Financial inclusion made easy in Africa

Africa's informal sector is mostly unstructured and value exchanges are done via cash, which limits their ability to access financial services such as credit and savings. 

Limestart financially includes small businesses to determine their healthiness and potential for scale. Our technology helps them digitize sales transactions, and accept digital payments from customers via the different available payment methods that exists today. Our algorithm uses their historical and real-time records to build up a digital profile for them so they can access financial services such as credit, savings, identity, business and healthcare insurance, social security and more, from our partners.

When scaled globally, Limestart will be used as a financial intelligent tool that bridges the gap between small businesses that are otherwise unbankable, to financial institutions and government, so they can tailor products and services for them based on how they function as a business and as individuals.

Small businesses put together, make up 90% of all businesses in every economy. This means that small businesses are the largest employers of labor in any economy. Yet, most of them stagnate and fail within 2 years of launch due to many reasons

• they lack proper business structure
• struggle to maintain decent bookkeeping habits
• run cash-mostly businesses, and as such, lose sales from non-cash customers 
• can't access necessary capital to help them grow to the next level. This makes them financially excluded.  

On the other hand, the financial institutions who are highly interested in this sector, find it difficult to provide smart credit to micro businesses because 

• its expensive for them to convert them as customers 
• they have no historical records to prove their bankability 
• they have bogus credit/loans qualifying processes 
• they suffer from operational bottlenecks 

In Nigeria, over 65% of its GDP is contributed by the informal sector which experiences a massive financial exclusion. The only way Nigeria and similar countries can experience true growth and digitization is when a greater number of its informal sector are digitally and financially included.

This exclusion fuels the decline in sustained businesses, new businesses, growth and expansion, and overall quality of life.

Limestart is the new standard for commerce in Africa and developing countries. 

Limestart helps small businesses to create and record permanent sales transactions, and enables them to accept digital payments using mobile card readers. 

We solution leverages on software, mobile technology, big data and analytics, software, and barcode, magnetic strip, RFID, NFC, and bluetooth technologies to create a holistic solution.

Our solution serves small businesses at the informal sector and at bottom of the pyramid in Africa.

Our flexible solution caters to 2 kinds of business owners;

• digitally inclined - those who own a smart phone 
• non-digitally inclined - those without a smart phone

Our digitally inclined customers interact with our solution by using our mobile application and card reader. From the mobile app, they can record real-time and historical sales, irrespective of the payment methods. They can  also customize their settings to make it work for their individual businesses and add more descriptions to each sales such as taxes, payment methods, customer information, view reports, and more. The card reader allows them accept in-person payments via credit/debit card and QR codes. 

The non digitally inclined customer only uses our card reader/mPOS devices as a means to accept digital payments. They can also record cash sales the same way on the device, however, this is for record-keeping purposes only. 

By use of Limestart, they will use our technology to financial services provided by our partners that are easy, flexible, affordable and tailored to their unique needs. Such services include identity, social security, personal and business loans, business and healthcare insurance.

Nigeria's population is an estimated 200 million people. The informal sector made up of micro, small and medium businesses, largely dominates the business economy.

Limestart's holistic solution will help drive millions of businesses not just in Nigeria, but around the world, to the digital economy. We will help them start, get funded, grow, hire more people thus multiple jobs creation, and be able to sustain themselves, their families, and their employees. 

The economic upside to this is that it leads to an overall improved quality of life, more social benefits for all, and GDP growth.

Limestart combines software, hardware, payments and analytics.

Limestart operates a platform business model; 

• we serve small businesses with digital bookkeeper that replaces their ledger books, helping them to record instant and daily transactions on sales, and accept digital payments. They also get insights on their business activities to see how much they made, how they made it, what product(s) are high performing, who their best customers are and more. This overtime, helps them to run data driven businesses as they'd know which products require increase in stocks and such
• financial institutions and other organizations (such as government) seeking intelligence on the business performance and practices of small businesses. 

Our technology includes a mobile application that businesses/business owners use to run their businesses, our algorithm that scores businesses based on behavioral patterns and transactions amongst other things, and a hardware card reader mPOS device that enables business owners receive payments from customers. 

We have a premium analytical and intelligent dashboard that feeds financial institution partners sufficient information that they can use to evaluate businesses based on their requirements, that are potential users/customers for their product offerings.

Our first MVP was tested in Lagos, Nigeria by mom and pop shops in urban areas. We tested with 20 businesses, who paid us $5/month for use of our solution. We had them test and use it for 6 months during which we got unique feedback on ways to improve our product which took us back to the drawing board. We are at the final stages of developing version 2 of our solution and are ready for deployment to a pool of 2000 businesses granted to us by a financial institution in Nigeria called OSB, whom we're in partnership with. 

What Limestart is doing is behavioral change. We are changing the way people do and have always done businesses in Africa's informal sector; the informal way. And we're giving them reasons/ incentives why they should run their businesses the smarter way.

Our technology forces our users to become digitally literate, as customers/users will have to open a bank/savings account and learn about how digital payments work. 

And example of this was with our very first customer during our pilot. Her name is Uzo and she runs a pop up Mexican restaurant where she sells tacos, fajitas, quesadillas, and other Mexican delights. She knew her turnover was pretty decent, but she had no visibility on which menu items sold more, which customers are high repeats, how much her expenses amounted to weekly and monthly, and she ran the risk of cash theft by her employees. 

By using Limestart, Uzo was able to have a bird's view eye on her business. She had insights on the average time her ingredients lasted, and how much unique food item she was able to make per purchase. She was also able to keep information about her customers, and contact them when she had sales or new events.

Uzo was also able to have a business bank account, and accessed loans from a Microfinance bank to boost her food production capacity.

We currently serve 20 customers, we have a pool of 2000 customers ready and waiting once we deploy the version 2 of our product. 

Our goal for the next 1 year is to reach 5000 unique customers and 5 million customers within the next 5 years. 

Our goal is to serve 5000 customer within the next one year and have 2000 unique loans/credit facility disbursed through Limestart.

Our 5 year plan is to have helped 5 million businesses globally, have $1b unique loans disbursed to over 1 million micro and small businesses over a 4 year period, with 0.65% in spread fees. 

Our CAC recovery time is < 6 months and our projected ARR form year 4 in transaction fees alone is $140m.

Some of the barriers we might face will be along the areas of 

• language. We would have to localized our solution to speak the language of the heart of the communities and markets we enter and operate in 
• pandemic. The current global pandemic can limit or plan for scale into newer markets and this is based on if the border lockdowns continue for longer than mentioned
• local legal structures and licensing. Each country and/or state/community may have differing laws on exercising business in their terrain and working towards abiding by these laws can delay or worst case, totally hinder us from operating in such markets. 

We built our solution in such a way that it is flexible and allows localization easily. We will set up and work with a translation team to ensure our solution is usable by the majority. 

We will look internally at vertical markets we can explore in our current market of operation, pending when the pandemic is over. 

We will start early and be strategic at detecting which markets are more viable to foreign investments and companies and start with those. 

Fulltime - 2

Partime - 3

We have the people, processes, technology, resources, partnerships, ready-customers, and deep market understanding to deliver this solution to solve the actual problems faced by our target market. 

Combined, we have over 30+ years in hardware and software development, startups, business venture building, and fundraising.

OSB - Financial institution with a direct customer based of 5000+. 

Fidelity Bank - Commercial bank / Financial institution

• Subscription fees for use of technology to businesses 
• Subscription fees for use of technology to financial partners 
• transaction fees on digital payments
• sales of hardware 
• spread fees in loans enabled through our platform 

• $1B + unique loans disbursed to 1 million + micro businesses over 4 years; with 0.65% spread in service ?ees

• -  Year 1; acquisition cost < $50; Year 2 acquisition cost < $25

• -  Avera?e customer li?ecycle → 2 years

• -  Customer LTV $280

• -  CAC recovery time < 6 months

• -  Projected ARR in Year 4 ?rom transaction ?ees alone → $140m

I want the access and assistance that Solve brings, the funding, the community and the publicity.