Afrigather Herconomy’s pre-seed increase is one for the historical past books. Final yr, the startup shocked the tech ecosystem with its funding story. Inside 24 hours of an Instagram put up by its founder, Ife Durosimi-Etti, the community-based startup raised $600,000 in funding to scale its SaaS product that provided girls continued entry to profession alternatives and reductions from chosen manufacturers. Now, Herconomy is taking one other huge step: pivoting to a fintech firm and discontinuing its former product and mannequin.
Change isn’t any stranger to Durosimi-Etti, Herconomy’s founder. Up to now three years, she has transitioned from company communications at Nigerian Breweries to working a furnishings enterprise earlier than placing her working gloves the place her coronary heart is—a startup that helps girls thrive. Herconomy’s former product achieved some vital feats, together with bringing collectively a vibrant neighborhood of girls and providing them entry to jobs, alternatives, and capacity-building workshops. Its enterprise mannequin relied on prospects paying to entry these perks.
Nonetheless, Durosimi-Etti’s goals for the startup transcend plugging girls to alternatives. She has all the time wished Herconomy to change into a catalyst for the socioeconomic independence of girls by actively serving to them develop their wealth, handle their funds, and entry capital for his or her companies.
In Nigeria, solely 33% of womales have financial institution accounts, leading to girls’s exclusion from a world of digital providers and wealth-creation alternatives. Banking the unbanked is a gigantic problem, however Durosimi-Etti thinks Herconomy has what it takes to deal with it. The community-turned-fintech Herconomy has made its first transfer by launching a cellular financial savings app that enables girls to avoid wasting and earn as much as 10% annual curiosity on their financial savings.
Herconomy’s slogan is “save, earn, study, join and thrive”. The corporate believes that saving is girls’s first step in the direction of monetary buoyancy and wealth administration. This perception within the life-transforming energy of a saving tradition might need come from the suggestions and success of a number of saving challenges that the neighborhood ran in-house over time. Earlier than launching this app, at the least 500 girls participated in Herconomy’s saving challenges and saved properly over $100,000 in whole. The app was piloted in April 2022 and already has about 5,000 lively savers on it, in line with Herconomy
Talking on the aim and influence of the pivot at a media parley to which TechCabal was invited, Lasisi, Herconomy’s CTO, stated: “Our mission is to empower girls in Nigeria and past to be financially unbiased, thereby contributing to the socio-economic growth of their ecosystem. That is in step with our imaginative and prescient to empower a million girls by the yr 2025.” To meet this imaginative and prescient, Herconomy has launched the Every Girl Deliver One Marketing campaign, which financially incentivizes girls by Herconomy’s referral program, in addition to their very own saving progress, to encourage at the least one individual of their circle to begin saving with the cellular app.
This new financial savings app is a vital a part of Herconomy’s bold purpose. The financial savings product has two most important saving plans: Vault and Float, which accrue 10% and eight% annual curiosity respectively. There may be additionally an Accountability Companion function by which associates can examine in on each other whereas saving in the direction of a purpose. The app additionally has a Save as You Spend function with which customers could make orders and get a couple of 30% low cost on choose items and providers.
Regardless of this pivot to fintech, Herconomy just isn’t leaving out its intensive neighborhood play. In contrast to most fintech merchandise, Herconomy will embody customers of its financial savings app within the actions of its 6000-member neighborhood. The customers will get push notifications of networking occasions, knowledge-sharing occasions, and enterprise development alternatives that may enhance their incomes potential and enhance their financial savings. They may also get entry to Herconomy’s weekly e-meetings, the place consultants are invited to debate varied issues affecting girls, starting from monetary literacy to reproductive well being. Thus, Herconomy will stay community-driven and women-focused. Although males are usually not excluded from these actions or from utilizing the financial savings app, the startup will make choices and measure its influence with girls in thoughts.
Talking concerning the challenges that the corporate confronted whereas constructing this product, Durosimi-Etti highlighted the problem of discovering expertise. With 1000’s of Nigerian expertise taking on distant jobs or migrating to the diaspora to work, discovering the suitable expertise proved to be a mission by itself. Nonetheless, she has managed to construct a 31-person group, over 50% of which is feminine. The corporate prides itself in how the gender parity of its workforce displays the world that Herconomy is striving for—a world the place girls are afforded the identical alternatives as males.
Herconomy at the moment operates in partnership with Providus Financial institution, with its prospects’ funds secured and insured by AXA Mansard insurance coverage firm. Over the following few months, Herconomy plans to push past its cooperative license to safe a microfinance financial institution(MFB) license, enabling it to drive its core monetary inclusion agenda.
As an MFB, Herconomy plans to onboard unbanked girls (these with out financial institution verification numbers) by opening tier 1 accounts for them and serving to them to entry all of the perks of the Herconomy app, by way of a strong agent community. Providing credit score to prospects can be one of many firm’s key ambitions, and in line with the agency’s affiliate product supervisor, Opral Ogbuigwe, Herconomy will launch its credit score choices in 2023.
With this foray, Herconomy is betting on girls and proving that even in Nigeria’s most saturated tech market, startups with social capital can distinguish themselves and make an influence with their disruptive applied sciences.
