Elevator Pitch
Akaboxi provides financial inclusion with a bottom-up strategy leveraging the preexisting strengths and structures of communities that practice the same commercial activity like agriculture, businesses etc and form saving groups to create a pool of money by saving and lending to each other. We are data driven entity leveraging the data collected during this saving and lending process in the savings group to go ahead and identify credit worthy individuals that are then connected to various FSPs willing to provide them with credit.
PROBLEM SOLVED
The leading Financial Service Providers (FSPs) target individual people who are looking for financial support and can approach them for services they need. These include the Micro Finance Institutions, Commercial Banks, and SACCOS. These systems usually do not extend to the very low-income customers like small holder farmers, youth and women . Akaboxi bridges the gap between those FSPs and individuals who cannot access their services and have turned to more informal group saving approaches, like Village Savings and Loans Associations.
Solution / Technology
Akaboxi provides a technology platform that digitizes savings groups in both semi- urban and rural communities. The platform leverages mobile technology through the android mobile application called “AkaboxiTech App” for android smartphones users and POS devices, USSD for those with feature phones and Akaboxi Enterprise Dashboard for Organisations. The system is also linked to each member’s phone number to send SMS notifications of each transaction made making it secure, transparent and easy to use.
We help mobilize saving groups and digitize the whole savings process making it more secure by bringing banking opportunities closer to them and raising capital to increase the financial credit. A credit scoring model built in the system enables members in each savings group to accurately assess their credit risk. As organized savings groups with a credit scoring model, and proper record keeping, it is easier to access support from organizations, FSPs, insurance companies and other companies.
Competitive
We provide tailored digital financial services for all our customers inorder to satisfy their needs of (security, transparency, digital financial record and access to credit). This all round service provision makes us a better option compared to our competitors who are not all round. The individual members have access to both individual and group information. The financial service providers target individuals
Market Size
Saving groups have about 25- 30 individual members that save from UGX 15 million in rural areas to UGX 120 million in urban areas in a year. According to Care International Uganda VSLA report more than 600,000 Ugandans currently participate in more than 22,000 VSLA groups in Uganda. About over 1 Million saving groups in Africa and accounting for 300 Million individuals practicing informal banking.
