Nadeem Juma

If there was one expression that has travelled far and wide across countries and continents in the startup world, it would be: “You are nuts.” And it was exactly those words that Nadeem Juma, Jad Abbas and Michael Tarimo got to hear “from everyone” right before closing a seed investment round of USD 2.5 million.

And honestly, who could blame everyone? The team had decided to raise the financing round in the midst of a global shrunken VC landscape, where investors were sitting on their money waiting for recessions and inflation rates to easen up, and in a sector that truly witnessed the VC squeeze first-hand, especially in Africa. African fintech startups raised USD 1.9 billion in investment rounds in 2022 – and while this may seem impressive, it is almost half of the amount raised in the year prior.

However, if there is one thing that the everyday people in Africa have in common across the continent’s diverse countries, deeply-rooted traditions, and delicious cuisines, it is the need to be able to smoothly and easily obtain access to money. The needs range from farmers looking for loans to pay for better cow feed, small business owners seeking access to financing to expand their business or employees on the lookout for asset financing options to upgrade their phones and become more efficient at work.

Nadeem spotted the need 17 years ago. “There is an evident gap in access to affordable credit that is not predatory, but rather sustainable, providing consumers and SMEs with emergency credit,” he explains.

While Nadeem’s quests throughout his career were vast and colourful, between digital content creation, education and music downloads, the undeniable opportunity in fintech always drew him back in. It started when he built the first mobile-money platform (m-wallet) in East Africa that was used by Etisalat in Tanzania and eventually fully taken over by them. He then moved on to establish a digital identity business that provides the KYC platform, helping mobile network operators initially know who their customers are, a clear step in bringing consumers into the formal financial sector.

And then, of course, there was the Vodacom Tanzania project in 2020. The telecommunications operator was on a mission to enable access to financing for its customers. This meant building a scalable tech platform which allows customers to obtain financing packages and deals, through which Vodacom could easily and seamlessly launch their own products.

Did it work? It did better than that – it mushroomed. In only nine months, the platform acquired 200,000+ customers, disbursed over USD 5 million in loans and obtained USD 3 million in savings deposits from its customers. “This is what happens when a seasoned African founder builds a product that tackles the institutional challenge plaguing the underbanked in Africa, and allows companies to offer customized financing to the continent’s vast population,” Acasia Ventures General Partner Biola Alabi explains.

Today, that digital banking infrastructure platform has become Credable. Credable can turn any business into a financing services provider, or fintech, through a plug-and-play, customizable and embedded platform. The company takes care of designing the financial product, credit scoring, securing capital and managing the product after it is launched on an ongoing basis. “In weeks, the company can go live with new banking  products. The customer wins by getting the banking products they need in the channel they’re already in, the business wins from higher engagement and revenue on their platform, and the financial institutions win by being able to access otherwise unreachable customers at scale,” Jad says. The focus is to enable and elevate financial offerings in emerging markets, starting in East Africa (Tanzania, Kenya and Uganda) and then expanding to markets such as Nigeria, Egypt, Pakistan and others in the Middle East and across Africa.

So, what made Credable the startup of choice for investors during a VC squeeze? While Credable’s founding team was labelled “nuts” by numerous stakeholders during its latest investment round, it was also commended for sticking to its cause. “Every single investor said that what set us apart was that we were a collection of experienced founders and operators building a sustainable, profitable business rather than driving a valuation narrative,” Nadeem concludes.