New Delhi to celebrate the wedding of one of our classmates. We still stay connected and support each other whether looking for a new job or starting a new business. In fact, my best friends from LSE have become my rocks as I’ve started my entrepreneurial journey doing everything from reviewing copy to looking over my financial models to introducing me to potential investors. It’s a truly incredible group of people.