Datascience limited

Having been excluded from accessing financial services, informal sector workers have resorted to savings groups to support each other in achieving financial goals through saving. Being community-managed, they depend on members' commitment and honesty spearheaded by a “treasurer” rather than any form of effective banking or record keeping. Our solution will provide the technology for these groups to manage the administration of their affairs including member onboarding and contributions using mobile phones. This solution is expected to impact them directly by providing access to financial services and promoting their effective participation in the digital economy. Scaling this solution globally especially to low income countries with a large proportion of informal workers will have a similar impact.

In Kenya, at least 80% of the working population work in the informal sector which translates to 12 million people. This section of Kenyans are mostly excluded from accessing financial services including credit because of their low and irregular income. While there has been an uptake in fintech applications to serve them, most are highly expensive, exploitative even. The problem we are trying to solve is the lack of options for affordable and convenient financial services for people in this income group -- options that appreciate the collective approach to solving problems for these communities.

Our solution is a mobile application that will enable individuals to register as a group, make contributions and track their contributions while providing administrative features like accepting new members and approving loans and payments to members. Unlike banking apps and online banking alternatives that require internet access and smart phone functionality, the application will be USSD-based which can work on any mobile device including feature phones at a minimal cost. An intuitive menu-based approach will be backed up by a messaging solution to support intra-group communication.

Our primary focus is empowering informal workers in Kenya who constitute 80% of the working population in the country. Currently, this target group is limited to solutions that are either too expensive, internet based or make use of traditional banking practices which do not work well for them which has limited their participation in the digital economy. The solution will be low cost but impactful, usable on both feature phones and smartphones; and tailored to leverage a community-based approach to finance. This will in turn translate to improved and efficient financial options, increased accessibility, connectedness and better standards of living. Overall our solution will improve their capacity to support themselves, their families and each other. 

We believe that the problem we are addressing, our solution and the target population are aligned with the challenge. This is because informal sector workers are greatly disadvantaged when it comes to financial inclusion and our solution attempts to provide a financial tool for them to participate and thrive in the digital economy both as individuals and as small businesses because a lot of them operate as sole proprietorships.

This is a solution we are passionate about  and we would like to see succeed. We are still looking at opportunities around possible partnerships, funding and any regulatory hurdles involved. 

While current solutions are tailored to traditional banking, our solution appreciates the importance of community in how the informal workers operate -- they prefer to save and borrow with and from the person known to them. We are taking the current savings group set up that functions outside of the digital economy and giving it a home within the digital economy. We expect this to have an impact on the target users themselves where they can form larger groups with more ambitious goals. We see informal workers to asking themselves the question "What else can we do with this group?". Additionally, the opportunities for scale given the large proportion of the population that this solution is looking to impact will force a rethink of traditional banking and create products that meets the customer where they are rather than than excluding them.

We plan to serve 1 million people in the next 5 years

The main indicator that we will use to measure impact will be the number of users. This will directly indicate the number of the target group that are using the solution and therefore have access to financial services that we are looking to provide. We plan to use metrics such as the average contribution and the amount loaned out/ repayed to indicate actual activity by the users.

We have 7 full-time people working on the solution on the products and engineering aspects. We are looking to compliment them with more full-time and part-time members in the areas of engineering, support, customer success and partnerships. 

Our team's skill set ranges from computer science, governance, statistics, engineering and finance. Collectively, we have been responsible for the development and rolling out of web and mobile applications to support functions like  governance, agriculture, health, finance and open data. This provides the skill stack necessary for the development of this solution. A majority of us were born, raised and currently reside in Kenya where we interact with the target population on day to day basis at a personal level, when shopping at the local farmers markets, thrift markets and other informal sector dominated places of business and when using public transport. This gives us a clear understanding of the target users and empowers us to approach the problem at hand from a point of knowledge and empathy.

The leadership team at Datascience limited is committed to the values of diversity, equity and inclusion. Kenya is a diverse country especially ethnically  and we are honored to be part of it. We are an equal opportunity employer and we do not discriminate based on ethnicity, race, color, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, religion, disability, age, genetic information or nationality. 

We are applying to Solve first and foremost to present idea to fellow innovators and and hope to get as much as possible in terms of feedback on its viability and and how we can better it.

Secondly, we hope to attract the attention of organisations to partner with us either as banking partners to implement the solution or to provide grant money to see the idea to fruition.

We need support in terms of financing to support development and other operational costs for development and rollout. 

Further, we need support in terms of research and expertise on legal and regulatory matters to make sure that the idea is can be implemented within the current regulatory framework. 

To have the impact that we envision the solution to have, we need support to build awareness, conduct the necessary outreach and onboard as many users as possible. 

We would like to partner with the MIT faculty at a mentorship level to befit from the guidance and the experience in working with organisations such as our in actualizing their ideas.

We are also looking to partner with banks to be the banking partners for the solution.

We qualify for the HP Prize for Advancing Digital Equity because we seek to provide access to a digital solution to a segment of society that had been left out completely at worst or targeted with exploitative solutions at best. We see our solution as contributing to promoting equity in access to the digital economy.

We will use the grant to support research and development for the solution and conducting outreach to target users.

We qualify for The GSR Prize because our solution uses technology to alleviate poverty in our local community. We believe that lack of access to financial services worsens the level of poverty and vice versa. Our solution seeks to empower low income earners to achieve their financial goals and thereby reduce poverty.

We will use the grant to support research and development for the solution and conducting outreach to target users.