ShopOkoa

ShopOkoa is a social trust network with embedded financial tools to allow +67m SMEs to offer credit to their most trusted clients and expand their circle of trust to new clients (think LinkedIn).

ShopOkoa is a social trust network with embedded financial tools to allow +67m SMEs to offer credit to their most trusted clients (think Affirm), and expand their circle of trust to new clients (think LinkedIn). For consumers, it means they can access vital finance at their bestie’s shop, and travel with their reputation to new shops. For SMEs, it means they can offer better terms to their top clients.

The largest source of consumer credit in emerging markets is SMEs financing their clients.  No credit cards or (functioning) credit bureaus.This means there is little source of consumer credit beyond SMEs. And,SMEs don’t know who to trust outside of close friends and family. This is a trillion dollar economy running on "hey, mind if I pay you at the end of the month?".

Loss of money due to bad debt is one of the biggest obstacles facing shops in Sub-Saharan Africa, forcing many to close down. This is due to poor record keeping done by pen and paper, making it hard to track every debt.

ShopOkoa digitizes this process, making it quick and efficient to record and track customers' credits.

In addition, micro-enterprise operators have minimum access to conventional financial products, which impedes their growth. ShopOkoa solves these by also providing them with a smart bank for borrowing loans and receiving micro-insurance. We have developed debt controller and recorder, which we have launched as phase 1 and 2 to the market. In addition, we are working on adding micro-credit and micro insurance for phase 3 and 4. Without funding, we intend to finish the remaining phases by April next year but with funding we can finish it within a month.

Based on our customer research, our customers are individuals from low and middle income households whose livelihoods are characterized by irregular cash flows such as farmers and casual workers.This forms over 23 Million Kenyans who include women, youth, men in Kenya who are interested in saving little by little toward unexpected day to day emergency needs and can compliment their savings with credit to manage the frequent ups and downs in their income yet they lack of credit scores to show that they are financially trustworthy.

During my internship on a covid-19 SME recovery program that was a partnership between Kenya national chambers of commerce and the master card foundation ,we realized that SMEs lack financial tools that could help them capture their transaction data which is essential in generating credit scores that would enable them access the SME recovery loans.

Most SMEs were denied the loan due to the lack of solid data to prove operations of their business and their financial trustworthy.

 In addition to that we conducted market research with 100 potential clients and from the 100 interviews we conducted indicate that women who are actively engaged in budgeting, and have a bank account(Sacco or women group) altogether with men(Blue-collar workers) are likely to use our mobile app to pay for expenses on credit whenever they have run out of cash or when they have unexpected event driven expenses.

We are currently testing with the first 200 shops in Thika, an outskirt region of Nairobi, Kenya after which we shall scale with the first 100,000 borrowers in the first 12 Months through partnership with community based saving groups.

For our testing, we are working with 3 mini-supermarkets as well.

Our users' journey begins when the user downloads the app and register an account with ShopOkoa either as a shop owner or as a buyer.
The buyer will then select products they need, input the unique ID of the shop they are buying from, then proceed to the payment options where they can pay upfront, in installments, from their shopping savings or on credit.
If on credit(Buy Now Pay Later) or in installments, Our App uses Artificial Intelligence to analyze borrowers ability to pay back and how much credit they can get. If the borrower is eligible, he/she proceeds to buy goods on credit. Then the shopkeeper confirms and issues the product.
The buyer will then use the app to pay back the debt within the set period of time and each time, the record will reflect on the merchants app. The merchant can use the app to track credit payments both offline and online. In addition to that, the customer receives automatic SMS reminders when his or her debt is due for payment.

We are currently testing with the first 100 shops in Thika, an outskirt region of Nairobi, Kenya after which we plan to scale with the first 100,000 borrowers in the first 12 Months through partnership with community based saving groups.

For our testing, we are working with 3 Minisupermarkets.

We are targeting to acquire 10% of the total digital lending market size in partnership with 10,000 shop owners within 12 months in order make our first USD 1,000,000 in revenues.

Millions of low and middle income Kenyans whose livelihoods are characterized by irregular cash flows such as farmers and casual workers depend on shop borrowing to cater for their emergency consumption needs. ShopOkoa satisfies their borrowing needs by allowing them to buy goods on credit, build their credit, save for shopping and access different flexible
purchasing options. ShopOkoa aims to become  a financially inclusive app that allows over 1Million low and middle incomes families to have real time
financing options that meet their buying needs.
Moreover, ShopOkoa helps Merchants improve their financial management and control their risk of going out business due to bad debt.

Financial illiteracy and bad debt costs SMEs in Kenya an aggregate loss of more than 300 Million USD in 2019.
ShopOkoa helps to save upto 40% of this loss due to bad debt by providing digital ledger and saving platform that help SMEs and their customers manage their credit and finances.
ShopOkoa targets over 23 Million Kenyans especially those from low to middle income households in the next 5 years with a focus to help households meet their daily needs and businesses grow.

 This will be measured by start line, midterm and end of year reports

    Monthly monitoring reports
    Surveys that will be done on a quarterly basis
    observation
    Sampling one by one groups on individual self satisfaction
    Partner reports
    By using the logical framework to capture progress regarding inputs and outputs of different objectives and activities based on deliverables.

Deliverable s include users of ShopOkoa Mobile App, digital awareness skills, formal banking,economic opportunities created, loans accessed from formal financial institutions and jobs created.

Lack of funds

Slowed market research as a result of minimum face-to-face interaction due to covid-19.

Travel restriction also pose a threat to hinder growth of the product.

We Need a banking partner in order for our technology to be allowed to take

ShopOkoa has a unique, dynamic, innovative hard working team.The team comprises of a mixture of different skills and trainings from different institutions of learning. They have different expertise from outstanding organizations in Kenya and outside Kenya.

Kelvin Mulama- CEO and Founder.
As the team leader, I am a student Actuary and a Fellow of the Leaders in Innovation Fellowship under the Royal Academy of Engineering-UK, specializing in Fintech based products and business development solutions for low and middle income communities in developing countries.

I have led product development with a number of top industry players such as the UN- Habitat Makerthon, Tech Bridge invest Kenya, Safaricom Plc Kenya, Hult Prize USA.

Isaac Opiyo- COO.
As the COO, Isaac Opiyo is an alumni and Fellow of President Obama’s Young Africa Leadership Initiative (YALI) 2019,Harvard Business School Crossroads Emerging Leaders Fellow 2020 and a Youth Think Tank Researcher with Mastercard

Alvin Tegutwo – System Analyst.

An enthusiastic Computer Scientist with a passion of solving problems using technology. He has over 3 years’ experience of managing software development.Alvin has also worked with Google and Andela.

Levi Kisaka: Software Developer.
Software developer: Mobile Application, Dashboard , Engineering, and Innovation.

ShopOkoa has two groups of partners for Product commercialization and scaling:
Kenya National Innovation Agency on technology development and Chandaria Business Innovation and incubation on product incubation.