DUNDIZA

COVID-19 has affected more than 450,000 jobs in the Tanzania tourism industry with more than 80% being youths and women, who have been suddenly attacked by fear of economic depression in individual and family context. Unfortunately, they didn't have any savings so their future is terribly unpredictable. They never had access to saving platforms due to unfavorable technologies offered by traditional banks. When empowered, youths and women reveal great contribution to any country's economy which is the principle under which Dundiza was founded to come up with a solution. This cloud-based platform utilizes AI to help youths and women in Tanzania have access to equal financial inclusion through their mobile phones. The product is meant to be applicable to all sectors across the world where youths and women can save a certain percent from their daily or monthly income to secure emergency funds for food securities and alternative investments.

Unbanked entrepreneurs are the ones who do not have savings or checking accounts with banks or credit unions. In normal cases, people who don’t have access to such services get passed by many financial inclusion opportunities such as food security, health insurance, credit scores, digital financial education and investment capital. If youth and women access savings, they could be able to stock some food and other important needs to last them during hard times and allocate another savings to alternative investments e.g. Horticulture. Global tourism sector has suffered great unemployment and bankruptcy which doesn't only affect people in the tourism but also closely integrated ones. According to UNWTO, COVID-19 has affected more than 7 million jobs in the tourism sector globally. Among them, 4.2 is covered by field tour guides and the rest by indoor staffs in tour operators, travel agencies and hotels. An absence of consistent revenues for this group directly affects other businesses which depends on their customers' spending decisions including purchase of food and other necessary needs. So the emerging series of effects associated with events that we don't often see coming could be minimized if people save money especially in developing countries.

Dundiza is an electronic mobile wallet which is automatically assisted by AI to help youths and women foster financial inclusion during and after unpredictable events similar to COVID-19. The first step is to open an account through USSD, Mobile App or Web browser. As they sign-up, they can fill their information using their full names, email or phone number, date of birth, national ID and residence. Users will thereafter receive email or SMS notification to verify and activate their accounts in order to start saving. After having a Dundiza account, users can make decisions on why they want to save by selecting their best choice among different options including future investment and business scaling, health insurance, school fees, pension funds and life emergencies with an option on how they want AI to save for them, whether daily, weekly or monthly. The system provides financial consultation which communicates with the user to advise them on how to manage their savings, what to do with the money or where to invest. It also does an intelligent research across user accounts to determine where they mostly get charged (electricity, water or internet) and notify them to control and reduce consumption of such services.

Our product targets low income employees and unbanked entrepreneurs specifically youths and women working inside and outside the tourism industry. From my 5 years of experience working as a tour guide, the target market (including myself), is made by people who earn as little as 5-15$ per day and yet, will have to support their families by providing food and good shelter. But if we could have access to a digital saving platform, we would have saved little by little over a period of time for emergencies like COVID-19 so that we use our savings to start new business for alternative income in order to survive while spending that income across small businesses around our communities to buy food and necessary needs before the lockdown. As for the case in Tanzania, this would mean 350,000 guides and porters providing income for more than 500,000 small and new businesses which also circulate their money in savings for their families, buy goods and services across thousands of other businesses to end up maintaining government taxes. So the solution is set to target a small group of tourism stakeholders but to also create an impact to millions of communities across the country.

Dundiza is designed to reach any person, beginning with tour guides across Tanzania and the rest of the world who are willing to save any amount they prefer regardless of their amount of salaries and social status in order for them to survive economic depression during unpredictable times by securing food stocks, creating alternative businesses and scale existing ones. When the first target of 350,000 is reached, Tanzania and the rest of the world will have a rapid increase in self employment due to increased access to technology and investment capital which helps create hundreds of jobs across their communities.

The application of AI/Machine Learning, API and QR-code to transfer, control and manage financial data give us a great competitive edge. When traditional banks fail to convince customers to leverage from digital platform, Dundiza takes the chances to bring these services to minimal wages and low income entrepreneurs across the world. Our system doesn’t only provide a better way to save for emergencies and future investments but also the safest platform for financial consultations, payment of services and money transfer to family and friends. Consultation is automatically provided via SMS and Mobile App after learning about customer saving behaviors to advise them on how to invest with their savings. With the use of QR-code-based mobile wallets, Dundiza users can opt-out from making cash payments and go cashless to avoid potential hygiene issues around handling banknotes. However, the saving system can also interact with the payment system in a unique form. When a customer save money in their bank accounts through Dundiza, they can also set their savings to be accessed for credit and debit payments. If the payment is credit, it means the supplier can automatically get paid by our system in the future. But if the payment is debit, the supplier can instantly receive their payments when the user scans the QR-code. 

Artificial Intelligence (AI) covers 75% of the entire operation enabling the overall block-chain system to receive automated commands and instantly respond with respect to expected actions. The modern technology has given us the opportunity to serve marginalized communities with a sophisticated and user-friendly platform designed to learn customer behaviors and help them allocate their funds where necessary. To aggressively shift people’s paradigms, we created a purpose for them to be in need of savings, so AI helps them accomplish that with a command system which moves the money available in their mobile or bank accounts to Dundiza for fixed savings. Users can see all transfers and access their information but AI restricts them from withdrawing the money until it matures to reach the agreed period of time. When it matures, AI transfers it back to their mobile or bank accounts with an instant feedback on their investment strategies. AI sends these investment strategies to help the customer figure how to control the money so that they don’t spend it unnecessarily and fail to attain their investment goals. On top of that, AI can also detect overcharges on service bills on employee payroll caused by individual overconsumption of let’s say water or electricity, and notify the user to reduce consumption of such services.

Until now, traditional banks have managed to provide digital mechanisms on deposit and withdraw services. Their customers can put cash on mobile phones to transfer it to the bank for normal savings whereby they can easily withdraw it from the bank by using the same mobile platform, all being done using the API command system. In Tanzania, few banks work in collaboration with new and pre-existing Fintech companies like M-Power and Speen which provide digital savings and loans. Their systems don’t utilize AI despite that it could be a great resource to get to know their customer spending decisions before they sharpen their strategies. With full utilization of the current technological resources, it is possible to link all user accounts and access their transactions, observe their spending power and save a certain amount depending on system observation while ensuring transparency. 

We have successfully interviewed more than 100 women in Arusha local markets and 150 students from Institute of Accountancy Arusha (IAA) who are willing to open their savings accounts with Dundiza. Through this group, many other MSMEs will be impressed by the benefits and join the digital revolution. When more lives are impacted, Tanzania will experience a rapid change on saving and investment cultures across thousands of its communities as well as economic growth which will increase job opportunities and boost the country’s GDP. To prove the feasibility of our solution, you can take a look at www.withplum.com which controls almost 80% of its functionality by using Artificial Intelligence. 

With regard to the current economic situations which is caused by several COVID-19 effects, millions of people have suffered the pain of economic depression, food insecurity and family pressure. People have also suffered health insecurity which is caused by hygiene issues on the use of banknotes, making them think of opting to cashless modes of payment. But one strong reason for each one of them to feel the pain is lack of savings. They are supposed to be transformed from spending their income unnecessarily to saving and investing. We aim to help micro and small businesses run by young people and women to recover from the profit losses as well as business shut down endured through COVID-19 and have access to working capital and marketing channels to bring people back to work after the downsizing they had to undertake due to COVID-19. In the long-term, we aim to provide people with easiest, fastest and cheapest way to save your money while generating competitive interest rate and credit scores from their financial payment and savings history to be eligible for small loans for their businesses in low-income and marginalized communities as a key boost to global economic growth and prosperity, making the workplace more diverse and resilient for the future digital world. Dundiza is inspiring and empowering young people and women running MSMEs in marginalized communities of Tanzania with improved economic mobility of the most vulnerable in the workforce by leveraging cashless and countless financial transactions to provide a safer, faster and equal access to quality digital financial services opportunities. Dundiza will improve and foster high rates of employment and alleviate poverty in regions with weak government and economic support, by giving people with the opportunity to grasp financial freedom sustainably and transparently. Our solution will reduce this social and economic challenge of accessing working capital, marketing channels, unemployment, poverty, gender inequalities, and ultimately reduce these populations’ vulnerability. All in all, we work to democratize for the digital financial savings, microcredit scores and investment opportunities for people during and post COVID-19 world to get one step closer to an equitable world.

Dundiza currently serve 120 people in Arusha and Kilimanjaro Tanzania through an offline system called Dundiza Vikoba whereby people choose to contribute their savings as a group on a weekly basis in order to be covered and secured during uncertain periods. In our Vikoba, 93 of members are MSMEs running food supply businesses for Mountain Trekking and Wildlife Safaris and 27 tour guides who had put their savings on their bank account and decided to shift to our collective Vikoba services. However, we are guaranteed to gain more customers and more traffic on savings, and certainly, less cost and higher profits when we go digital. For instance, COVID-19 has affected tourism but food suppliers still provide their services to local residents in Arusha and Kilimanjaro regions due to high priority to buy more food and stay at home. In a period of one year, Dundiza will expand its services beginning with Arusha Region whereby we target to serve 1,750 people out of 447,000 total population. Among the 1,750 people that we will reach, 79% will use Dundiza App on their Smartphones and the rest will use small mobile phones with the application of USSD for easy access around remote areas. In a period of five years our markets will highly be extended to big cities including Dar es Salaam which has approximately 8 million people with more than 65% MSMEs run by youths and women.

The saving culture seems to expand rapidly due to increased awareness on financial management across marginalized communities. Dundiza keeps focusing on democratizing the money circulation system and behavioral change by encouraging remote and cashless financial services for people to avoid visiting banks and use banknotes in order to prevent infections due to crowds, queues and cash-handling. Our system will also include payment and money transfer options to enable customers to open payment and transfer accounts and set aside a certain amount of money on those accounts for cashless transactions. By using such services, users can use their mobile phones not only for savings but also for money transfer and cashless payments.

Dundiza Team has foreseen that Tanzania is going to be the first market place for saving, investment, payment and money transfer market place in a period of five years. However, many startups including Dundiza will need stronger and tougher damage paddles to tackle existing barriers, many them of them being set by government policies and bureaucracy across private financial institutions with which we intent to partner. The system is complete on our side but our partners give us a hard time trying to make the it well functional and sustainable;

1. Technical expertise in creating an Android and IOS mobile App which should be designed for users to save money, calculate their interests, receive financial and investment consultation as well as transfer money and make payments.
2. License from Tanzania Communication Regulatory Authority (TCRA) for providing financial services through telecoms.
3. Bureaucracy by banks and telecoms to appreciate our product and support us through system integration. However, we still need help in convincing our partners for the system to be integrated by August this year since we have been in touch with them but they haven’t seem to show a positive response. 

Getting involved on platforms like the LHoFT and SOLVE is our primary approach in trying to overcome the barriers. These platforms help us build our capacity and network with many people from different places with different skills and knowledge about financial technology so they would play a big part in helping us break down most of technical barriers. On other hand, we also overcome the barrier of legal and compliance by looking out for people who are willing to support us financially in order to pay for our business license from TCRA. On the side of bureaucracy, EcoBank through their f6s entrepreneurship challenge has been helping us to connect with reliable people to expand our network and receive more support. As a team, we strive to strengthen our relationship with the current network and build new networks with Fintech stakeholders. In this way, it will be easy to get help from someone we know at a certain point during our progress. Last but not least, we have faced barriers today and believe there are more barriers to come at some point in the future, so we think in long-term. This method helps us predict on barriers we might likely to encounter during the process so that we find ways to address them before they occur. 

N/A

2 full-time staffs, 3 part-time staff and 1 contractor. 

The whole team including myself has acquired a perfect position in solving social and economic issues for youths and women around Tanzania communities given the following criteria;

• The team members have 6 years of experience in the Tourism industry working as local tour guides and have been financially excluded from digital financial savings and money management platforms all these years which brought a strong reason to address the issue.
• We have been saving our money in traditional banks for more than 3 years and have seen a great impact from our savings except that we realize these services do not reach more than 75% of the working population due to inconvenient, time consuming and unreliable methods for customers to reach these services.
• It’s a team with 3 alumni from Young Africa Leadership Initiative at the Regional Leadership Center in Nairobi, Kenya who pursued community development training under Civic Leadership Track which aims to empower transformations.
• The 2 founders have been working for over 2 years doing researches on weaknesses and under-performance of financial institutions in Tanzania and have spent more of our time brainstorming and applying design thinking principles to create a solution to existing financial management challenges facing youths and women in Tanzania. The founders have participated in the CATAPULT: Inclusion Africa 2020 program at the Luxembourg House of Financial Technology (LHOFT) which built a great capacity and added tremendous knowledge and necessary skills to sustain the business.

Dundiza is partnering with the Luxembourg House of Financial Technology (The LHoFT) from Luxembourg who provides leadership and entrepreneurship training while linking the team with outstanding mentors and business analysts who assist in executing the business. In collaboration with the Luxembourg Chamber of Commerce (LCC) and Government of the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg, the LHoFT helps us create value for our product and provides connections and engagements with global financial institutions, IT industry, investors, research and academia as well as regulatory and public authorities. We have partnered with EcoBank Tanzania to help us with the technology resources such as Application Programming Interface (API’s) and Masterpass QR to assist us with easy and transparent access to money transfers from either mobile money account or bank account into our saving account. In addition, EcoBank is assisting us to pivot for micro-credit opportunities through savings history generated from the standard credit scores algorithms of EcoBank in order to provide access to small loans to our customers. Furthermore, we are partnering with two Mobile Network Operators including Airtel and Tigo Tanzania whereby both Telecoms will provide us with the landing gear for our customers to transfer money from their mobile money towards Dundiza for their savings and investment plans. We anticipate to establish our relationship through system integration whereby three different units i.e. Mobile money accounts, Dundiza platform and Bank accounts will be connected together to form an efficient and effective digital financial system which is 100% upstanding for MSMEs to utilize. 

Dundiza interfaces directly with young people of ages from 19 to 38 years old and women with ages from 22 to 55 years old who run micro and small businesses working inside and outside the tourism industry and would need to save and manage their money instantly, while generating financial credit scores that will enable the users to secure small loans from our primary partners for their businesses by using a web based application. Dundiza uses a Business-to-Business (B2B) and Business-to-Customers (B2C) model whereby the users/customers will be charged 2.9% transaction commission fees and the second way to generate revenue is charging 6% of any premature withdrawal; which means that if the user plans to withdraw the savings before the maturity date - we allow them to withdraw the money but Dundiza will charge 6% of the withdrawn money in order to promote discipline in financial inclusion. Our biggest competitors are Jumo and Spenn who provide electronic financial services and products. Unlike them, Dundiza offers offline financial education to young people and women by conducting webinars and seminars with our beta-users. In addition, Dundiza provides the users with an automated financial creditworthiness that is calculated from user transaction frequency data (UTFD) to generate alternative financial credit scores. 

Dundiza will bring in money through outsourcing, donations and grants. Through outsourcing, the co-founders have a great knowledge and experience in providing tourist services to domestic and international travelers and would use our salaries and tips on Dundiza activities. We also founded a youth-led tour company with which we will be able to double our income in tourism, and thereafter, ensure financial sustainability for our Fintech startup. On the other hand, we will also organize online and offline crowd-funding campaigns in order to receive donations and grants from family, friends and anybody who is willing to support our initiative.

Apart from believing in Boston as the center of innovation and dreaming of being part of the MIT Community to address world challenges, we believe that Solve is among the best tech-based marketplace for social impact innovation in the United States. Dundiza team has been facing challenges trying to drive lasting transformational impacts across Tanzania communities and we believe that Solve can assist in addressing these challenges as follows;

• Connect us with technical experts available in the Solve community to help us in creating an Android and IOS mobile App which should be designed for users to save money, calculate their interests, receive financial education as well as transfer money and make payments, same as how the USSD performs.
• We also apply to Solve in order to leverage great opportunities of grants and donations from potential donors, investors and crowd-funding initiatives. If we get an opportunity to receive funds, it will be possible to acquire our licence form Tanzania Communication Regulatory Authority (TCRA), purchase USSD codes and if necessary, pay IT and programmers to create an Android or IOS App for smart phone users. 
• Since February 2019 when Dundiza was established, we have been facing challenges while reaching out to people asking for them to understand our platform and recommend it to potential stakeholders. Through recommendations from Solve and reputable representatives at MIT, it may take less than a month for potential local partners to understand our efforts and provide us with system support for sustainable integration. 

Our partnership goals are divided into short and long term. For the short term, Dundiza seeks primary partnership with local organizations including banks and telecoms. We have made several attempts with EcoBank to have our systems integrated to allow money transfer, savings and payment activities through mobile application. We also have seek partnership with Airtel and Tigo as telecom companies where users can utilize to send money from their mobile phones to their bank accounts through Dundiza. 

Our long term partnership goals are defined with regard to the availability of resources we must need to utilize for the platform to reach its scaling stage. We have contacted the Institute for Data, Systems and Society - IDSS at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology through their Industry Page in order to engage with their community of leading MIT Faculty and Students that hold interdisciplinary expertise in Artificial Intelligence and human behavior.

Dundiza has requested to partner with the Industry Initiative at the Institution for Data, System and Society (IDSS) which operates under the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). The industry is comprised of the best among global communities of faculty and students who are experts in research, artificial intelligence, institutional and human behaviors, of which are the pillars for the reliability and sustainability of our product. If accepted, our partnership will be potential especially for the development of the e-wallet which will mostly depend on IDSS through the following aspects;

• Research; our platform depends on a lot of research in order to understand and determine how the system should work to allow automated money transfer, savings and payments. The research team could also help approve the feasibility of our platform and provide suggestions on what to do to make its applications easier and much better.
• Artificial Intelligence; most of our services depend on the utilization of artificial intelligence in communicating by exchanging account transactions information in order for the system to automatically make decisions for the user. 
• Human and institutional behavior; as we strive to conquer a reasonable market share in Tanzania and cooperate with various institutions in doing so, we need people who could help us learn more about customer expectations and institutional behaviors especially on matters concerning business partnership.

Dundiza aims to put much efforts on creating strategic partnership and be a member of international institutions like SOLVE, and find a chance to meet the potential administrator, Bruna Braga.

In Tanzania more than 12 million women running micro and small enterprises especially food, groceries and clothing businesses are misguided by the belief that in order for them to save and invest their business profit and income for a better future, they need to have a lot of money or earn a lot of money. This leaves more than 890,000 women-led micro and small businesses dying every year because those business lack access to financial services such as digital savings and investment, credit scores credibility and small loans. And most MSMEs run by women die because they lack working capital and marketing channels that will enable them to sell their products and services to the target customers.

In order to solve this social and economic challenge that affects most women in developing countries, we came up with a digital wallet money management platform that allows women running micro and small business in marginalized communities to improve their financial planning, automate their savings and get high investment opportunities. Dundiza will use the Innovation for Women Prize to unveil more opportunities for women to instantly and securely save and manage their business profits and income in a reliable, transparent and affordable manner. Through the Prize, we shall invest into systems that empower women running micro and small businesses to generate financial credit scores that can be used for financial credibility to financial institutions to give small loans to women entrepreneurs by building financial credit scores within a short period of time. 

Dundiza utilizes Artificial Intelligence in three different ways;

• Automated savings; a big number of low-income entrepreneurs and employees spend most of their income unnecessarily without setting aside some of it on savings. Our platform is designed to automatically crosscheck through customer behaviors and spending decisions by learning and calculating their daily, weekly and monthly frequency of depositing and withdrawing and transfer a variable percentage of money from their normal accounts to the registered savings account with regard to their withdraw and spending power. 
• Financial Education; our platform should also be designed to work differently from other financial institutions. Unlike traditional banks, we don't only help people save their money but also maintain frequent communication to educate them on how to make smart financial decisions by creating plans to invest their money and grow their businesses. For this case, the system should be able to learn the frequency of customer deposits, detect their accounts capacity and calculate their investment capital. The system will then send messages to customers on the type of business they can be able to start with the money they have on their savings so that when the savings mature, they already know and decided what to do with the money to prevent them form spend it all unnecessarily. 
• Credit scores; through the AI for humanity prize, we can be assisted with a unique system that can take a record of transactions and total amount of individual or group savings to mark a score which would be transparent to other financial institutions including loan providers. The presentation of their credit scores will build trust for financial institutions to provide loans to youths and women-led SMEs.

The AI for Humanity Prize would help Dundiza Team meet potential experts who can play a big part in advancing the way we aim to provide financial technology solutions in Tanzania through a digital wallet which also provide cashless payments and money transfer services.

Being among the leading platforms in addressing global challenges, Future Planet Capital through its Prize will certainly help Dundiza Team connect with a network of world's largest investors and business advisors. For the past two years, my team have been highly committed in bootstrapping the ideology and implementation of financial savings to marginalized communities in a fairly traditional way through Vikoba offline saving platform and we now aim to advance this solution by applying the modern digitized methods. With the help of Future Planet Capital Prize, Dundiza can successfully outreach millions of unbanked and underserved youths and women as well as the low-salary employees in Tanzania, to provide a reliable and sustainable financial education, saving platform and loan credits that would increase their access to financial inclusion and rapid economic growth.