Funding
2nd Place Winner, CreditGO, Takes Home $8000 at the “African App Launchpad Cup 2020”
Egypt’s Information Technology Industry Development Agency (ITIDA) announced CreditGO, the B2B payment aggregator & merchants wallet for small businesses, as the second place winner at the just ended “African App Launchpad Cup 2020” competition.
The startup was also awarded with US$ 8,000. The African App Launchpad Cup 2020 which is considered the first of its kind in Africa, gives early stage entrepreneurs and startups from all over Africa the opportunity and space to showcase their innovative ideas and present their business projects.
CreditGO pitched their business model, a free mobile application for electronic payments that serves C and D segments’ merchants located in tier 2 cities and introducing cashless payments & digitization; thus achieving financial inclusion, creating jobs and generating operating income to everyone.
This announcement took place during the framework of the activities held by “The African Launchpad for creating games and digital applications”; a presidential initiative aimed to develop the capabilities of 10,000 Egyptian and African youth, qualifying them to develop digital games and applications using the latest technologies.
The African App Launchpad Cup initiative targets to support the creation of 100 startups in Africa in App and game development in cooperation with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (Egypt) and a number of international companies, ministries and institutions in various African countries.
Commenting on their performance, Sherine Ewase, Deputy CEO of CreditGO said, It was a great honor for them at CreditGO to have placed second among the outstanding multinational African startups and compete with their creative ideas, being able to present and convince the jury with the vision of CreditGO.
“We aim to play an essential role in society and build a strong foundation for financial inclusion across Egypt, to have a positive impact on the community and the economic development of the country. We have achieved 3 million Egyptian pounds in change, resulting from 75,000 transactions carried out by 2500 CreditGO users, and this is a validation for our hard work, dedication and commitment to our vision” confirms Ewase.
The B2B startup (CreditGO) further stated that they are working towards their growth and expansion phase where they look forward to reaching a wide and diverse segment of Egyptians who will benefit from the services, while educating them about the importance of digital transformation.
More than 180 startups from various African countries including Egypt applied to the competition, who were shortlisted to 50, and then to 24, to announce the final 7 winners for the first, second, third, and fourth places, four of which are in the applications category and three in the games category, and Egypt had four winning contestants in this list.
The “African Launchpad for creating games and digital applications” initiative has graduated 1,911 graduates this year, making the total number of graduates 3,064 since its launch in 2019.
About CreditGo
CreditGO is an Egyptian joint stock company specializing in electronic payment and collection services and owns the CreditGO free of charge mobile application, which is considered an alternative to traditional electronic payment devices.
CreditGO is a convenient, simple-to-go solution that adopts financial inclusion by empowering independent workers and the unbanked community to improve and increase their financial position.
Funding
Ghana’s OZÉ Raises $700K with Plans to Expand to Nigeria
The Accra based tech startup, OZÉ, reports, it has raised US$700,000 led by Anorak Ventures and Matuca Sarl. The fintech startup helps small businesses in Africa grow their operations by digitizing and providing them with access to capital.
An angel investor joining the round was Rising Tide Africa (Nigeria), along with existing investors such as MEST Africa and Ingressive Capital.
What the fund is to be used for?
OZÉ is a fast growing tech startup in Ghana that says it is investing the new fund in growing its team, expansion into neighboring Nigeria and to marketing its recently launched iOS business app.
In Ghana and in most other Africa countries, access to capital for small and medium scale enterprises is a struggle. Much that the MSME credit gap in Sub-Saharan Africa is pegged at US$331 billion which means many African lenders are missing out on close to US$80 billion in annual interest income, simply because lending to these category of businesses is tough.
The challenges with small businesses in the African market
Sadly, a number still keep records on papers, they have no formal business education, not only that, one cannot find any credit history, they have weak or no collateral, and their operations are quite opaque.
OZÉ comes into the scene with its award-winning business app and proprietary credit risk algorithm, making it profitable for banks to make no-collateral loans to MSMEs.
For the co-founder and CEO of the tech company, Meghan McCormick, their OZÉ Flywheel makes it profitable for banks to lend to MSMEs. She goes on to say that,
“Using OZÉ already screens for the type of entrepreneurs banks should want to lend to and as entrepreneurs keep using OZÉ they can access more funds at a lower risk to the bank.”
What we know is that, their OZÉ Business App makes keeping financial records habit-forming in a more fun way. Remarkably, its users earn gold coins when they track sales and expenses, send digital receipts and invoices.
They also remind customers to pay what they owe, simply from their smartphones. There is a business dashboard which shows how the business is trending and have made available a business coach who is just a click away.
Since it launched its beta app in 2018, a growing number of active users and paying subscribers have recorded more than 250,000 transactions in the app with a value of more than US$50 million. OZÉ says it piloted a small loan portfolio in 2020, with no defaults and had a projected annual 43% ROI (return on investment).
Dave Emnet, a co-founder and COO, in a press release said, he was super excited about the next stage of OZÉ, adding that, they were integrating with Paystack and other PSPs (payment service providers) to allow for SMEs accept and send payments through the app as well as partner with more financial institutions to expand on the success of OZÉ’s approach to lending.
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