Lendahand Blog

Stories

Melissa was born and raised in Pretoria, South Africa. After obtaining her legal degree at the University of Pretoria, she spent three years in private legal practice, whereafter she joined the corporate world as an in-house legal advisor. For most of her career, she's been active in the renewable energy space. She has two amazing kids and dogs, and a bucket list item for her would be to see the Hellisheidi geothermal power plant in Iceland. Her favorite travel destinations are the Kruger National Park and the Western Cape.

Stories

Today’s “Five Minutes With” interview features Adriaan, who gave up the sunny grounds and dark basements studying experimental physics at the California Institute of Technology to join Lendahand in the middle of the pandemic. Apart from working on data, technology, and investments at Lendahand, he enjoys rock climbing.

ImpactWritten by Lynn Hamerlinck on 5 November 2020

When you travel to a country like Uganda, you prepare yourself for a string of buses, minivans and boda-boda’s to get around. But as a local, you want reliable and safe options to commute to work or to get to an appointment on time. How do you get from A to B?

StoriesWritten by Lynn Hamerlinck on 27 October 2020

One year ago we moved to our office on Eendrachtsplein in Rotterdam. Lendahanders love their office. On our blog, we tell you all about what makes it so unique.

UpdatesWritten by Koen The on 26 October 2020

Our CEO Koen The stated in the Dutch newspaper Het Parool that ordinary people, small savers, and investors with (small) targeted capital injections can make a difference in developing countries. Read on to know more.

UpdatesWritten by Lynn Hamerlinck on 26 October 2020

If you didn't get the chance to participate in our latest webinar or forgot to take notes, we summarized the highlights for you. Our colleagues Thomas Plaatsman and Lucas Weaver talked about the situation and effects of COVID-19 in the emerging countries where our portfolio companies are based.

Stories

Today we introduce you to Vini in our second interview of our “Five Minutes With” series. Vini is Brazilian, and among other interesting facts, he learned to program when he was only 11 years old and initially studied game development.

Stories

Lendahand has almost doubled in size in the last 1,5 years. Time for a re-introduction of our team! Starting in this series is our newly appointed CFO: Daniel van Maanen. Daniel joined our company this January (how much the times have changed since then..), has a background in investments and was the CFO at his previous company Aircrete.

ImpactWritten by Lynn Hamerlinck on 7 October 2020

It might sound surprising that while the pandemic is affecting economies and households all over the world, solar home systems are in high demand in Africa. But when you suddenly start spending all your time at home, light and electricity become priorities.

ImpactWritten by Lynn Hamerlinck on 25 September 2020

Over the past few years, the Lendahand portfolio has diversified significantly. You can directly fund entrepreneurs from several different industries, such as agriculture or solar energy. Additionally, you can also visit our platform for perhaps the best-known form of financing in emerging markets: microfinance institutions (MFIs).