Reeple: Aiding small businesses in Africa access fair credit

According to Africa Finance Forum, 82.6% of micro and small businesses in Africa lack access to loans. Also, 38 million small businesses in Nigeria lack access to credit facilities, and this lack of access to finance has limited the operations, growth, and expansion of these businesses thereby leading to their eventual death and non-existence.

The major factors limiting small businesses from gaining access to loans and credit facilities in Nigeria and across Africa are reported to be the lack of required data needed for creditworthiness checks, non-existing credit history, bad creditworthiness, and unstructured financial management.

Also, the lack of access to fair credit has exposed over 60% of these small businesses to predatory lenders who charge them ridiculously high interest rates thereby subjecting them to massive debts they can't afford to repay and bankruptcy.  The overall ripple effect is that these small businesses die, and the business owner becomes jobless thereby leading to unemployment, poverty, and hunger. 

The Reeple product is a web software that utilizes artificial intelligence technology in helping micro and small businesses determine their creditworthiness by analyzing alternative data such as financial data, mobile data, behavioral patterns, and spending patterns, and thereafter connecting them to appropriate non-predatory loans.

Reeple also uses artificial intelligence to predict the loan range suitable for the businesses to borrow and the probability that they would be able to repay the loan based on the given loan amount, interest rate, and tenure. Thereby saving them from future debt and credit defaults.

For small businesses that have bad creditworthiness or don't have enough alternative data to be creditworthy, we give them access to our free financial management tool, known as Finver. With finver, they are able to build their creditworthiness through budgeting, financial tracking, savings, and effectively managing their expenditures and subscriptions. This gives them a creditworthiness boost and they invariably gain access to loan facilities through our loan partners. 

Here’s our product demo video:

https://youtu.be/bZRN9n1QgQc

Target Population: Small businesses within Nigeria.

Our solution serves the 38 million underserved small and micro businesses that are disconnected and excluded from loan facilities within Nigeria due to their lack of traditional credit history and credit scores.

Our solution helps to ensure that they are able to effectively manage their finances, build up their creditworthiness, determine their credit scores, and finally get connected to loan facilities. 

I previously had a personal experience of not being able to access a loan to build a business and this eventually led to the closure of the business.

I have 8 years of experience building tech-inclusive products and I previously led and built an artificial intelligence company for 4 years, expanded its impact to 5000 users, and secured partnerships with Facebook, Merck, Atos, and Giz. I decided to utilize my previous experience coupled with the problem I countered to start Reeple and ensure that millions of other small businesses in Africa don't wound up dead due to the lack of access to credit.

Our CTO, Kunle Adesanya, is fully integrated into building Fintech software solutions for the underserved as he has 7 years of software experience and helped build the credit finance platform for Y combinator's portfolio company, Shekel Africa.

Our head of Credit risk management, Damilare Fagbuyi, has spent the last 10 years leading credit and financial inclusion teams in top microfinance banks and credit firms within Nigeria where he engaged with thousands of disenfranchised small businesses who lacked access to credit. He is currently using his experience in Reeple to further drive financial inclusion via credit risk assessment and credit access for small businesses.

Our solution currently serves 135 businesses monthly and generally impacts 1200 customers.

We just secured a partnership with the biggest bank in Nigeria, Zenith Bank, which would see us extend our solution to 5000 micro and small businesses monthly.

Here's a press release on the partnership: https://techpoint.africa/2023/...

We believe the robust network, partners, and industry experts within the Solve program would be pivotal in helping us further develop our growth strategy and achieve our goal of expanding our impact to 10,000 businesses within the next 12 months.

We hope to leverage the support of Solve in the following areas:

Mentorship from industry experts and startup founders within the artificial intelligence and blockchain technology space and within the fintech industry who we can further learn from and capitalize on their experiences and networks to scale our solution.

Access to partnerships and collaborations with financial institutions, Solve alumni, small businesses, and international organizations within the Solve network with whom we can mutually work together and leverage each other's support to drive financial inclusion for the disenfranchised communities.

In Africa, particularly in Nigeria, creditworthiness is mostly determined by considering the large collateral, high profile network, and wealthy net worth of people and businesses thereby disenfranchising millions of individuals and small businesses within the middle and low-income margin.

Reeple's approach closes this wide gap by leveraging artificial intelligence and machine learning technology in analyzing alternative data such as mobile data, financial data, spending patterns, behavioral patterns, and digital footprints in determining creditworthiness, thereby giving the low-income and middle-income population the opportunity to fairly access credit facilities.

In One year:

1. Our ultimate goal in 12 months is to expand our impact to 10, 000 businesses by helping them to access credits and grow.

We are on course to achieving this by leveraging partnerships with credit firms, banks, business hubs, and small business cooperative societies. We recently partnered with Zenith Bank which gives us access to aid 5000 businesses access credit monthly.

2. Secondly, we would be improving our AI and machine-learning models by increasing our predictive scoring and loan repayment probability from 95% to 99% by training our models with more data and integrating generative AI models. 

3. Thirdly, extend our solution as an API to 100 financial institutions and lending platforms across Nigeria to further improve their lending process and drive access to credit for the financially excluded population.

In 5 years:

1. Our goal in 5 years is to expand our impact to 250, 000 businesses across Africa. We would be achieving this by doubling on partnerships, working with local government districts, expanding our solution to more states, and via extensive digital marketing. 

2. Scale our solution to 4 other African countries: Ghana, Kenya, Rwanda, and Tanzania. We would be leveraging extended networks within those countries to form partnerships that would help us scale and operate within those regions. 

Using the SDGs as a key focus, we measure our impact by monitoring the quantitative and qualitative outcomes and results our solution has on our customers and beneficiaries. 

Impact metrics:

1. SDG 1 (No Poverty): We track how many business owners or entrepreneurs are able to gain access to credit through Reeple to develop their businesses and as a result have a comfortable income to take care of their families and children.

2. SDG 4 (Quality Education): We track how many small businesses and business owners through our financial management tool improved their financial management knowledge and had a boost in their credit scores.

3. SDG 8 (Decent Work & Economic Growth): We track how many small business owners we have impacted via access to credits and how many employees they employed as a result of their growth.

4. SDG 10 (Reduced Inequalities): We track how many disenfranchised entrepreneurs or business owners that have become financially inclusive via our solution.

Our theory of change is broken down into 5 stages 

1. INPUT: Technology such as artificial intelligence and blockchain; Marketing, technology, sales, and social Impact talents; Financial data, mobile data, digital footprints data, and other alternative data; Web app and website.

2. ACTIVITIES: Aggregrate relevant alternative data from small businesses, analyze these data, and use it to determine their credit scores and loan repayment probability. Also, give small businesses access to tools to manage their finances.

3. OUTPUT: Increase in the number of small businesses able to analyze their creditworthiness and determine their credit scores.

4. OUTCOMES: Small businesses manage their finances better, improve their credit scores, easily determine their creditworthiness, and get easy and fair access to non-predatory credit facilities.

5. IMPACT: Small businesses grow, become profitable, and self-sustainable, contributing to an increase in the employment rate and an increase in the GDP of the economy of the country.

Our solution leverages Artificial intelligence technology and Blockchain technology.

How we use Artificial Intelligence:

We use Artificial intelligence technology to efficiently and swiftly analyze alternative data, determine credit scores and predict the loan repayment probability of small businesses.

Basically, we are using data analytics, natural language processing, and deep learning to analyze spending and behavioral patterns from financial data, mobile data, bank transaction history, and digital footprints to predict creditworthiness.

How we are integrating Blockchain: 

To ensure that the financial data and other sensitive data of our customers and beneficiaries are securely stored without 3rd party access, we are integrating blockchain technology in enhancing security and transparency in creditworthiness checks.

This blockchain identity solution helps us ensure that small businesses have more control over their data and private information and the sole right to share the data with 3rd parties like loan companies and banks.

One of our principles and goals as an organization is to both advocate for and actively practice diversity and inclusion within the workspace.

We are doing this by ensuring the elimination of gender or cultural bias in employing talents and promoting staff. For example, outside of the cofounders, we currently have a 50-50 gender-based management team. 

Also, we ensure we employ and build our team based on the skills, talents, and wealth of experience of an individual and not based on cultural or financial background thereby eliminating cultural bias. This is expressed in that 90% of the team attended a public tertiary institution and 70% of the team are from a low-income or middle-income background.

Our solution benefits loan companies that give out credit products and small businesses that seek to access loans.

We give credit and loan companies access to our API for alternative creditworthiness checks and we charge them $0.24 per check.

We help borrowers determine their credit scores and thereafter connect them to suitable loan facilities to access loans. We charge them 2% to 5% for every successful loan we connect them to.

Our financial sustainability plan:

1. Our primary model for financial sustainability is by generating revenue from selling our product to our customers. We sell our creditworthiness check APIs to banks and loan companies by charging them per API call. We also charge small businesses a small percentage of interest on loans received.

2. Our secondary model is by raising external funds to accelerate growth. We would be sourcing funding from Venture capitals,  Angel investors, and grant funding from international organizations, charitable organizations, and fellowship programs. 

Current success with financial sustainability:

- We are currently generating revenue monthly and recorded a 315% growth in revenue within the last 7 months.

- We currently have a monthly revenue of approximately $2000

- We raised $33, 000 in investment from Zenith Bank and an Angel investor.