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Numida Technologies

Numida Technologies provides entrepreneurs with powerful data profiles, improved lending terms, and critical financing to ignite business growth.

Uganda’s estimated 450,000 Micro Small and Medium Enterprises generate around 90% of the country’s private sector production. They also generate four out of five new jobs and make significant contributions to national economic prosperity.

However, 74% of these critical businesses identify access to—and the high cost of—finance as a significant hindrance to their growth. Small businesses use the Numida mobile app to keep track of their financial records, and Numida uses the cash flow and behavioural data collected in the app to then issue appropriately sized, unsecured loans.


Without financing, many of Uganda’s small and medium sized enterprises operate far below their potential.

A major reason for this issue is poor record keeping from small-to-medium sized entrepreneurs and a lack of collateral that financial institutions require in order to issue business credit.

Finance organizations pass the cost associated with their increased efforts on to small business borrowers, in the form of high interest rates and application fees. At the same time, the organizations offset their own perceived risk by commanding high collateral requests.

With the essential small business community hindered by inaccessible financing, Uganda is missing valuable opportunities to create employment, stimulate the economy, and to ultimately increase standard-of-living for the entrepreneurs, their families, staff and wider communities.

Numida solves these problems by integrating improved financial management with access to unsecured credit.


Through convertible note equity, EWB was able to provide essential early-round financial support with speed, simplicity and at low cost. This ensured Numida could engage in essential product research and development to accelerate the potential impacts of the product.

Initial investment was bolstered throughout the founding-stage through the support of EWB fellows: with three Long-Term Fellows and one Junior Fellow embedded to provide talent in financial modelling, investor preparation, networking and strategy.

With these support frameworks in place, Numida secured a grant to execute a pilot  with over 1000 entrepreneurs in 2016.

 


Numida leverages mobile technology to improve the financial management and financial literacy of Ugandan small business owners through their simple record-keeping app. As entrepreneurs use the app to keep track of their finances they unlock access to unsecured credit directly in the app. Numida users can access credit after only 7 days of app use, however the longer and more consistently they use Numida, the higher loan principals and better terms they are offered. This gamification motivates good financial management behaviour and combined with loans appropriately designed according to the businesses actual cash flows Numida can greatly reduce their risk and cost of lending. Loans are disbursed within 24 hours via mobile money offering a level of convenience unheard of in the SME lending sector.


Raised nearly 15 times initial EWB funding.

As of August 8, 2017

  • Disbursed 190 loans to 135 Ugandan small businesses
  • 99% repayment rate
  • Growing at 15% week on week
  • Won Seedstars Uganda pitch competition, and invited to pitch for $1M in Switzerland
  • One of 500 ventures from 14,000 applicants globally selected to interview for Y-Combinator, the world’s leading tech accelerator
  • Selected to participate in Blackbox Connect, a San Francisco tech accelerator sponsored by Google for Entrepreneurs

Selected for the 2016 Unreasonable Institute East Africa.

The Unreasonable Institute is an annual five-week workshop program connecting innovative businesses with mentors and potential funding opportunities. Carefully selected, high-potential companies are equipped with a platform for mentorship and networking to continue their impressive development trajectories.

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