Kabir Kumar

Kabir Kumar leads Omidyar Network’s global policy and ecosystem building efforts. He is a former Senior Financial Sector Specialist at CGAP, where he led CGAP’s Digital Finance Plus initiative and coordinated efforts in key markets in South Asia. Kabir helped launch CGAP's program on technology-enabled business models for financial services and worked closely with some of the pioneering implementations in the mobile financial services space.

Kabir has been an adviser to banks, mobile network operators, technology companies, and investors in over 15 countries in Asia, Africa, and Latin America. His work has been quoted in numerous media outlets including CNN, The Banker, Economist, and NPR. He has a dual master's degree in public administration and international relations from the Maxwell School of Syracuse University. He can be found on LinkedIn and Twitter.

By Kabir Kumar

Blog

Mobile Money: 10 Things You Need to Know

Mobile money is a fast moving space and 2013 was a busy year. Read our list of 10 trends in the mobile money arena in 2013.
Blog

Global Landscape of Digital Finance Plus

To illustrate the global landscape of Digital Finance Plus, CGAP has identified 55 companies providing innovative solutions in the energy, water, health and agriculture sectors.
Blog

Improving Education with Financial Innovation, Chapter-by-Chapter

Kytabu is a Kenyan-based company that offers a textbook subscription service where users can pay in small increments for individual chapters of textbooks and read the content on their cell phones. The company hopes to make educational materials much more accessible and affordable in Kenya.
Blog

Expanding Water Services with Digital Finance

Upon realizing that rural community water projects were often unsustainable due to poor accounting systems, Grundfos conceptualized a pay-as-you-go (PAYGO) model that improves community water management by increasing transparency and reducing the reliance on cash.
Blog

Increasing Clean Energy Access through Digital Finance

Angaza is one of many new businesses helping to increase access to clean energy by providing innovative financing options.