CGAP & Pensaar Design Partner with Cashkumar to Study Data Privacy

WASHINGTON, D.C., February 3, 2020 – The Consultative Group to Assist the Poor (CGAP) will partner with Cashkumar and Pensaar Designto explore how much low-income people value their data privacy.

In India, while there is some understanding of the need for Data Protection and Privacy (DPP), there is still an opportunity to do more to provide DPP – especially to lower income people. Based on the first round of research and experimentation with Pensaar Design, it has emerged that people have demonstrated a strong interest in having DPP. Building on this finding, there are a few hypotheses to be tested regarding this audience’s openness to DPP as a concept.

This upcoming phase involves testing these hypotheses in a real-world context to further improve our understanding of how, when and under what circumstances do data protection settings influence behaviour. Cashkumar will partner with CGAP to do this next round of testing.

Dhiren Makhija, CEO and Co-founder of Cashkumar commented, “We are happy and keen to partner CGAP on this research which addresses the most valuable commodity in today’s digital world. It is our obligation as a P2P lending company and also as a member of this society to advocate DPP, a responsibility we place above all. Cashkumar implements high standards in protecting the data of our customers and we are eager to contribute to efforts which spread awareness about it.”

David Medine, CGAP Data Protection Lead stated, “We are excited about partnering with Cashkumar, and continuing our work with Pensaar Design, to test the degree to which consumers are willing to act to protect their privacy in their financial transactions. The findings could promote industry self-regulatory efforts by making the case that privacy is good business.”

Deepa Bachu, CEO & Co-Founder of Pensaar Design, the firm carrying out the research said “We are delighted to have the opportunity to dig deep and develop a really rigorous understanding of DPP among the lower income group and, to have the privilege of partnering with CGAP. Our behaviour based rapid experimentation gives us an opportunity to continuously learn and evolve our already deep understanding. We look forward to the next phase to further behaviour based rapid experiments with financial service providers.”

About Cashkumar

Founded in 2012 by Dhiren Makhija, Kannan Kandappan and Yogesh Joshi, Cashkumar is one of India’s leading P2P lending companies, focused exclusively on offering short term loans to borrowers. Cashkumar is at the forefront of creating an alternate channel of credit and investment in India by connecting lenders with borrowers. To date, Cashkumar has disbursed more than 5500 loan application worth over Rs. 23 crores. For more information, visit https://cashkumar.com/.

About CGAP

CGAP is an independent think tank that works to empower poor people to capture opportunities and build resilience through financial services. We test, learn and develop innovative solutions through practical research and active engagement with our partners on building responsible and inclusive financial systems that help move people out of poverty, protect their gains and advance global development goals. Housed at the World Bank, CGAP is supported by over 30 leading development organisations committed to making financial services meet the needs of poor people. For more information, visit https://CGAP.org.

About Pensaar

Design Pensaar Design is a design strategy and consulting firm that co-creates customer experiences, consults on design strategy, designs experiences and propagates design thinking in organisations. Pensaar Design’s vision is to elevate the level of design thinking in product and service organisations. For more information, visit https://www.pensaardesign.com.