ActiveFund Fintech

8 of 10 SMEs in Uganda do not survive after two years of operation due to poor business management skills in; investment decision making, human resources, manufacturing, packaging, branding, pricing, marketing, sales, customer relations and budgeting.

SMEs run out of capital to re-invest in their businesses. They go for loans from banks and money lenders that charge them high interest rates of over 19% per month which leaves them with no profit amidst risky terms. These high interest rates and poor business management skills combined have collapsed hundreds of SMEs.

We enable SMEs to apply for Business Credit so that they can take care of business needs. Through Business Growth Training, entrepreneurs acquire skills required to run sustainable businesses. Our Dividend Saving Accounts enables entrepreneurs to save from $10 per month and earn an interest of 5% on their savings. Our solution globally eradicates business failure, poverty and unemployment.

Activefund Fintech aims to solve the existing issue of business failure that has led to unemployment and poverty in Uganda. 

41% of Ugandans live in poverty. According to the World bank report, two of every three Ugandans that were lifted from poverty fell back [1]. 

Reports from the United Nations Children’s Fund also indicate that nearly half of Ugandan households experience multi national poverty [2].

This rampant poverty exists due to unemployment caused by business failure.

As highlighted earlier, 8 of 10 SMEs fail in two years. Failing businesses have not managed to employ the majority of local people. These local people have become  poorer because they have no means of income.

 Activefund Fintech reaches out to SMEs especially those founded by local entrepreneurs. We provide Business Credit to fund activities that lead to business growth to operating ventures that are fully satisfying their targeted markets. We also equip them with business growth and management skills required to run sustainable businesses.

Activefund hopes that sustainable businesses can grow, overcome failure and employ more people. This in turn leads to industrial innovation, no poverty, and no unemployment.

References

1. https://www.worldbank.org/en/c...

2. https://www.unicef.org/esa/med...

Activefund Fintech solves business failure, unemployment and poverty by enabling entrepreneurs that own SMEs to get Business Credit, take free Business Growth Training and open Dividend Saving Accounts.

With Business Credit, entrepreneurs are able to get credit and take care of their business needs, such as stocking goods or simply buying manufacturing equipment.

With Business Growth Training, entrepreneurs are able to attain all necessary skills required for them to manage and run sustainable businesses. These trainings are free, short, mandatory and also aim at helping SMEs not misuse credit.

If entrepreneurs are unable to save financially, their businesses are at high risk of collapsing. Our Dividend Saving Accounts help them to save from as low as $10 per month and earn an interest of 5% per month on their savings.

In the whole criteria of selecting targeted SMEs, strong preference is given to local entrepreneurs, especially those that belong to the informal sector.

Being a Fintech project, Business Credit, Business Growth Training and Dividend Savings will be made available through a mobile app. This is to enable global digital inclusion.

In circumstances of less pandemic, Activefund reaches out physically to targeted SMEs while making use of financial technology.

Activefund Fintech serves SMEs in the major towns of Uganda. According to the Uganda Registration Services Bureau, there are more than 18,862 formal or registered businesses in Uganda. In a report by Uganda Revenue Authority, 80% of Uganda's economy are informal or unregistered and do not pay taxes. On estimate, there are more than 20,000 unregistered or informal businesses in Uganda.

Activefund hopes to reach out to a maximum of 15,000 SMEs per month while providing them with Business Credit, Business Growth Training and Dividend Saving Accounts services. These include retail shops, wholesale shops, transport providers, market vendors, hotels, restaurants, saloons, printing shops, local manufacturers and technical or vocational schools.

Whether informal or formal SMEs, there is need for equipping of business management skills among entrepreneurs that run these SMEs  because they are underserved. Most SMEs fail because banks and money lenders that provide them with credit services aim only at recovering their money. On the same note, these SMEs are underserved by the government through unfair taxation, business registration and trade policies.

Through our business growth training, we are training SMEs how to invest well, manage businesses and abide with legal trade policies that benefit their businesses. We are also providing business credit at the lowest interest rates to fund business activities that leads to business growth and sustainability that prevents business failure.

Activefund Fintech will reach out to targeted SMEs both physically and through a Mobile app that will be available for download from google play store and app store.

The problem we are solving, solution we are providing, and target population we are serving are well-aligned to both the Challenge and selected dimension as follows.

Our solution is designed to solve business failure by enabling entrepreneurs that own SMEs to get Business Credit, take free Business Growth Training and open Dividend Saving Accounts through the use of a mobile app.

We mainly target local SMEs in the major towns of Uganda who have been excluded from use of safe and private digital financial tools to allow their small businesses thrive in the digital economy.

Activefund Fund is headquartered in Mukono, an outskirt of Kampala the capital of Uganda.

Most SMEs in Kampala rely on credit for survival, which same credit with high interest rates has left most of them profitless.

In 2019 before Covid-19, Activefund reached out to 194 SMEs, disbursing Business Credit in form of paper cash. Our Business Growth Training were being carried out physically. We had not the product of Dividend Saving Accounts at that time.

After Covid-19, paper cash became a carrier of the pandemic. We had to resort to financial technology; disbursing Business Credit digitally through mobile money. Business Growth Training was done through sharing training content using what's-app. Upon this, 100% of our targeted SMEs preferred use of financial technology and what's-app than physical cash and physical trainings.

We are now serving a maximum of 100 to 105 SMEs per month in Mukono, Kampala.

Activefund Fintech is a new solution to prevent business failure. Our offering credit to entrepreneurs helps them take care of emergencies that would lead to failure. Existing competitors offer credit at high interest rates with focus on money recovery. Our entire focus is to provide credit at low interest rates to fuel business growth and offer business management skills training to curb business failure. We hope that this will enable broader positive impacts. 

Activefund will also change the market through the use of technology, a mobile app that will enable entrepreneurs to apply for credit any time, anywhere other than them walking into banks and going through tough paper verification processes while applying for a loan.

We are currently serving 104 and above customers or entrepreneurs on a monthly basis. These are employing at least 3 employees on full time basis.

We plan to serve 500 SMEs in a period of one year and a maximum of 15000 SMEs in five years by 2026.

By serving 15,000 entrepreneurs whose businesses we empower to not fail, they can be able to employ 3 full time workers, we would be impacting or aiding employment for approximately 45,000 people.

3 of the UN Sustainable Development Goals align with our solution. These include SDG 1: No Poverty, SDG 8: Decent work and economic growth and SDG 9: Industry Innovation and Infrastructure.

We are measuring our progress towards our impact goals by identifying the number of businesses we have helped not to close or fail, number of entrepreneurs we have empowered with business management and growth skills and number of dividend savings accounts that we do have.

1. Izaac Wambi; Founder and Head of Operations

2. Aidah Kaitesi; Head of Dividend Savings

3. Jude Juuko Thadeus; Head of Business Credit

4. Emma Masambu; Head of ICT Systems

5. Edith Nalubwama; Customer Relations

6. Brenda Tibawayika; Business Growth Training Officer

Full Time Staff: 6

Part Time Staff: 1

The Team that works on the Activefund Fintech project outsourced and managed by Activemakes Limited is carefully selected.

Our top management team entails of Izaac Wambi, the Founder and Head of Operations and Aidah Kaitesi, Co-Founder and Head of Dividend Saving Accounts who both have vast experience of over 6 years in foundations of business and use of media and information communication technologies for business development. The top Management Team is also rich in areas of human resource and financial management which are key tools for any successful project.

Our overall team is resilient, trained, accountable, ethical, professional, innovative and productive.

We work with personnel that understand how to build businesses in Africa and gain profits from them. 

Because the global economy is going digital through the aid of technology, our Team members are as well conversant with the latest digital economic tools and trends that SMEs should embrace to effectively start up and build sustainable businesses in Africa.

Activefund Fintech is an Equal Opportunity employer that values skills, experiences, innovations, time and energy that every team member brings on board.

We work with people of different races, tribes and languages. Because most women have been left out from employment opportunities, our approach is to employ 6 women out of 10 employees. This approach is also inline with our criteria for entrepreneurs that benefit from our business credit and business growth trainings.

We also value personalities and thus design our policies to provide a thriving environment for everyone on our team.

We need to get access to funding in form of grants and investments, access mentorship, coaching, and strategic advice from experts, and acquire knowledge on re-building and running licensed software in form of a mobile app that will power our project and bring our idea into life.

We need financial partners to help us build capacity that will enable us pitch to investors that can fund our project. We are looking for funding to build our Fintech Mobile App. We also need funding to boast our capital for business credit disbursement.

We would like to partner with;

1. Fintech companies that will help us share ideas on how we can bring our idea to reality.

2. Investors that will invest in our business credit treasury in form of grant or equity capital.

We qualify to apply for The Andan Prize for Innovation because Uganda is a long term ally of Sweden and one of the countries hosting more than 1,400,000 refugees from her nearby countries such as South Sudan, Somalia and Congo.

These refugees face extreme poverty with no access to education, employment, health or accommodation yet most of them have become permanent settlers in the country especially those that ignore living in refugee camps.

Many Congolese women who previously were refugees are business women dealing in the buying and selling of jewelries in Kampala, Gulu, Jinja and Mbale, the main capitals of Uganda.

As highlighted earlier, our team will reach out to such people owning small  businesses to empower them with business growth training that motivates them to build legal and sustainable enterprises that can even employ their fellow refugees. This can reduce on poverty and unemployment among refugees.

We would like to be considered for The HP Prize for Advancing Digital Equity because;

1. Our solution advances Inclusion; most of our targeted clientele have been left out from accessing digital financial technologies or tools that are essential for carrying out global trade. We want to bridge this gap as our customers will be able to access our products even if they will be miles away from us.

2. Our solution advances Digital literacy; We will definitely train entrepreneurs how to use our app and how to use digital financial tools such as Quick Books and Microsoft Excel to manage their businesses.

3. Our solution advances Economic Opportunity in communities across the  globe; We would like to reach out to every entrepreneur with a business idea that proves income generation and sustainability which will create an economic opportunity for businesses to flourish. Activefund Fintech will be based in Uganda but we hope to expand to the nearby countries and Africa at large. This will enable us to connect Africa to the rest of the World through Financial Technologies that we might emerge in the future. This will include use of Visa and Master Card to pay back Business Credit or buy goods and services online.

We do qualify for The Innovation for Women Prize because our solutions use innovative technology to improve quality of life for business women who have been left out.

In Uganda, 50% of the young girls who later become women do not complete their education at High School or University level due to poverty and early pregnancies. Such women are not given employment chances. They are regarded as failures and are generally referred to as house wives and also abandoned by men. 

Out of of 104 SMEs that we are currently working with, 76 of them are women led. We are advancing the economic livelihood of women especially those that did not have a chance to graduate at University but have business ideas that need credit funding and business mentorship to flourish. We hope that if we get funding, more women will own businesses, they will employ more other women or even men and their lives will change. This is why we would like to be considered for the Innovation for Women Prize.

Besides this, Activemakes Limited that owns Activefund Fintech has a co-founder who is woman and she is generally influential in building start ups to achieve financial sustainability and economic growth.

We qualify for and would like to be considered for The GSR Prize because our solution uses innovative and sustainable approaches to alleviate poverty and contribute to a sustainable world, where businesses can flourish without failing.

Our Mobile App can be integrated into a wallet that entrepreneurs or individuals can actually use to trade or invest in crypto currency.