LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman is leading a group of investors in an initial funding round of $13 million for anti-poverty startup Segovia Technology Co., a company that develops software aimed at helping governments and organizations fight global poverty, according to Bloomberg.

The firm’s products are tailored to making humanitarian aid more efficient. “Social programs, especially cash transfer programs, are critical to the fight against extreme poverty,” said Hoffman in a statement. “But currently they don’t have access to the kind of enterprise software that modern businesses need to function effectively.”

Segovia seeks to end that problem by providing governments, NGOs, and other aid organizations with a modern arsenal of tools.

Hoffman and other investors expressed that the multitrillion-dollar humanitarian industry suffers inefficiencies from inadequate and outdated technologies.

Harvard economists, Michael Faye and Paul Niehaus, founded Segovia after seeing a need through their academic and charitable work. The two started the nonprofit, GiveDirectly, which showed that providing cash grants directly to the world’s poor is more cost effective than sending goods or in-kind assistance.

Segovia has been hired by Save the Children, the International Rescue Committee, and GiveDirectly for projects in countries throughout Africa. “We have not brought our best technology to the bottom billions,” said Faye, Segovia’s CEO. “We think we have a unique opportunity to change that.”

– Joe Kitaj

Sources: Bloomberg, The Chronicle of Philanthropy
Photo: savethechildren