Vollar

According to World Bank, 734 million people live on less than $2 a day. In South Africa, this level of poverty accounts for 55% of the population. Despite billions of dollars invested annually towards social development in South Africa, poverty is on the rise (StatsSA). Finding ways to increase the effectiveness of this funding is paramount to combatting poverty.

Vollar exists to give disadvantaged people access to basic income. We do this through our online platform that allows organisations to use money to reward participation in social development programs. These rewards provide an incentive for participants to achieve better results and offer a source of supplemental income for the recipient.

Using Vollar to reward participation can help organisations drastically increase their impact for little to no additional cost. For example, a Vollar customer converted their education programs' catering budget into rewards,  resulting in their program graduation rate doubling.

South Africa has one of the highest unemployment rates globally (28.5%) and the highest youth unemployment rate globally (56%, World Bank). As a result, 31.7M people live in poverty.

Both the public and private sector in South Africa is focused on job creation through business development and education, as the primary interventions to address poverty. Funding from the private sector has doubled in the last decade to over $600M annually (Trialogue). Nevertheless, poverty and unemployment have continued to increase.

Our research indicates that because people are forced to live "hand to mouth", focused only on surviving the day, it creates a survivalist mindset. This significantly hinders the success of development programs as it's common for people to attend programs just for the catered food, a stipend, a possible job, or merely a free ride into town.

Through pilots, we've shown that implementing supportive systems, like Vollar, are highly effective in improving social development outcomes because they motivate people to strive for better results and create a way for the participant to earn money to meet their essential needs. 

Vollar is an online platform that enables organisations to create monetary rewards in their social development programs. 

Each reward is funded by the organisation, with the purpose of incentivising people to achieve a goal to earn it. For example, an organisation might offer a R100 (~$6) reward for every participant that passes an assessment in an educational program. The organisation indicates on the Vollar platform when someone has earned a reward, and the earner immediately receives the monetary value assigned to the reward. However, they receive this monetary value as our virtual currency which can only be spent it at pre-vetted small businesses, who can cash out the virtual currency back to local currency.

Through this process; development programs achieve better outcomes, participants have a way to support their physical needs, and small businesses have an additional source of income.

Vollar serves organisations engaged in social development and their beneficiaries. Our executive team has almost a decade of experience working in the non-profit sector, leading organisations ourselves and working on the ground to alleviate poverty. 

We work closely with our customers, seeing ourselves as partners for impact rather than service providers. Taking this approach allows us to coach our customers on the best practices for using incentivisation in their programs and enables us to understand where our technology can be improved. 

We firmly believe in using research to inform our decision making, and as such we have a dedicated social researcher on our executive team. He is responsible for writing academic work on behalf of Vollar and keep up to date with other relevant academic work that helps inform our decision making. 

We regularly engage with people who are earning Vollar, to understand the impact it's having in their life. One such person is Banathi (30), who completed an entrepreneurial program with a Vollar customer. Banathi saved up his Vollar to buy bulk food for his uncle who couldn't leave home in the slums due to illness.

Vollar is a tool that can improve the outcomes of entrepreneurial development programs, as well as provide supplementary revenue to small businesses. 

One of our customers, Balwin Properties, regularly uses Vollar to reward participation in their skills development and entrepreneurial development programs. They now achieve a regular 100% graduation, whereas previously they had a 50% drop off rate.

In Vollar's pilot in 2019, we invested $1000 a month to reward participation in community volunteering projects. This resulted in up to 50 people a week accessing basic income through volunteering and local small businesses doubling their income.

There are a few organisations using rewards in social development in a similar way to Vollar. The biggest competitor to Vollar in South Africa is Zlto.

Zlto allows its users to earn points with no monetary value. These points can be used on their website to purchase discount vouchers that have been sponsored by corporates. These vouchers can be redeemed in the sponsoring corporates' stores. Other similar initiatives use this same approach.

Vollar is different in that we allow our users to earn a virtual currency that is funded by a customer, and can only be used for payments at small businesses. We are currently the only platform we know of that uses this method.

We believe Vollar is more innovative because we've found a way to link a customer problem to a social need, and in the process support small businesses. Competitors are focused on creating market access for corporates to enable their platform to run.

Vollar is vastly more scalable as we scale naturally with every new customer. Scaling Zlto requires both partnering with community organisations and forging long term partnerships with corporates to continually acquiring coupons for users to purchase.

The Vollar platform consists of 2 distinct platforms.

Vollar is a web application for organisations to create and fund rewards for their social development programs.

Payper is a digital wallet where users earn and spend their Vollars. Payper is a separate platform that was developed by the Vollar team.

Both Payper and Vollar are build on React, a modern web framework. Payper is built to support low-end smart phones. The backend of Payper and Vollar include blockchain technology to securely store and trade balances with a trusted audit record.

We recognise that the majority of people receiving Vollar are low-income individuals. As such we have given special attention to making Payper accessible. We have done this in the following ways:

1. We partnered with Bi.Nu to allow user to access Payper completely data free on all major South African telecommunication providers. Payper can be accessed data free at https://payper.datafree.co

2. Payper is designed to support money requests. As long as a user knows their account number and pin code, they can ask a merchant to request money from them if they don't have a phone.

3. Payper is localised into four South African languages, ensuring our users understand how to use the platform. We plan to add more languages as we scale.

4. We plan to release a Payper chatbot later this year that will allow users to pay directly from their preferred messaging platform. This will be extended to also support USSD.

To see the Vollar and Payper ecosystem in action watch the following video: 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DAJJs42oRuw

To see a recap of Vollar's 2019 pilot: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AQ1T4U9GMFk

Vollar provides an easy to use online platform where organisations can fund monetary rewards for their social development programs. These rewards serve the purpose of motivating beneficiaries to strive for better results, and in achieving them earn supplementary income. Organisations use Vollar's online platform to create and distribute rewards based on outcomes they want to drive through their programs.

Our short term goals are to increase the effectiveness of social development programs and to give disadvantaged people access to supplementary income.

These goals link to our long term outcomes which include: 

• Increasing household income to ensure families have access to essential products and services. 
• Increasing revenue for small businesses to allow local economies to flourish.
• Restoring dignity to disadvantaged people by giving them a sense of accomplishment from achieving a goal and earning a reward. 
• Improving the rate at which poverty is reduced by increasing the effectiveness of social development programs.

To test that Vollar can achieve these goals, we have conducted small scale pilots and academic research in different contexts within South Africa. The results showed that Vollar was able to drive change more effectively than anticipated. In a six month followup after our first pilot in 2019, locals felt Vollar created an opportunity for people to take care of themselves and solve their own problems in a dignified way. It allowed people to escape the trap of poverty while being proud of their achievements (Followup Article).

In 2019 Vollar served approximately 150 people.

By the end of 2020 we aim to serve 1000 people monthly.

In 5 years we aim to serve 100 000 people monthly.

Vollar has an ambitious impact goal of providing 10 million people with access to supplementary income within the next 10 years. 

We aim to increase the income of people earning Vollar by $30 a month. While this may not seem like much, it is a 50% increase in the monthly income of our target market, and allows us to implement Vollar in a wide variety of development programs while still complying with labor laws. We've already seen in our own pilot the profound effects an additional $30 month, has on these families and the small businesses in their communities.

To achieve these goals, we will partner directly with funders and impact investors to introduce Vollar into the organisations they are funding. This top down strategy will give Vollar immediate access to organisations that can implement the platform in their programs and communities.

Linked to this, we aim to scale Vollar to other countries, Uganda and India are currently at the top of our list based on the the amount of development aid these countries receive.

1. Covid-19 created an immediate barrier for Vollar as organisation are facing uncertainty regarding budgets. We recognise that this is only temporary and while the nature of how organisations work will change, we believe that within the next year, the need for solutions like Vollar will increase.

2. Raising investment for Vollar within South Africa has been unsuccessful.  We believe this is due to investors having a low appetite for risk and the lack of a local mature impact investment ecosystem. We have however received local grant funding and international investment which has been incredibly helpful in getting Vollar to where it is.

1. We will approach funders of organisations directly to get buy-in to our vision and approval to fund Vollar rewards within their ecosystem. We also plan to introduce Vollar into Covid-19 specific relief efforts, such a food security projects.

2. We will be registering Vollar in Europe to give us wider scope for investment and better access to funders and impact investors.

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Our team consists of 7 people:

Kyle - CEO - Full Time
Moshibudi - COO - Full Time
Liam - CRO (Research) - Full Time
Tiialotta - Project Manager - Part Time
Andrew - Software Developer - Full Time
Emmanuel - Senior Software Developer - Part Time
Margo - Communications - Full Time

Kyle - Founder and CEO 
Kyle is a social and technology entrepreneur that has spent the past eight years developing technology aimed at improving communities.

Before founding Vollar and Payper, Kyle spent six years living in Europe where he co-founded VOMO, an app and online platform connecting volunteers with the needs of their community. VOMO is now registered and running in the USA.

Moshibudi - COO 
Moshibudi has corporate experience in communications, marketing and client relations. Before joining the Vollar in 2020, she spent six years doing mission work in Tanzania, where she started the Tanzanian operations for an international NGO.

Starting in a derelict school building, she and her husband built the organisation into a self-sustaining operation with over 32 local full-time volunteers. 

Bachelor of Technology - Multimedia Design (2010)
Masters of Arts in Communication Science (2021)  

Liam - CRO (Research)
Liam is a scientist and social activist. While completing his studies at Stellenbosch University, he passionately participated in campaigns for social justice and institutional reform. This led him to dedicate his career to addressing the consequences of historical global injustices. 

Liam has written numerous research articles for Vollar, some of which have been accepted for presentation and publication both locally and internationally.

Bachelor of Science in Molecular Biology and Biotechnology (2017)
Bachelor of Science Honours in Wine Biotechnology (2019)  

Balwin Foundation- Balwin Foundation became Vollar's first customer in late 2019, implementing rewards in their skills development and entrepreneurial development programs.

Bulungula Incubator (E2 Partnership) - Vollar started working with Bulungula Incubator in early 2020 as part of a test with E2, to see if Vollar could be included in the support they provide to other projects. Bulungula is implementing Vollar to incentivise a high school math program in the rural Eastern Cape of South Africa. The goal of the pilot is to see if rewards can be used to drive students to complete the course and achieve better grades.

SAB Foundation - Vollar was one of the SAB Foundation 2019 Social Innovation Award Winners, this has given us grant funding and support from the SAB Foundation.

Bi.Nu - BiNu is providing Payper users with data free access to Payper on all major South African telecommunication networks.

Vollar provides it's online platform to organisations engaged in social development. These could be non-profit organisations, foundations, or corporate CSI departments.

Vollar uses a tiered software as a service business model.

Tiers:
1. Free - Maximum 25 beneficiaries. 12% fee on wallet top-up. Online Resources.
2. R3 390 (~$200) per month - Maximum 250 beneficiaries. 9% fee on wallet top-up. Email support. Free 1 Month Trial.
3. R9 900 (~$550) per month - Maximum 2500 beneficiaries. 5% fee on wallet top-up. Priority support.

When an organisation wants to use the Vollar platform, the contact us and we help them setup and account. We usually do a strategy call to help them understand the best way to implement Vollar and train them on using the platform (this is moving to video tutorials). Some customers prefer to bring us out to their site to help them with setup in the community, this is billed separately.

There are also times that customers want or need more bespoke setups or integrations, in this case, the project is budgeted separately based on the customers' needs.

Vollar began in 2018 as a non-profit organisation but encountered many obstacles to raising funding. We were encouraged by an investment firm to find a model to make Vollar commercial, based on some of their past experiences with social enterprises. We took this advice.

We reregistered Vollar as a commercial company at the beginning of 2019, after raising investment from a European investor and launched our first pilot. It took a few attempts to settle on a pricing model that we felt worked for Vollar, but we landed our first commercial customer in the 3rd quarter of 2019.

Until now, Vollar has relied primarily on investment and grant funding to grow. 

We started selling at the start of 2020 to generate recurring revenue, but Covid-19 put us in a challenging position. Many deals fell through as a result of lockdowns. However, we've made it through, and are seeing renewed interest in Vollar as organisations are commencing social development programs.

Working with Solve will give us exposure and trust from international funders that are conducting work in Africa. Having these funders on our side, will provide us with the necessary network of organisations and donors to scale Vollar throughout Africa.

The expertise within the Solve community will give us access to individuals with the knowledge and experience to help us scale Vollar.

We recognise that for Vollar to scale it requires funders buy-in to the vision and trust the process. We believe that in order to build that trust, we need to document more success stories, gain recognition from influential organisations such as Solve, and acquire trusted board members with networks and influence.

Skoll Foundation - To gain partners for scaling.

USAID - To have Vollar introduced as a tool that can be included into the work they are doing.

Vollar is directly tied to economic and social inclusion, and is a flexible platform that can be used within numerous development initiatives.

Winning the Andan Prize would give our team the networks and funding to introduce Vollar to refugee communities.

In our pilot in 2019, Vollar was used to reward community volunteering. We were excited to find that over 60% of the people that joined these volunteering programs and earned the rewards were local women.

We discovered that many were single moms with little to no income in the home. Vollar gave them a solution to do impactful work locally, without needing to travel, and provided them with income that they could feed their family. 

If Vollar won the Innovation for Women Prize, we would use this money to scale out community volunteering initiatives so Vollar can be accessed by more women who are unable to leave their communities.

Vollar helps disadvantaged people have supplementary income, which lowers the stress related to financial insecurity, allowing them to fully focus on educational programs.

If Vollar won the GM Prize on Good Jobs and Inclusive Entrepreneurship, we would use the funding and networks to scale Vollar to organisations providing 4IR training to disadvantaged individuals. 

Vollar can be easily scaled to any country. While the needs of individuals in Portugal are not the same as those in South Africa, Vollar is flexible enough to adapt to any cultural context, providing motivation, supplementary income, and supporting small businesses.

If Vollar won the Gulbenkian Award for Adult Literacy, we would use the funding and network to launch our solution in Portugal, integrate with local payment systems and translate the platform.

Vollar is a simple solution that can easily scale to impact millions of people. 

If Vollar won the Future Planet Capital Prize and was considered for investment, we would use the funding and networks to scale Vollar to other African countries and India.