A SuperApp for low-income populations

There are 2 billion people (25% of the global population), who are digitally unconnected.  The majority are located in developing countries, where between 50-80% of populations are completely excluded from the digital economy.  

Being digitally unconnected in a world that is increasingly reliant upon digital services leaves these populations further and further behind.  They rely on brick & mortar solutions for education and healthcare of questionable quality.  They are often excluded entirely from the formalized financial sector.  In short, they are unable to access the ever-growing breadth of digital services that can have life-changing impact and have the ability to scale.  

On the supply side, digital service providers that offer basic services for the poor are growing exponentially.  It is within the digital ecosystem that innovation is reinforcing, extending and disrupting traditional delivery of education, health and financial services; systems that frequently exclude poor populations or offer subpar services. In emerging markets, fintech, edtech and healthtech alone are a 455B industry and growing rapidly.  Yet, digital service providers targeting poor populations face significant hurdles to reach the majority of their addressable market due to lack of smartphone ownership. This dramatically limits their growth and potential for impact.

Uniti unlocks access for unconnected populations to digital services. We help them to overcome key barriers to entry (affordability, digital literacy and literacy) and to meaningfully engage in services to improve their wealth, health and livelihoods. By making smartphone ownership productive out of the gates, we seek to both address the underlying causes of poverty while creating the income that will allow users to remain a part of the digital economy without subsidies.

We do this with a mix of technology and behavioral science: 

1. We address affordability by facilitating access to basic smartphones with a combination of subsidies and device financing products we are developing with partners to work for poor populations;

2. We pre-load our Super App on the devices.  Our Super App is designed to be a 1-stop-shop for inexperienced digital users to access high-quality basic services.  It contains an interoperable, curated suite of 3rd party apps in fintech (bank account, lending, savings, insurance, financial education), healthtech (telemedicine, fertility/pregnancy tools, diet, exercise, wellbeing), edtech (basic- to higher-education) and agtech/worktech (farming info, job boards, upskilling).   Our tech stack is designed to simplify and support the user experience and includes a KYC wallet, payment rails, messaging capabilities, and data tracking.  

3. We use our proprietary engagement program to help users overcome barriers to entry (KYC, literacy and digital literacy) and effectively use digital services through a combination of human and digitized support.  Our program is behavioral-science-based, using goal setting & milestone achievement to encourage technological adaptation and track impact to ensure that our users are able to engage in apps that drive quality of life improvements for themselves and their families.  

SuperApp demo (the app itself is post-MVP):  https://www.figma.com/proto/tgy3hv8AsxoneH7YaXXtxS/Uniti-App?node-id=1346%3A7838&vi[…]e-down&starting-point-node-id=1347%3A5801&show-proto-sidebar=1

Our solution serves three distinct communities.

First and foremost, we serve poor digitally unconnected populations in emerging markets by helping them to enter the digital economy.  Digital services are the most cost-effective, scalable means for these populations to access high-quality basic services that serve as an engine to improve their wealth, health and livelihoods. Rather than targeting a specific service, we take a holistic approach to service provision.  We start by asking our users to prioritize goals and areas of need in their lives and map those goals to specific services. We then employ our engagement program to help users to meaningfully engage with these services.  We track impact through user feedback (bi-weekly micro-surveys, focus groups) and objective measurement (milestone achievement, app usage data).

Secondly, we serve digital service providers that have market-validated solutions for poor populations. These are services – banking and telemedicine, pensions and numeracy – that struggle for visibility in the Google Play store and for long-term retention of acquired users. We partner with these service providers to include their app and/or service in our Super App, providing them access to an entirely new, highly-engaged market segment they are unable to reach on their own.  We further support service providers with usage and impact feedback to hone their products to our user base.   

Finally, we plan (at scale) to serve governments, NGOs and other international organizations with the provision of anonymized market intelligence.  We gather extensive, cross-sectoral data on end-users, including app usage, user priorities and impact.  This information can be invaluable in the design of programs and services targeted to poor populations.  

We are currently piloting our program in Ghana with ambitions to achieve global scale.  We have two key staff on-site, both Ghanaian:  Our co-founder and Ghana-lead – who has worked in community-based development programs in education and maternal health – and our community guide who is locally-based in Asumura, where the majority of our users are currently based.  These staff are actively involved in managing our local activities and co-creating our user on-boarding and engagement program. They act as our eyes and ears to understand user-perception and the impact of our work on our users' lives.  They also provide insights into local service providers whose products are relevant to our users and work in close collaboration with all of our Ghana-based partners, including service providers, Care Ghana (our on-the-ground partner to identify users) and Bluetown (who provide low-cost data to our users).  In essence, they are key to the bottom-up creation of Uniti. 

Our global team is focused on building out the top-down fundamentals of our strategy, product offering, including our technology (SuperApp) and structure of our engagement program, and global partnerships.  All staff of the global team have worked extensively in emerging markets with organizations focused on poor populations.  We have core competencies in building effective partnerships across local and global organizations.  Both our CEO and CFO are experienced entrepreneurs as founders of Devex (a development marketing and communications platform) and a fintech focused on emerging markets, respectively.  

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We seek to be part of the MIT Solve community for two primary reasons. 

First, the technology and content we provide our users is their first foray into the digital ecosystem. We consider it a critical part of our work that our users' first digital experience be value-creating.  However, we are conscientious that digital technology is often not employed to the benefits of the end-user.  As such, we seek to be aligned with communities, such as MIT Solve, that equally seek to harness technology for good.

Second, we are a platform for distributing high-quality basic services to low-income populations.  In essence, we are an enabler for products and services to reach their target customers.  As such, we consider it critical to be part of an ecosystem of changemakers that are creating the types of products our end-users can benefit from.  We see MIT Solve as a powerful ally on this front. 

We are working in uncharted territory.  

There is broad recognition that heavy investments in broadband coverage have brought the vast majority of the world within reach of the digital economy, yet access to devices lags behind.  As we rely increasingly on technology in every aspect of our lives, this gap has growing economic and societal implications.  

The current solution to this problem focuses on driving down device cost - this is the focus of device manufacturers, telcos and global tech firms.  Through small, incremental price decreases, they are slowly bringing on new users with a focus on urban youth.  However, this process is slow and only addresses a fraction of the currently unconnected market. 

At Uniti, we are looking to make device ownership financially viable for a much larger swath of society by subsidizing device cost and working with partners toward the creation of device financing that is designed for poor populations.  As a for-profit, social business, we are able to subsidize a portion of the device cost by charging the service providers in our Super App for access to new users (essentially a marketing spend).   No individual service provider can afford to cover device cost fully for user acquisition, but collectively a handful of service providers can make device ownership affordable.  This model allows us to drive down device costs and bring into the digital economy a much larger segment of the digitally unconnected. 

We further use technology to drive economic growth for our users.  Key to our engagement program is helping users to understand how their device can work for them - with services that allow them to reduce costs, increase income and withstand price shocks that perpetuate poverty.   Our objective is not only to provide access to the digital ecosystem but to make it work for the people we serve.  

Our vision is to provide universal access for poor populations to the digital economy and help them benefit from this access in a way that transforms their lives.  To do this, we start by asking our users about their individual goals in finance, education, health and work.  Based on their answer, we provide them a program of training, tools and support to achieve their goals through the use of digital resources.   

In the next year we aim to: 

• bring 3,000 digitally excluded individuals into the digital economy;

• prove that our Uniti Beat engagement model is effective at overcoming key barriers to entry faced by our users and supporting them to meaningfully engage with the services provided; 

• prove our business model - i.e. that the provision of basic digital services to currently connected populations can be done in an effective, ethical and profitable manner, such that it can be scaled globally.  

In the next five years we aim to: 

• Be active in 20 countries through a licensing model and bring 300,000 digitally excluded individuals into the digital economy;

• Have clear and compelling data that on a regional, country and global scale as to: (1) the basic service needs of digitally excluded individuals (what are they asking for vs what others think they need) and (2) the effectiveness of digital services individually or bundled that has a meaningful impact on users' lives. 

We measure impact with objective and subjective indicators.  These include app usage data, customer in-app spend, regular user-feedback micro-surveys and achievement of goal-specific milestones (that measure progress against goals).

Some of the key indicators that we use to measure our impact are as follows:

• App usage:  We target 30+% usage on all of the digital services housed in our Super App (to date we've achieved 22% vs app industry standard of 5%).   We correlate strong digital service usage as an indicator of the value the service brings to the user's life.  

• Net promoter score (NPS):  We target  4.5 / 5 NPS based on on-going user feedback on their experience with Uniti.  We correlate the NPS score with the users perceived value of Uniti on their lives.  

• Milestone achievement:  We target 75% achievement of specific milestones based on the users' individual goals.  For example, among users who have the financial goal to Save More: (1) % who have opened a digital bank account; (2) % saving on a weekly/monthly basis; (3) % who have achieved a particular savings target, etc.  

Our theory of change can be broken down into 3 simple statements:

1. The provision of a smartphone to a digitally unconnected individual offers them a gateway to digital services.  This gateway provides enormous potential to create value in their lives and, in turn, fuel the local and global economy.  

2. Yet the provision of a smartphone alone is insufficient.   Rather, new digital entrants must be empowered to engage in services that can meaningfully impact their lives for that smartphone to be a driver of economic prosperity.  

3. Goal setting and milestone achievement is a powerful psychological tool that can be effectively employed to help new digital entrants effectively engage in digital services. 

On the first point, there is substantial buy-in from stakeholders ranging from governments and development agencies to business and academia. Tracking digital inclusion and wealth creation across China and India as well as South Africa and Nigeria shows the path and the scale of potential. There are important concerns about surveillance-orientated business models such as WeChat or social media business models that treat the customer as the product. But there is little debate on the underlying reality that the future is digital and the opportunities for equitable growth are immense. 

On the second point, as part of the pilots undertaken to date, we have effectively tested the provision of smartphones with varying levels of intervention.  There is very clear evidence from our experience that:

• New digital entrants with little support on phone and app usage beyond an initial phone registration and handover either: (1) use the phone to make calls but do not engage in digital services (typically in the case of former flip phone owners) or (2) do not use the phone at all. 

• There is direct correlation between user interventions (physical and/or digital interactions between the user and Uniti) and an uptake in phone and app usage; 

• Users who successfully engage in 1 digital service are exponentially more likely to engage in further digital services;

• Testimonials from top users provide clear evidence of direct impact of digital services and improved quality of life.  For example, the use of farming programs to detect disease and improve yield, an update in savings through digital financial service access, the use of telemedicine to treat health issues…  A few examples testimonials can be found in this video:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cTuulBD_V40&t=36s

On the third point, there is very well-documented evidence that goal-setting is a highly effective tool in creating behavior change.  This has been used and evidenced by numerous industries (weight-loss, stop smoking, etc), as well as medical professionals.  In our application, we seek to use goal-setting to help:

• support the behavior change that is linked to the transition from traditional to digital services or simply the uptake of new services that were previously unavailable;

• encourage meaningful engagement in digital services by helping users to achieve their personal goals through the use of digital services.

Uniti drives value for customers by using a combination of systematized behavioral science and software designed to maximize accessibility for users.

The technology on Uniti smartphones – any off-the-shelf Android device with minimal specifications – includes a combination of repurposed and innovative technologies. We combine enterprise-level Enterprise Mobility Management (EMM) with soft-lock technology that enables device financing. Each of these technologies is robust and market-tested with tens of millions of users globally. The EMM platform allows us to adapt and update the service suite on Uniti devices while providing real-time user support from a call center or similar low-cost infrastructure. Soft-lock technology helps to ensure that users stay up to date on loan repayment for the device. Layered on top of the EMM is Uniti’s launcher and Super App. The app captures and stores KYC data from users, establishes a communication channel for Uniti’s messaging (including audio and video files), and houses a suite of 3rd party off-the-shelf apps that make up the service suite. The Uniti app additionally creates interoperability across the app suite – such as single sign on and consent-based data sharing – and lets users see how their use of services is driving progress in their lives. The launcher creates a unified user experience across Uniti devices and highlights our messaging and app suite on the home screen of each device.

This technical platform supports the second component of our offering which is automation and gamification of our engagement program – Uniti Beat. In support of our mission to drive usage of high-impact services and to deliver engaged and monetizable customers to our service partners, Uniti has designed more than 100 user interventions to reinforce the value proposition of the service suite and reduce barriers to usage. Those interventions range from audio notes and short videos to surveys, testimonials and group interactions. We are iterating on these user interventions and automating them to create a gamified user experience. Over time, we will use those learnings to train algorithms to optimize outcomes for users and service partners alike.

Uniti's founding team consists of 2 men and 3 women from 3 different nationalities (US, France, Ghana).  Our vision is for a global company, but as we are currently active in Ghana and intend to expand first in Africa, we plan to hire in Africa (most likely in Ghana) both our COO and Head of Sales (and potentially a Head of Product).  

We seek to support local businesses through our work.  Specifically, we prioritize local apps for inclusion in our app suite and work hand-in-hand with them to strengthen their product and impact.

We seek to support upward mobility among our users.  Within our network, we are empowering our users to become Uniti mentors and guides.  We are particularly interested in hiring women, with whom we have had better outcomes.

We seek to ensure gender equality.  To date, we have a 50/50 men to women ratio of users.  However, we are actively considering increasing the ratio to favor women users in support of closing the gender gap in digital access. 

Our business model is B2B2C.  

Our primary customers are best-in-class apps and digital service providers, whose products are targeted to poor populations.  We work across four key sectors: 

-   Fintech (digital bank account, lending, savings, insurance)

-   Healthtech (telemedicine, fertility planning, wellbeing)

-   Edtech (reading, basic-adult education)

-   Agtech/worktech (farming supports, supplemental income/job search)

We select the apps in our service suite through a competitive process that assesses the relevance of the content/product offering for our users and the level of associated cost (if any).   Our current suite in Ghana houses 14 apps. 

We offer these service providers: 

• an opportunity to grow their market with end-users they are unable to reach themselves, namely the unconnected populations that we bring on-line.  Unconnected populations account for 50-80% of the population in emerging markets, thus the ability to reach these populations is highly valuable for service providers, particularly as there is no initial competition;

• high levels of user engagement (on average 30% engagement rates vs 5% industry average engagement rates);  

• market intelligence on user data and customer feedback on their product.  

These service providers compensate us through:

• Listing fees:  upfront payment for inclusion in our Super App that covers a typical marketing spend;

• Revenue share:  longer-term compensation based on on-going user engagement and/or user spend (per the apps revenue model).

We anticipate that, at scale (10k+ users), our secondary customers will be purchasers of anonymized market intelligence, which may include governments, NGOs, and service providers.   Almost all programs and donor funding directed to these populations is siloed.  Our value is stems primarily from the fact that: 

• we work cross-sectorally and are thus able to create linkages and assess data insights across sectors;

• ask our users about their individual priorities, track usage of related apps and measure impact on their lives - in short, we work bottom up to understand what our users really want and use in order to continuously improve our service offering to meet their needs.  These same insights can be of value to any other player that is trying to provide value to the users we serve. 

Once we have proven the business model in 2-3 countries, we plan to expand internationally using a licensing model in which we license our Super App technology and Uniti Beat engagement program methodology.  

Uniti is a for-profit business.  We aim to develop our product primarily through investment (to date we've raised USD 700k) and secondarily through donations.  We are currently seeking to raise a seed round. 

In the medium-term, we should be self-sustaining based on revenue generated from our customers.  

We anticipate unit economics per device as follows:

+ $100-120:  Revenue from customers per device.  We anticipate approximately 50% from fintechs, 25% from healthtech and 25% other.

- $40:  COGS, which includes:  device subsidies (20% of the device cost), mobile data over 12 months, MDM & enterprise launcher and local staff costs 

This revenue/cost structure results in gross margins of approximately 80%.  

At scale, we believe we can achieve net margins of 60%.

To date, we raised a $700k pre-seed round of which $150k from BAs and $550k in-kind from our technical co-founder, mimik Technologies (global leader in native edge software) and impact co-founder (Keystone Accountability).  

We've just begun fundraising for our seed round.  We are 90% certain to have closed the first investor for this round (pending finalization of terms) and are in active discussion with 4 other potential investors.  

We are also in the process of finalizing our first revenue-generating contract with a service provider.  The terms have been agreed in principle and we are drawing up the legal paperwork at the moment.  We are in negotiations with 3 additional service providers.   We are on-path to obtain our 2023 objective to breakeven on COGS (meaning that we generate sufficient revenue from service providers to cover all costs related to our product, including both our tech and engagement program).   We anticipate achieving breakeven on our business model at the close of 2024.