Head in the clouds to help the little guy

ENAR

Company: Pi Slice Entrepreneur: Genny Ghanimeh Country: United Arab Emirates Industry: Microfinance Established in: March 2013 Many entrepreneurs can be accused of starting with their heads in the clouds, but few do so literally. In 2010 while Genny Ghanimeh was climbing Mount Kilimanjaro in Tanzania, her guide admitted to making the climb to pay for his daughter’s education. “I was surprised he did it six times a year, but he told me he had to do it.” The climb being no small feat, Ghanimeh was inspired and set on a course to make finance more accessible in places where it was lacking. She joined the entrepreneurial clan in Dubai in March 2013 when she launched Pi Slice, a crowdlending platform for micro-finance entrepreneurs in the Middle East. Ghanimeh identified a gap in microfinance in the MENA region, where out of the six million households identified by microfinance institutions (MFIs) as