Mzizzi

Mzizzi empowers businesses through affordable retail tools including eCommerce shops, POS systems, digital payments, and integrated logistics. We help SMEs in a number of ways:

• Building a local and international market
  eCommerce helps SMEs expand their outreach, as it reduces the investment required for a company to become visible in the market. Mzizzi enables SMEs, to reach a larger market through the ease of access and convenience offered by the platform.

• Improving quality of customer and financial data
  The Mzizzi Point of Sale (POS) records transactions and creates a verifiable track record of a company’s performance and trustworthiness, this information can improve access to capital from financing institutions. The data generated from transaction records can help SMEs reach out to targeted potential buyers.

• Disintermediation in logistics
  A significant proportion of value can be improved by removing intermediaries in the logistics chain, SMEs, through Mzizzi can ship goods directly to the end-user via eCommerce.

SMEs are at the heart of the Kenyan economy. They represent about 98% of all businesses, and more than 80% of Kenya’s working population rely on them for income. SMEs contribute an estimated $23Bn of the country’s gross domestic product. Though mostly informal, SMEs are engines of employment creation, generating 80% of new jobs annually. Top of the challenges that we solve are:

• Access to market - Access to markets is one of the biggest challenges for SMEs and a critical piece of meeting the goals of SDG8 for sustainable economic growth. They often don’t have the resources or access to networks to gain commercial traction.
• Collection and management of payments - Many African SMEs are challenged in the collection of digital payments limiting their capacity to increase sales, by reducing the channels available to customers to make payments.
• Tools to organize their operations and data - Data is critical to opening financing access for SMEs. Lack of proper management of information and poor record-keeping are key issues affecting small businesses in Africa. In order for SMEs to operate successfully, there is a need for proper data management, which serves an important purpose in accessing financing and assessing business health.

Paytree addresses the above problems through our solution Mzizzi. The solution works as follows:

Through a combination of web and mobile technology, the Mzizzi platform allows the seller to receive and withdraw payments made for their goods via digital wallet instantly. The digital wallet acts similarly to a bank account, allowing the business to keep their money until they need it. Mzizzi also enables order fulfilment for the SMEs by making the delivery of goods they sell worldwide.

Through the provision of eCommerce tools, Africans SMEs can realize benefits including extending the market reach and increased sales. Further Mzizzi eCommerce tools can facilitate efforts to enhance operations that lead to substantial cost savings,  as well as increased competitiveness, efficiency through the redesign of traditional business methods, and increased customer loyalty.

Mzizzi POS system can help SMEs better understand what sells best and then refine offerings accordingly. The Mzizzi point-of-sale system does more than just handling payments and recording sales. It’ll help improve: inventory management by telling you what’s selling and what’s not, show profitability by showing which product lines make you money, improve marketing by highlighting customer buying habits and improve efficiency through the redesign of traditional business methods.

The target group of Mzizzi is African small and medium business owners (SMEs), these comprise of businesses that employ from 1 person to 100. From our experience over 60% of the 2,800 businesses on Mzizzi also happen to be women-owned. In Africa there are over 44M formal MSMEs, these form the bulk of our target audience.

Through regular interactions with the business owners and training sessions, we are able to understand their needs and adapt to them accordingly. By addressing two of IFC's two building blocks of supporting SMEs, namely; access to market and capacity building, we are well placed to solve their problems.

Through the solutions offered by Mzizzi, SMEs can benefit in the following ways:

• Grow sales and revenues - through the improved access to market from selling online to an ever growing market
• Lower operational costs - this is achieved by the fact that Mzizzi is a shared platform and hence the costs of having a similar setup for an individual business are shared amongst many
• Better understanding of their operations - the data collected from the platform can help the businesses understand better how the business is operating

• By reducing the opportunities for interaction between business owners and customers, Mzizzi helps the business owners to manage the health risks of the pandemic;
• lowered operational costs can be achieved as the businesses no longer need to have a physical premise for customers to access their goods;
• Mzizzi improves gender parity since most women have to work from home and take care of their families and have to juggle with operating a business from home;
• by providing an access to market, Mzizzi helps businesses maintain their financial health, as they continue doing business despite the lockdowns

Mzizzi is unique due to its business to business to consumer (B2B2C) approach that isn't just transactional but also operational. Mzizzi also incorporates both an offline and online experience for small businesses, leveraging the power of technology to make these businesses not only competitive but also better planned and structured.

Through the multiple touchpoints, Mzizzi gets generates valuable data that can be used to improve the model of doing business and increase the efficiency and future product offerings. The data analytics can be used to improve business traceability for third parties such as financial and business organizations or even commercialized for the SMEs consumption.

Some of our competition is Jumia, Flutterwave and other marketplaces and digital payment providers. The competition is primarily business to consumer (B2C) and transactionally focused.

Our omni-channel approach combined with payments and logistics gives us an edge from being able to not only improve an SMEs bottom line from a transactional point of view but also an operations perspective.

We are building and testing our applications using our own  Gitlab server setup to allow our team to collaborate and perform continuous integration and Continuous Delivery (CI/CD) on various applications we have been deploying.

We also use the same environment to manage the training curriculum for new developers joining our team.

Our technology stack consists of data analytics tools which monitor eCommerce sales, product distribution and delivery.  We are using AWS, Docker and Google cloud resources to support the running and operation of our systems.

Most of the above technology is invisible to our users and has been adopted to ensure that we provide a stable and world-class experience for businesses. All our tools are web and mobile use friendly.

Below is a sample list of merchants that use our solution:

Nia Sanitary Pads -

• Improved delivery times and introduction of previously limited distribution channels from localized city distribution to nationalwide distribution

Keyara Organics -

• Achieved Revenue growth of over 300% within 18 months from January 2019

Tricia naturals -

• Faster delivery times from 2 day delivery in the city to less than 3 hour delivery times and 2 day delivery countrywide to 24 hour delivery countrywide

natures touch -

• Improved delivery and distribution. Also improved revenue and product volume by over 150% in one year
  

Dial A Kuku -

• Achieved customer growth of over 50% in just 12 months

By moving and adopting an omnichannel approach to their businesses with Mzizzi, MSMEs can begin reaping the benefits that both local (country level) and cross-border e-commerce can open up. These businesses are now able to reach regions (even in their own countries; your customer is the one able to reach your physical shop) that may traditionally have found it difficult to reach both in regional and international markets.

The tools that enable the SMEs to keep track and know who their customers are also helping them to upsell these existing customers and grow customer loyalty, thereby increasing sales.

Keeping track of their inventory means that they never run out of critical items that they sell; they can also find out which of their products perform best. With this data, the businesses can improve their decision-making process when it comes to the growth of their business.

Keeping track of financial records will further help them improve their financial literacy. The financial records are also key to when they need to secure financing for their business; these are records that traditionally are absent for SMEs.
Overall, in the long run; the tools that Mzizzi provides will enable these businesses to thrive and have a better understanding of business success, creating further profitability and opportunities for employment.

Currently: 2,800 Businesses

In the next 1 year: 5,000

In 5 years: 100,000+ Businesses

We are looking to impact about 5,000 businesses in the next one year. Most of these businesses can grow their capacity to each create employment for at least 3 people creating a ripple effect across the economies and families.

Over the course of the next 5 years we have an aim to grow our numbers to over 100,000 businesses. As we do this we will introduce more tools that support and augment the growth and development of these businesses, including but not limited to a product for SME financing, and data analytics. Using the data gathered from the transactions they make, we will have the information to accurately provide them with the required financing at every stage of their growth.

In five years, Paytree (Mzizzi) expects to be active in active in several African markets, including Kenya, Rwanda, Zambia and Uganda. It will directly target its services to the large numbers of Micro, small and medium sized businesses.

We intend to grow our internal skillset and human capacity to keep up with the growth in the number of businesses that we support. In addition to this we shall keep adopting technology tools like AI and machine learning to enable us to remain competitive and provide better tools.

The factors limiting our success:

• Risk Cost overruns occur with development tasks that we have not undertaken before.
• Risk We fail to raise the necessary financing required to scale our solution at the pace needed to create meaningful impact.
• Risk We fail to build necessary numbers for effective revenue generation into our model to accommodate growing costs
•  Risk We lack organizational bandwidth to maintain growth and innovation curve.

The factors limiting our success:

• Mitigation A cost buffer of 20% has been included in all development budget items.
• Mitigation We are actively preparing for our seed round financing.
• Mitigation Now that we have demonstrated a product-market fit, invest in more business development of revenue opportunities.
• Mitigation Continue to invest in building a stronger team, with strong succession planning.

N/A

15 Full time staff

5 contractors

The company, Paytree, was founded by Dayvee Ngugi and James Munyeria. Both founders are still full committed to the company's growth in their respective roles. Both founders have previous entrepreneurial experience from a previous venture as well as experience in providing digital services to both corporate and small businesses. Both founders know the limitations of existing technology tools for retail, From their previous experience in managing different startups, where they saw first hand the market limitations, and designed their own solution to bridge the gap between small businesses and markets with a solution tailored to SME retail growth.

Our team is made of a mix of skills that address different needs:

• 2 Highly experienced developers (10+ years)
• Transport & Logistics expert
• Team lead with startup experience and successful exit
• 3 Finance experts with 10+ years of experience
• Team lead with 10+ experience in web/ecommerce
• Communications expert (10+ years)

We currently have one major partner bank that supports our expansion across the region from a financial technology standpoint:

• Equity Bank (Pan African Bank) - Technology and financial partner

In terms of paid users and other revenue generation, we will drive growth through three revenue streams: commissions charged through sales for all merchants on our platform, subscription plans for different value addition and offering premium services. The entry level for the Mzizzi ecommerce platform is free to signup and get your shop setup, however revenue is earned across all sales made through the online shops. The Mzizzi POS is a subscription service with a very low commission on sales. Premium services are for corporates and more advanced users of our services.

Initially to support our growth as we build our business numbers, we will seek for donations and grants to augment our financial needs. Bringing in an investor(s) for an equity stake is also part of our plans. In the next 3-5 years, we project that revenue from our customers will have grown to a point of sustainability and enable fully autonomous growth.

We are applying to Solve as our technology is now ready for a massive

adoption, and we need help getting to reach more people. Solve will help
us getting more visible, and possibly be an avenue to meet our financial needs, but also will provide a validation from a renown institution, which is now needed.

Solve can also help Paytree's efforts to provide SMEs with better tools by connecting us to relevant stakeholders (funding partners,
technology development partners, social proof advocates, industry
authorities, policymakers, and more).

Paytree seeks partners for

    Early-stage investment
    Advanced technology expertise
    Systems integration capabilities
    Business process and change management consulting
    Project management expertise
    Business growth strategy

• UN Women - We'd like to work together to provide market access tools to SMEs run by women in Africa and business training
• Leap Ventures - We'd like to learn from them what it takes to grow a successful startup

Most refugees require a way to start lives afresh in the countries in which they seek refuge. Mzizzi provides an easy and simple way for refugees to take advantage of their skills to start and grow businesses without much capital input.

The target population for Mzizzi are the small and medium business owners (SMEs), these comprise of businesses that employ from 1 person to 100. From our experience over 60% of the 2,800 businesses on Mzizzi also happen to be women owned.

Mzizzi enables women to conduct business in a fair and enabling environment that gives them the tools to thrive and reach markets. Mzizzi can become a driver of inclusive growth and sustainable development by empowering women as entrepreneurs and traders.

Paytree supports productive activities, create decent jobs, entrepreneurship, creativity and innovation, and encourage the formalization and growth of micro-, small- and medium-sized enterprises (MSMEs), including through access to retail tools for both offline and ecommerce. The tools provided by Mzizzi can be used by all genders including persons with disabilities, thereby creating full and positive inclusion.

Paytree helps MSMEs gain access to financial services (including online and mobile payments) and their integration into value chains and markets (including virtual marketplaces)