Mosabi

Mosabi’s engaging, mobile financial education helps underserved citizens improve decisions and behaviors on their businesses and money. We harness data insights from user profiles and journeys to match them to best fits across a marketplace of digital financial services. Our Mosabi training – the “MBA for the rising billions” – includes topics such as our core business skills, money management, and financial literacy. It also includes complementary upskilling modules on practical smallholder agriculture skills, value chain perspective, entrepreneurship mindset, health, sanitation, digital inclusion, safety and security, and women’s empowerment. Users also benefit from basic literacy and digital skills, knowledge on knowing their rights, and information on holding service providers accountable to client protection.

There are billions of citizens around the world who are unbanked or underbanked – hundreds of millions of them are emerging market citizens who are living in less-developed home countries or in immigrant, migrant, or displaced communities in developed countries. At the same time, informal entrepreneurship predominates among these communities. The ILO and OECD estimate that there are two billion people in informal employment globally. In regions such as sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia, it’s up to 95% of GDP. Those informal sector entrepreneurs often have limited formal education and financial literacy and little to no access to capital. Financial exclusion makes upward mobility more difficult, and it generates cycles of subsistence-level income. Informal workers are twice as likely as formal workers to belong to poor households.

Critically, financial institutions that could serve these rising classes of informal sector citizens find it too expensive and inefficient to do so. The challenge of catalyzing value and impact from those lower is often a pain point for providers – it’s also an imperative for strategic growth. There are legions of banks, telecoms, fintechs, insurers, and also NGOs, aid agencies, humanitarian organizations, charities, and governments (central banks, ministries, and social safety nets) facing similar challenges.

Mosabi's engaging, mobile education platform helps underserved emerging market citizens and MSME learners improve decisions and behaviors on their business activities, on digital resources, and on money. We link edtech and fintech by driving behavior change through mobile learning and then harnessing data analytics to drive financial inclusion. Users are empowered to build profiles based on their digital and financial knowledge gained, unlocking best-fit matches across a marketplace of financial services and helping to drive livelihood impact outcomes. Mosabi helps financial and platform partners create a larger, more informed and better understood customer base – reducing costs to onboard and upskill them, moving the needle on behavior change, achieving meaningful engagement, and driving higher lifetime customer value. We have set our sights squarely on impact metrics indicating improved financial health – and more meaningful engagement with services and innovations that can help.

Mosabi’s mission is targeted at improving livelihoods and opportunities for low-income citizens hustling to build lives of grassroots entrepreneurship and informal sector work. The informal sector is essentially “the working poor” – and this cross-section is often the engine of local economies. This is especially true among youth and young adults who are entering the workforce in countries where salaried jobs are few and far between. The choice of hustling to generate entrepreneurial income, engaging in the unstable ebbs and flows of gig economy work, conducting small-scale agriculture, and building micro-businesses is one that individuals are often thrust into. Frequently there have been interruptions in educational pathways, so these groups must access equitable and inclusive upskilling for employability and work preparedness. Because of the rampant financial exclusion, the most important resources that could catalyze these journeys – formal financial resources – are often out of reach.

We believe passionately that the value we provide underserved West Africans is transformational and practical. The urgency is even greater because of the collective vulnerability of our target learners amid the pandemic. Overindebtedness, productivity losses, anxieties, and diminished capacity to deal with financial shocks could afflict large segments of the country. Our savings content helps users build a buffer for lean times; digital literacy content upskills MSMEs to continue business even amid restrictions on movement; budgeting and bookkeeping content provides blueprints for making sure funds don’t go through the cracks; and our chatbot puts Mosabi as a “digital coach” in citizens’ pockets, helping them choose responsible providers and products that best fit their contexts.

Before Mosabi we all spent years helping hard-hustling workersinformal sector entrepreneurs and MSMEs across contexts.

These segments are the lifeblood of in less-developed home countries and in immigrant, migrant, or displaced communities in developed countries. But financial exclusion and limited education often cause pervasive cycles of poverty. We ask, How can we help citizens break those cycles, scale business activities, and build more secure livelihoods for their families? 

Mosabi confronts the Challenge dimension head-on by addressing gaps in knowledge, skills, literacy, and numeracy for those seeking a better future of learning and work for underserved populations.

We have just established our first partnerships with financial service providers, mobile network operators, and development cooperation NGOs to begin launching and scaling in India – which will be our first operational ServiceNow market. As we continue to scale, the target communities of immigrants, refugees, and forcibly displaced populations in other ServiceNow markets can drive tremendous scale for Mosabi – the market potential is vast.

Mosabi is early-stage, but across 7 countries, we have over $350,000 in total revenue, more than 33,000 total users, and an NPS of 9 out of 10. We are a growing startup, but we see strong validation of product-market fit that our content and platform works. Completion rates range between 12 and 15% – several factors higher than the overwhelming majority of edtech platforms. We are seeing resulting efficiencies for partners that reflect knowledge retention applied to decisions and behavior change. Engagement with our content and platform was predictive of up to 25% higher microcredit repayment rates versus control groups in Kenya. Also, 70% of users report increased earnings or savings or both after learning through Mosabi. Through August 2021, our new mobile channels have driven organic user growth in 25 new countries.

We feel that Mosabi is qualified and aligned for the prize. Mosabi is a platform for financial wellness for underserved populations. Through embedded upskilling in financial journeys, Mosabi's AI-driven digital learning helps grassroots entrepreneurs and MSMEs improve decisions and behaviors on their businesses and money. A patented machine learning engine harnesses data insights from user profiles and journeys to boost product engagement and overall financial health, and Mosabi matches interested users to best fits across a marketplace of digital financial services and platforms. Our mission is to use technology and data science to boost livelihoods for the rising class, and at the same time drive better decisions and meaningful engagement of the products and services that can provide value – contributing to virtuous cycles and resilience for both providers and clients.

We would use the resources and support from the prize to advance our traction and outreach in the pursuit of goals aligned with it. This includes helping to (a) cultivate newfound partnerships and dialogue, (b) work together on “company-building” efforts to refine technology, integrations, business processes and commercial models, and (c) target and scale to new markets. In doing so, we can catalyze capacity-building initiatives for marginalized and underserved target populations and countries.

Mosabi is working hard to bring true innovation to underserved Africans – hyper-relevant learning content delivered through cutting-edge delivery channels in a future-proofed business model. We are making transformative mobile learning sustainable.

Our solution bridging edtech and fintech is unique because of its scaling potential and human-centered approach. Among other edtechs, none connect learners to telecoms and financial institutions; among other credit scoring fintechs, none also provide rich, holistic education. 

We’ve built a B2B business model as a hybrid of a fintech and an edtech. Mosabi is a lifelong learning platform for life skills and financial education that helps our users improve financial decisions and behaviors. We incentivize behavior change through mobile learning and harness data analytics to drive financial inclusion.

Mosabi’s empowering microlearning translates into user profiles and data analytics scoring. We gather engagement analytics and track a user’s demonstrated understanding of the content, while our algorithm generates creditworthiness ratings. Our partner financial institutions view insights on our B2B dashboard – KYC information, e-learning performance insights, loan questionnaire data and our scoring profiles via API – and can offer financial products more confidently and efficiently. This virtuous cycle for both providers and users is the true driver of resilience.

We cement these key competitive advantages together with our approved USPTO patent: Serial No. 62/808,964 which provides intellectual property ownership to Mosabi for the processes and technology to use mobile education to qualify and match learners to financial products.

Mosabi's technology includes phone interaction (learner-facing), a cloud-based analytics engine, and a web dashboard (partner-facing). On their phones, learners go through topics such as understanding digital and financial platforms and products, entrepreneurship, agriculture technical training, business skills, and financial literacy through compelling, lightweight, and story-driven lessons available across multiple mobile channels. Lessons combine text with multimedia materials, using illustrations, audio, and video to reach audiences with limited literacy or digital skills.

Our platform uses gamified quizzing, surveys, chatbots, and messaging to drive meaningful engagement. Using Mosabi’s predictive machine learning models, our application analyzes user journeys in real time, generating a unique learner pathway based on their targeted profile and preferences. Users are learning and interacting in their local language, using combinations of text, speech, and photo responses. Mosabi’s application then uses AI and NLP techniques to translate and convert those responses into a unified data model. 

Meanwhile, our infrastructure charts and tracks user interactions. We gather engagement analytics and track how users demonstrate understanding of content and demonstrate behavior change – and then our algorithm generates creditworthiness ratings. Partner financial institutions see insights on our B2B dashboard, including KYC, e-learning performance, application questionnaire data and our alternative credit score via API – and can then offer financial products to users more confidently and efficiently.

We have set our sights squarely on impact metrics indicating improved financial health – and more meaningful engagement with services and innovations that can help. 

Our key business metrics are uptake of – and performance within – financial products. This big data approach informs the training of our scoring algorithms. 

For social impact metrics, we track an array of indicators aligned with the IRIS initiative of the Global Impact Investing Network (GIIN). Our key impact metric is the increase in the earnings of our users, and the number of local people employed. Indicators also include living standards measurements, baselines and progress-out-of-poverty indexing (PPI).

We are a growing startup, but we see strong proof-of-concept that our content and platform works. Completion rates range between 12 and 15% – several factors higher than the overwhelming majority of edtech platforms. More than 30,000 learners have gone through our platform and content. We see user affinity, with a net promoter score of 9 out of 10. We are seeing resulting efficiencies for partners that reflect knowledge retention applied to decisions and behavior change. Engagement with our content and platform was predictive of up to 25% higher microcredit repayment rates versus control groups in Kenya. Liberia's Ministries of Health and Education formally measured $4 million in cost savings after our content onboarded government employees to digital salary payments. And, we see knowledge translating into user impact: 70% of users report increased earnings or savings or both after learning through Mosabi.

The speed of inclusive fintech innovation can be breakneck, but central banks and ministries of finance haven't always had the capacity to keep pace. There is often a rush to regulate emerging technologies and require licenses even when they fall outside the scope of regulated financial transactions and rails. Conversely, many new startups are building platforms that process a tremendous amount of personal data, but client protection and data privacy laws often aren't evolving quickly enough to keep them in check. I think it behooves us to pause to make sure approaches are responsible and inclusive, and embrace self-supervision and sharing of best practices. After the leading-edge examples in Kenya and Sierra Leone, is encouraging to see central bank sandbox approaches gaining traction in a number of other countries as well.

Because Mosabi's mission intersects with regulatory and supervisory mandates for equitable growth and expanded access to innovations, opportunities abound for us! Mosabi is a foundationally data-driven organization, and we think we could be part of some of the global dialogues on how to best collaborate and share insightful and actionable data from the sector. We set our sights squarely on impact metrics indicating improved financial health – and more meaningful engagement with local services and innovations that can help. By embracing best practices for ethical, inclusive data science we can provide an example for how client protection and privacy can run parallel to scalability and sustainability for fintech startups.

To date, we’ve brought our learning content to more than 33,000 individual citizens. 

We frame our go-to-market model with “distribution partners”. Our hypothesis is that engagement and completion rates for Mosabi mobile learning content will be higher than for the general public because of the delivery model as trusted partners together. An example is our partnership with World Vision to bring Mosabi’s training and links to financial products to the women membership of their village savings groups programs.

When we combine these factors of approach with our determined focus and priority, it is evident that our scaling user base can reach millions of underserved citizens as we move forward with them on their journey of education, empowerment and inclusion. Because of this, we believe that Mosabi could reach 100,000 active learners by the end of 2021. These growth projections for outreach and impact can provide a compelling story for pathways out of extreme poverty for millions of citizens. The last-mile delivery model that we are proposing to create together will also serve the broader community. Mosabi expects that millions of additional citizens in the operational countries will also gain access to the Mosabi solution because of the funding and enabling environment of our distribution partners NGOs.

We expect our user growth to accelerate rapidly because of (a) financial service provider partner choice and (b) go-to-market distribution partnerships. We have a tremendous pathway laid ahead through the scaling possibilities of working with the large footprint of development sector agencies and with larger financial service providers that embrace economic empowerment and financial inclusion.

For underserved populations, the same gaps discussed earlier – in education, skills, and resources – also exist across Latin America and Asia. We are building a scalable product and strategy that lays the groundwork for expansion into these regions. Among the countries at the top of those lists are Mexico and India. Within 5 years, we plan to launch in 20 countries and serve 10 million learners across the Global South. Within 10 years, we aim to have emerged as the worldwide training platform of choice for lifelong learning aligned with global sustainable development.

We set our sights squarely on impact metrics indicating improved financial health – and more meaningful engagement with local services and innovations that can help. By embracing best practices for ethical, inclusive data science we can provide an example for how client protection and privacy can run parallel to scalability and sustainability for fintech startups. 

There are also interesting opportunities for Mosabi to play a role in how impact measurement data is shared among innovators, global development actors, and impact investors.  Across our user base, track an array of indicators aligned with the IRIS initiative of the Global Impact Investing Network (GIIN). Our key impact metric is the increase in the earnings of our users, and the number of local people employed. Indicators also include living standards measurements, baselines and progress-out-of-poverty indexing (PPI).  At Mosabi, we’re both inspired and challenged by the new pathway we have forged. We feel a tremendous responsibility to be learning every day. Accordingly, we will continue to thrust ourselves into sector working groups and task forces for banking sector reform and advancing national strategies for financial inclusion and financial education.

7 full-time staff and 5 part-time staff

We are proud of our differentiated solution – but our team is our biggest differentiator. We bring a team experienced in digital financial services, financial education, creative arts, and technological innovation. 

Co-Founder and CCO Kayee Au is a human-centered design and UI/UX specialist who worked in animation and illustration at DreamWorks. She is a financial literacy edu-tainment thought leader through her work on building Mosabi’s innovative digital learning management system. Kayee was named an AMBA “MBA student of the year” at the American University of Cairo.

Francis Uchechukwu Okeke (Co-Founder & CFO) is an African inclusive innovation ecosystem specialist and an Amani Institute Fellow. He manages partner onboarding and core banking system integration with partner organizations and user groups.

Chris Czerwonka (Co-Founder & CEO) brings 10 years with Deloitte Consulting and 8 years in financial inclusion and fintech. He remains a founding steering committee member of the Financial Inclusion Forum Africa, Accion’s Smart Campaign Fintech Protects community of practice, and the RELAY inclusive fintech working group under the World Bank and CGAP.

Jessica Massie (CLO) has 18 years of specialism in financial capability and financial inclusion. She is a curriculum design and pedagogy specialist with experience across Africa.

Patrick Burke (CTO) is a full-stack technology platform and SDLC expert and a DevOps architecture lead. He is a specialist in full-stack design, data science, and cloud platforms.

Our Mosabi leadership team is committed to use opportunities we have been afforded to create jobs and opportunities for local colleagues and stakeholders so that, as we grow and evolve, our team is representing the diversity of the populations we serve. We are committed to a diversity and inclusion policy in operations, hiring, and team development. Mosabi has taken active steps to empower a diverse c-suite; our inspiring executive team includes members who are Black, Asian, and Native American. We aim to create rewarding and meaningful jobs in the communities we serve, and to find and develop talent from among those communities. We search for ways to support fellow companies and peer entrepreneurs who come from marginalized or underrepresented backgrounds and communities. We feel like we can offer connections and introductions in our networks, soundboarding and mentorship on company-building, and we are always grateful for the chances to do so!

Our team at Mosabi has built a unique and transformative platform to advance digital and financial inclusion in Africa.

We have seen recent momentum behind positive proofs-of-concept. We have driven efficiencies for our partners, better performance for borrowers, and impact indicators on behavior change and financial stability for our users. The sector has validated our model and approach with notable competition wins and awards, including the Sierra Leone Fintech Challenge, the Singapore Fintech Festival startup competition, and the Inclusive Fintech 50.

We know that the Challenge and Solve could truly unlock some of our bottlenecks to scaling our innovative solution.

Down the line, we know that we would look back on the Challenge, the Prize, and its support and mentoring and see the origins of our overarching goals for the collaboration/partnership: to build sustainable revenue streams across mission-aligned partner-customers, to reach financial profitability and to drive measurable social impact.

We believe Mosabi’s value for users to be transformational, but also practical. Mosabi can contribute toward SDG 1 – but also 4, 5, 8, 10, 15 and 17. With Solve and the Challenge’s help, we can be empowered to achieve the scaling and impact for Mosabi that we know is possible.

We feel like there is a promising pathway ahead. But, as stated earlier, we need help!

We envision the invaluable support from the Challenge and Solve helping to (a) cultivate newfound partnerships and dialogue, (b) work together on “company-building” efforts to refine technology, integrations, business processes and commercial models, and (c) target and scale to new markets. In doing so, we can catalyze capacity-building initiatives for marginalized and underserved target populations and countries. 

What organizations would you like to partner with, and how would you like to partner with them?

We see pathways for working with B2B partners to upskill their existing user base to generate greater engagement and higher lifetime customer value. There are avenues for us to deploy workforce skilling to field staff, especially those at inclusive financial service providers in emerging markets, to ensure that client-centricity, responsibility, and transparency is understood and in sync on both the demand side and the supply side. 

This includes banks, larger microfinance institutions that embrace innovation, pan-continental telecoms/MNOs, insurance and micro-insurance companies, asset financing companies, and other fintech companies (such as payment platforms and pay-as-you-go solar organizations). 

We launch to new markets with a small, lean local team after we have first established institutional partnerships, both with (1) at least one financial institution partner with an inclusion mandate, which can fuel monthly recurring revenue through our B2B SaaS datastream service subscription and (2) at least one “distribution partner”. We have a fundamental priority on collaborating with distribution partners that target capacity-building across the SDGs. Potential distribution partners include NGOs, government agencies and programs, aid and humanitarian organizations, CSOs, UN bodies, self-help groups, community training initiatives and other grassroots organizations whose mandate is to provide support services to the same demographic that we target – low-income, underserved citizens who are often unbanked/underbanked and usually rely on informal entrepreneurship for generating income. A distribution partner who signs on with us also wants their members to benefit from our transformative education and also link to the financial products of our partner banks.

We see pathways for working with B2B partners to upskill their existing user base to generate greater engagement and higher lifetime customer value. There are avenues for us to deploy workforce skilling to field staff, especially those at inclusive financial service providers in emerging markets, to ensure that client-centricity, responsibility, and transparency is understood and in sync on both the demand side and the supply side. 

This includes banks, larger microfinance institutions that embrace innovation, pan-continental telecoms/MNOs, insurance and micro-insurance companies, asset financing companies, and other fintech companies (such as payment platforms and pay-as-you-go solar organizations). 

We launch to new markets with a small, lean local team after we have first established institutional partnerships, both with (1) at least one financial institution partner with an inclusion mandate, which can fuel monthly recurring revenue through our B2B SaaS datastream service subscription and (2) at least one “distribution partner”. We have a fundamental priority on collaborating with distribution partners that target capacity-building across the SDGs. Potential distribution partners include NGOs, government agencies and programs, aid and humanitarian organizations, CSOs, UN bodies, self-help groups, community training initiatives and other grassroots organizations whose mandate is to provide support services to the same demographic that we target – low-income, underserved citizens who are often unbanked/underbanked and usually rely on informal entrepreneurship for generating income. A distribution partner who signs on with us also wants their members to benefit from our transformative education and also link to the financial products of our partner banks.