Finance
InDrive Eyes Financial Services To Bolster Presence In Developing Markets
InDrive president Mark Loughran
Ride-hailing company inDrive is exploring financial services products in the developing markets where it is active.
Mark Loughran, the company’s president and deputy CEO, who joined the company last summer, said that the move would enable greater financial stability for drivers on the platform.
InDrive was founded in Russia and is now headquartered in the U.S. Much of its business is in developing markets in Asia, Africa and Latin America but last year ventured into the U.S. market with a launch in Miami.
Loughran joined inDrive to grow these various parts of the business as well as develop new ones, including a $100 million program to support businesses in developing regions.
The move into financial services would be targeted at drivers in markets where there may be financial instability and strain.
“[It’s] for those drivers in the developing markets, when something happens in their family or maybe something happens to their vehicle or their bike or whatever and they need to fix it. We’ve been starting to look at financial services and options there, just piloting some ideas.”
The plans are at an early stage, Loughran said, but the company is looking at potential partnerships in these markets with services like lending in mind for drivers and delivery riders that need financing for cars or bikes.
“On the financial services side, it’s more helping with thinking about access to financial services, like small term loans. You’re talking about people who would have previously no banking credibility at all,” Loughran said.
“They wouldn’t be able to do that, where they’d have to go for a loan is not a good option for them or their families. So [we’re] looking at different ways that we could support them, we’re testing it on a very small scale.”
The model of providing financial services, namely loans, to delivery and ride-hailing companies is not a new one with fintech start-ups popping up in recent years to address that market. This includes Moove, which is active in Africa.
“It’s back to our commitment to make sure that those increasing numbers of drivers can be supported, their earnings can be stable and also it can work for them financially, which is why we take the low percentage take rate versus our competitors,” Loughran said.
Late last year, inDrive launched a $100 million program to invest in businesses in emerging markets in a bid to further its presence there and support smaller enterprises. While inDrive has focused heavily on ride-hailing and deliveries in these developing regions, it launched in the U.S. last year with tentative steps into Miami.
InDrive differentiates itself from competitors like Uber and Lyft with its bidding model where passengers can negotiate a fee for their journey rather than a set price. InDrive takes up to 10% in commission, depending on the market.
Loughran said the U.S. expansion remains nascent with no immediate plans to move into other cities. Rather, the company is refining the Miami business and gathering data on its performance.
“It’s been probably four months or something [since the Miami launch]. It’s some period of time but not an enormous period of time. I think we just need to continue with that model and obviously look at is it sustainable? Will it continue to grow into next year with the same enthusiasm as it started? How does the profitability look?” he said.
“The cost of doing business in the U.S. is very different from some of the other markets. This is our chance to learn that and make sure we get the whole offering correct.”
The company would not disclose any driver or passenger numbers in Miami.
Loughran is a former executive at Microsoft and Honeywell and joined inDrive in July 2023 while the company raised $150 million in funding almost a year ago to expand the business’s geographic footprint and its other verticals like delivery.
InDrive does not disclose any revenue figures but Loughran said that the company is “on a good track” to profitability.
“Now it’s about us making sure that we get to the right level of scale to make sure that the investment that we’ve got in our central tech stacks and everything else can then be absorbed by the number of the rides. We’ve got a very strong focus on that, we’re certainly on a path to that, so I would be positive about our path to that.”
BURLINGTON, Vt. (WCAX) – Initial public offerings, better known as IPOs, may seem like big investment opportunities, but a financial adviser is warning they could be a risky addition to your portfolio.
Dan Cunningham of the investment management company One Day in July, said he recommends that people stay away when a company starts selling initial shares on the stock market.
Most recently, Elon Musk’s SpaceX became the biggest IPO ever, but Cunningham said people shouldn’t get caught up in the hoopla.
“They generate a lot of excitement, but when you look at long term results, IPOs have not been a good investment. So we really try to encourage people to stay away from the hype. You are really betting on the future and taking an enormous amount of risk by buying IPO shares in many cases,” Cunningham said.
According to Cunningham, the good news is that, over the long term, the market and most retirement funds that mirror it will balance out.
Copyright 2026 WCAX. All rights reserved.
DULUTH — The Duluth Homegrown Music Festival is seeking both new operational leadership and a solution to financial filing issues that caused the organization to lose its federal tax-exempt status, which it has not held since 2022.
The organization is currently operating as a taxable nonprofit, confirmed Don Ness, the former Duluth mayor who serves as president of Homegrown’s
board of directors.
Ness and the board are working to discern whether there might be any outstanding tax liabilities in the wake of an apparent filing lapse.
“It’s a serious matter that requires diligence to do things right, and to correct past oversight, and to make sure that we are in full compliance with all tax and regulatory requirements,” Ness said. “The board is 100% committed to that course of action.”
As the Duluth Monitor first reported, Homegrown had its federal tax-exempt status revoked in 2022 after failing to make required financial reports for three years. The Monitor also reported that Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison’s office has notified the organization it may be in violation of state law requiring the proper registration of soliciting charities.
Clint Austin / Duluth Media Group file photo
“All but one of us have been on for less than a year,” Ness said of the current board members. “We’ve been committed to saying, ‘hey, we need to improve the points of accountability.’”
The organization will also require new operational leadership. Co-directors Cory Jezierski and Dereck Murphy-Williams resigned earlier this month, after leading Homegrown through four successful festivals.
“My contract ended at the end of May, and I knew a few days later that I did not want to continue in that position,” Jezierski said. “Simply put, it was the best thing for my mental health. It’s a job that requires many, many hours and a lot of work, and it can be very stressful as well.”
Amy Arntson / Duluth Media Group file photo
Murphy-Williams did not respond to an interview request for this article, nor did preceding Homegrown director Melissa LaTour. According to LaTour’s
LinkedIn profile,
she was Homegrown director from 2016 to 2022.
Jason Beckman, a recent president who is no longer serving on the board, responded to a News Tribune email but did not provide an interview availability before this article went to press.
Ness does not believe the reporting lapses were due to any ill intent. He praised Jezierski and Murphy-Williams for their success managing festival operations. “They cared deeply about the festival,” he said. “It’s amazing to see that our community continues to support this really unique and special festival.”
“Those guys run a hell of a festival,” said Scott Lunt, festival founder and a current board member. “I think they needed help with bookkeeping.”
Clint Austin / Duluth Media Group file photo
By Jezierski’s account, issues with the festival’s tax status became apparent shortly after he became co-director. “We went to file taxes, they were rejected,” Jezierski said. “At that time we, of course, didn’t know why right away, but once we started pulling on that thread, we unraveled a whole lot of the problems that were going on.”
Jezierski said “it took a long time to try to get any sort of help” from the board, but said that by the time he and Murphy-Williams left the organization, “everything had been turned over to be reconciled” with a financial professional.
Ness, like Lunt, was deeply involved with Homegrown in its first decade but had not had an official role with the festival since then. After launching the festival in 1999 and running it on his own for several years, Lunt was “burnt out,” Ness remembered.
Derek Montgomery / Duluth Media Group file photo
After a transition period during which the festival was run in partnership with the Ripsaw newspaper, Homegrown established a nonprofit organization in 2006 with Ness as festival director. Ness subsequently stepped down when he was elected mayor in 2007.
By 2025, Ness was in his current position as executive director of the Ordean Foundation.
“I was approached by a couple of longtime music scenesters,” Ness recalled. “They said, ‘There are questions about (Homegrown’s) nonprofit status. There are questions about some governance issues. We’re concerned.’”
Ness agreed to join the board, and became president. The 2026 festival ran smoothly from an operational standpoint, but Ness found the financial reporting to be lacking.
Clint Austin / Duluth Media Group file photo
“The last board meeting that we had prior to the (co-directors’) resignations was intended to be an overview of the festival that was a month before,” Ness said. “I certainly felt very uncomfortable with how little financial information we were receiving.”
Lunt also joined the board in 2025, marking his first time serving in that capacity. He said the new board has been spending significant time addressing the accounting and reporting issues.
“Every year at Homegrown time I’m like, ‘I should get more involved,’ and then I don’t,” Lunt said. “Then this board thing came up, and it was kind of sold to me as, like, four meetings a year. I was like, ‘Oh, that’s perfect.’ And now we’re meeting weekly.”
Clint Austin / Duluth Media Group file photo
Although it’s unclear how the organization’s finances will look when the accounting and reporting issues have been fully addressed, along with any outstanding tax liabilities, both Ness and Lunt said they are confident the annual festival will continue without interruption.
“The organization will continue,” Ness said. “The festival will continue. Homegrown is in no danger in terms of its viability.” The financial documentation Ness initially received indicated budgeted revenues of about $140,000, against about $130,000 in expenses.
“Financially, I think we’re in a great spot. We have the money to hire the (financial) professionals, and we have (done so),” Lunt said. “We were hoping that we could get all this sorted out before it had to become more public.”
“We poured countless hours into this festival, and this is how it ends, with everyone talking about this,” Jezierski said. “It’s rough.”
“There’s a DIY ethos that is really at the core of Homegrown,” reflected Ness. “We’re throwing a music festival that isn’t waiting for some famous band from the East Coast to bless us with their presence. We are doing this on our own.”
Clint Austin / Duluth Media Group file photo
That DIY spirit also means “you’re kind of passing wisdom down from person to person, and sometimes that’s imperfect.” Ness continued. “The ways that we do things evolve over time, because it’s not a buttoned-down corporate sort of thing. That can create its own set of challenges.”
“It’s self-supporting,” said Lunt about the festival. “It’s widely volunteer-run. You do need to pay a couple people, obviously, to keep track of some things, but it’s going to be strong into the future. It’s gone through its bumps before.”
While most AI in financial services remains advisory, LUMIQ has built the layer that owns the decision — autonomous, auditable AI agents making regulated calls in production at leading banks, insurers, and capital markets firms. Today, LUMIQ serves clients across India, the United States, and Southeast Asia — leading institutions across insurance, banking, and capital markets.
NEW YORK and SINGAPORE, June 19, 2026 /PRNewswire/ — LUMIQ, an AI-native financial services company, today announced a strategic funding round to scale auto-decisioning for financial institutions across the United States and Southeast Asia. The round was led by Bajaj Finserv, one of India’s largest and most diversified financial services groups, with participation from existing investor Info Edge Ventures.
Right now, thousands of customers are waiting for a policy to be issued, a loan to be disbursed, a claim to be adjudicated, because somewhere an FSI employee is drowning in decisions, held back by the risk of getting it wrong. Today, when e-commerce delivers the same day, banks and insurers still decide in weeks. We built LiteCone to take that burden: AI decides the routine cases, completely and accountably, so humans spend their judgment on the one case that actually needs it. This round lets us bring that to every financial institution in the markets that matter most.
Shoaib Mohammad, Co-founder and CEO, LUMIQ
From AI that assists to AI that decides
For decades, financial institutions have bought technology that made their people faster — faster data, faster scoring, faster copilots. The decision still landed on a human. LUMIQ is changing that. Through its LiteCone platform, the company deploys AI agents that read the file, apply the institution’s own guidelines, and reach the decision end to end — escalating only the cases that genuinely require human judgment. The output is not a recommendation. It is a decision, with full reasoning attached, cross-referenced to policy, and defensible under audit.
The results in production speak clearly. At a leading life insurer, LUMIQ’s LEO agent decides 75–80% of underwriting cases with zero human touch, reduced policy issuance cost by roughly 25%, and compressed turnaround from days to under eight minutes — running 24×7 with complete auditability. Across its client base spanning insurance, banking, and capital markets in India, the US, and Southeast Asia, LUMIQ now processes millions of decisions annually.
LiteCone turns a real financial-services role into a working AI agent in weeks. Every agent we deploy is consistent, explainable, compliant, and auditable by design — not as an afterthought. This capital lets us go deeper on the platform and broader across roles. And through our cloud and AI lab partnerships, institutions will increasingly find LiteCone already embedded in the platforms they run today.
Vaibhav Dobriyal, Co-founder and Chief Product Officer, LUMIQ
-
Washington, D.C2 minutes agoTrump’s DC makeover frenzy bewilders locals and visitors: ‘It’s like we’re under occupation’
-
Augusta, GA3 minutes agoAugusta Regional Airport hosts drone camp for students
-
Cleveland, OH15 minutes agoCleveland police arrest suspect in involuntary manslaughter investigation, find fentanyl and PCP
-
Austin, TX17 minutes agoAustin community celebrates ‘Black Artists Matter’ mural before removal
-
Alabama22 minutes agoTwo Alabama bridges rank among longest in U.S. Have you crossed them?
-
Alaska29 minutes agoPilot dies in small plane crash southeast of Cordova
-
Arizona32 minutes agoArizona’s Rugged Wilderness Area Has Gorgeous Mountain Trails And Scenic Camping Spots – Islands
-
Arkansas37 minutes agoTulsa downs Northwest Arkansas | Northwest Arkansas Democrat-Gazette
