Jamii.one

In 2018, I co-founded Jamii.one with the mission to solve the issue of financial inclusion. As a past management consultant for PwC, I recognized the need for a scalable platform that could empower low-income communities to improve their lives and secure their financial future. Born from this recognition, Jamii.one is a for-profit digital platform that builds on existing structures to connect the unbanked in savings communities to banks and other financial services. As a sustainability and microfinance practitioner and Jamii.one’s CEO, I have ensured a holistic approach to financial inclusion and commitment to the UN’s SDG to end poverty. Part of this includes integrating learning into our app to equip our users, who are mostly women, with the business and financial skills that they need in their daily lives. In January 2020, we reached +4,000 users in Ethiopia with the goal to reach 300,000 users in 2021.

Jamii.one provides the unbanked with access to financial services. Access to services like secure savings and loans allows people to invest in their future (e.g., start a business), which helps alleviate poverty. In low-income communities, a popular and established method of saving up is to join a savings group where you save up as a community rather than individually. Jamii.one solves the problem of financial exclusion by digitalising and empowering these groups. Savings groups use our app to track their activities which makes saving easier and creates digital identities and credit scores for each user. Jamii.one leverages this data to give access to financial services that they would otherwise be excluded from. Our app is co-created with more than 600 people in savings groups, basing the solution on their needs and abilities. We negotiate with banks on behalf of thousands of families, enabling them to improve and secure their futures.

Every second adult in the world is underbanked meaning they lack assess to financial services such as loans. That’s 2.3 billion adults. Many of them - 1.7 billion - do not even have a bank account and are thereby unbanked. In Ethiopia, our current focus country, 65% of Ethiopian adults are unbanked and more than half are women. To compensate for this financial exclusion, many save in savings groups (there are over 25,000 groups in Ethiopia that we know of). By saving as a group, people in low income communities gain access to small loans. This makes them less vulnerable to risks like food shortages, unemployment, illness, income shortage etc. That's why access to loans is one of the most important factors for surviving and escaping poverty. Savings group members lack credit history and formal identification - that's where Jamii.one comes in. Using our app, users digitalise their group's saving activities, build a credit score and a digital identity, and learn vital business and technological skills. We then provide them with access to formal financial services and financial guidance, where they can receive larger loans and securely save their money, empowering them to improve their lives and futures. 

Jamii.one is a digital platform and app built with and for savings groups (our users). In low-income communities, a popular and established method of saving up is to join a savings group where you save up as a community rather than individually. Our app is built to digitalise and support these groups. Group members can use our app to record their savings and lending history, which creates a unique credit score. This credit score enables our users to gain access to financial services that they have previously been excluded from. The groups also learn business skills and how to use technology, empowering them to improve their future. Our app accounts for low literacy amongst our users, and we work closely with NGO partners to train users on how to use our app.

Jamii.one serves people in savings groups in rural and urban low-income communities in Ethiopia (with plans to expand to Kenya this year). +85% of the members in these groups are women who are often saving money to support their families. We reach them by partnering with local NGOs and their agents who understand the local context and can teach them about our app and its relevant benefits. The impact of our app is a core focus of Jamii.one. That's why we built the app in collaboration with over 600+ members of savings groups, ensuring that the app met their needs. This meant addressing their need for digital literacy through our app. We have also ensured transparency and lowered the risk of group conflict by providing tools to calculate and settle money. And from September onwards, our users can also buy input on credit and micro-insurance. 

Our users say: 

• “I never thought mobile application is for me. I rather thought it was for the young and educated.” 
• “Now I will tell my son that I can use an app that registers my data.”
• “Jamiipay app makes me feel that I can be modern and use a mobile technology.”

People without credit history and/or forms of ID are entirely excluded from formal financial institutions. This exclusion has negative consequences on any of the affected, but it is especially pronounced for women who must deal with the compounding effect of their sex. By championing the financial inclusion of all, with a special focus on women, we empower them to invest in their future, the future of their families, and ultimately help them escape poverty.

I've always been passionate about making a difference. It wasn't until I began working in micro-finance that I saw an opportunity to make a sustainable and important difference. I worked with MFIs in Africa and this is where I began to see firsthand how financial empowerment and loans were the answer to moving out of poverty. I also recognized the vulnerability of many poorly financially educated individuals when entering financial markets for the first time. Many were susceptible to loan sharks and other predatory financial schemes. Upon my return to Copenhagen, I decided to enter a contest by CARE on digitalising savings groups. Throughout this program, my vague idea of a financially empowering platform crystallized into an app that would support savings groups and give them access to financial services.  After becoming the competition's runner up, I reached out to my now CTO Daniel Brøndum Torp on LinkedIn. Together we founded Jamii.one in 2018. We collaborated with Luna Olischer, who performed important research in Uganda and Kenya and provided us with the vital information from our future users. In 6 months and with input from over 600 women, we created Jamii.one.

When I was 15, I wrote an article on the idea that the genius of this decade,  the one that would bring inventions to reach all social development goals, would be born into poverty. Like 88% of girls today, she would only attend primary school. Her mom/family would not have the financial means or would lack access to the loan that could pay for her school tuition. She would never attend the next level of education to grow her thoughts and ideas - and the world would never know the genius that could have been. This thought is very close to my heart. It gives me a sense of profound urgency. We must work to end poverty and make sure that everyone can realise their full potential. Ensuring that women all around the world have access to loans and other financial services is key to alleviating poverty and enabling them to reach their full potential. 

I have broad knowledge of the economic, historical, cultural, and societal related factors that influence investments in the African continent. Most importantly, this knowledge is supported by my experience working in micro-finance and NGOs. I completed a bachelors in financial accounting and business administration followed by two masters in African studies and in international business and politics.  My schooling supported me through numerous project management and financial consultant roles in Danish, Kenyan and British companies. 

In the early days of Jamii.one, there were a lot of difficulties in entering the African market. I was adamant about continuing our efforts within Africa because of the vast need and potential for sustainable development. My team and I were persistent, knocked on doors, employed local representation and finally, after several months of work, we connected with the top four Banks in Ethiopia. During this time, team morale was low and I myself started to have doubts as to whether we would be successful. My passion and knowledge that savings groups would benefit hugely from access to financial services is what kept me and my team going.  Every step in Jamii.one's two year journey has been a challenge, and every time I come back to the core purpose of my company. It's what keeps me motivated and pushes me to continue developing our platform to be the best possible solution to financial inclusion.

COVID-19 has been a global challenge, especially for our users. They can no longer meet in their savings groups and our NGO agents can no longer visit them. The team at Jamii.one was sent home to work and I knew in this moment that as a leader, I needed to set aside the stress brought on by the crisis to keep the team spirit high.  I am a strong believer in allowing employees to be whole people, not to “put on” a face and to leave their “issues” and personal lives at the reception. If we want to make a positive impact for other people, we need to start with ourselves and care for each other as a team. With COVID-19, myself and the team were a great support system to one another, helping one another with tasks when other familial responsibilities took over. In spite of COVID-19 being a huge hurdle in our journey, our product is even more important now. Financial services will play a vital role in helping our users recover from the crisis. This has been a huge motivator for my team and I.

We can service an already existing low-income segment that is usually too risky for financial institutions to service. This is because they lack collateral and the loans are too small to be profitable. We built the KYC (know your customer) process and credit assessment into our technology for instant registration and assessment. This will lower risk and increase profit potential as we increase market size. All of this data can be collected in minutes through the MFI, a bank's API integration, or an online account. On the other side we introduce micro learnings to the users to build their education and trust in the financial system. Our technology requires just one smartphone for a savings community of e.g. 20 members (jamii users) to build a digital identity as individuals and as a group, a credit history and credit scores. This allows each member to be financially included even if they do not own a phone or have formal ID. The app can run offline (2.0 in September) and syncs on an edge connection. In Kenya (our second marketplace) the fees on popular mobile money platforms like Mpesa exclude those with the lowest income while their requirement for formal ID prevents rural communities from accessing the platform. Jamii.one doesn't have the same restrictions as Mpesa and while we don’t want to be a mobile money provider, we do want to integrate as many services as possible to better serve our users so nobody is excluded.

Extreme poverty has many significant negative effects, such as hunger and malnutrition, lack of education, homelessness, war, refugees, and increased crime rate. As Hans Rosling stated: the most important factor that affects people’s lives is their income. We enable opportunities for future income growth for our users by providing access to financial institutions. With this access, they can acquire capital that they can then use to invest in their future. 

We believe that our product empowers our users because we provide the access; members of savings group have complete freedom in deciding how they will use the opportunities we enable. And they can do this all while  learning digital skills for further inclusion.

Testimonials:

- “I never thought mobile application is for me. I rather thought it was for the young and educated.”  

- “Now I will tell my son that I can use an app that registers my data.”  

- “Jamiipay app makes me feel that I can be modern and use a mobile technology.” 

We expect our work to have an impact on humanity because including people with very little capital in financial systems allows them to grow their income. We also teach our users business and financial skills that they can transfer to other aspects of their lives, especially to their income-generating activities. Additionally, we believe this positive impact is magnified because it happens on their own terms. 

Growing incomes reduces aforementioned negative effects of extreme poverty, making the world a safer and better place to live for all. 

Today we serve 4154 users in Ethiopia. 

In 2021, we will serve about 300,000 individuals across Ethiopia and Kenya. 

In five years we will be active in 10 countries with a total of 2 million users.

In the next five years we will be active in 8 countries with a total of 2 million users, 15 bank partners, and 21,000 NGO-Premium subscriptions. We want to reach Kenya, Uganda, Ghana, Rwanda, Philippines, Bangladesh, Brazil, and provide savings groups in these countries with the vital access to financial services that they need to move out of poverty. We will achieve this by connecting with new NGO partners, pitching to and partnering with banks and launching the 2.0 version of our app in the fall. This version will include micro-learnings to help our users make educated financial decisions. This will ensure that they can reap the full benefits from access to financial services, without risk of stifling debt. We ultimately want to help create more stories like that of Yetemwork's all over the world by solving the problem of financial inclusion.

The main barriers that currently exist are financial and market barriers. Financially, we need more resources to scale our product. Our 2.0 app launching this fall will be used by up to 300,000 individuals. To increase our impact and the number of users, we need NGO partners, and to be able to offer them access to financial services, we need bank partners. These partners are vital to the delivery of our product.

In order to overcome these market barriers and get to the right partners we need a larger team and the right talent. While effective, our knocking-on-doors bottom-up approach in Ethiopia was time consuming and largely inefficient. Our product is ready for massive scaling - we just need the right partners and investors to help us reach our full potential and impact.

COVID-19 is another barrier in reaching more potential users, and has placed financial strain on Jamii.one. 

To overcome our financial barriers, we are taking three mains steps: 

1) Seeking additional soft-funding;
2) Conducting additional activities that will make us attractive for investors including taking part in and being selected as one of three winners of Mastercard Lighthouse MASSIV program Nordics with European finals in August, and having our financials audited;
3) And, reducing spending incl. on the core team, who have been working on absolute minimal pay for two years, and must remain on this salary for one more year plus delaying new hiring. 

To overcome market barriers, we want to develop our local capacities in Ethiopia via our current three-person Ethiopian team. A greater local capacity in Ethiopia and other future countries in which we operate would ensure a greater connection to our users, as well as the possibility for local partnerships that can be difficult to manage from abroad. We are reaching out to our networks and are already connecting with valuable NGOs and eligible bank partners in Kenya. 

To address COVID-19, we have created a website to support our NGO partners. We have also looked for NGOs who already have access to savings groups so we do not have to wait for agents to go into the field to meet them. 

Additionally, we are increasing awareness of Jamii.one with a new marketing and communications strategy. The Elevate Prize program will help overcome all barriers with crucial funding and with increasing awareness and networks, possibly easing the work of finding the right partners.

We currently partner with 51 NGOs in Ethiopia, most of which are international and will need the same service we provide in other countries. They are our connection to our users. Our NGO partners use the data from our application to monitor and provide support to savings groups. Their 'agents' help establish and run savings groups in low-income rural and urban communities. Jamii.one elevates the roles of these agents into digital trainers, whereby they continue to run savings groups but with the support of our application. By making saving in groups easier and less time consuming (which also has benefits for members), these agents can reach more individuals and groups. For many agents, their work with savings groups is their livelihood - our goal is not to replace these agents but rather to help make their job easier. 

Our app is used by savings groups and our NGO partners. By using our app, savings groups benefit from the automation of share outs, the increased transparency of group activities and the creation of credit scores and digital identities. Likewise, NGOs benefit from data provided by our app and the expanded role of their agents which increases their value. Using the data, NGOs can monitor and support savings groups. We provide free support guides for our NGO partners to ensure that our platform is self-sufficient. Financial institutions will benefit from partnering with us because we will provide them with access to new clients that were previously too risky and difficult to reach and service.

We bargain with banks for lower prices on behalf of our 4,000+ users and charge the banks a customer acquisition fee that they cannot pass onto users. We also charge NGOs to access our business intelligence data which they can use to improve their projects.

End-users will not experience a charge due to collectively bargained fair prices and a commission charged to FSPs and NGOs.

Year of Funding: 2019
Funding Stage: Seed / Angel
Name of Funder: Innovation Fund Denmark
Type of Funding: Grants
Amount of Funding: 40323

Year of Funding: 2019
Funding Stage: Seed / Angel
Name of Funder: Rind&co., Silberbauerholding, Rikke Clausen, Scalability CPH
Type of Funding: Equity
Amount of Funding: 166036

Year of Funding: 2020
Funding Stage: Seed / Angel
Name of Funder: Acini Capital, Rind&co., Silberbauerholding, Rikke Clausen, Scalability CPH,
Type of Funding: Debts
Amount of Funding: 195855

Year of Funding: 2020
Funding Stage: Seed / Angel
Name of Funder: Innovation Fund Denmark
Type of Funding: Grants
Amount of Funding: 72570

We are eligible for several types of soft funding such as from development funds and financial inclusion grants. We are also heading towards our pre-seed round of funding aiming at raising $1,1 million in 2021. 

The barriers standing in the way of Jamii.one reaching it's full potential and impact can be greatly reduced, if not eliminated by the Elevate Prize. Our main barriers are financial and market barriers. The USD $300,000 of funding would allow us to hire more talent, especially in our local Ethiopian office and our upcoming Kenyan office. It would allow us to sustain our current operations and grow from 4,154 users to 300,000 users this year across Ethiopia and Kenya. Access to a dynamic network of industry leaders and experts would allow us to break through into the markets of our 5yr 8 focus countries including Uganda, Ghana, Rwanda, Philippines, Bangladesh, Brazil, and would provide us with valuable local insights for each country. Finally, the tailored media and marketing campaign would increase awareness of Jamii.one to attract new NGO partners, investors passionate about impact and banks looking to reach new customers. In addition to these benefits, access to Elevate Prize Global Heroes and partners would inspire my team and I to continue our work to solve the problem of financial inclusion.

We need funding to continue scaling our business and impact, and we need marketing and exposure to reach both potential users and partners. 

NGOs locally present in the countries we operate in or that we plan to operate in. Our users are typically supported by the NGOs we collaborate with making them a crucial component. 

Banks locally present in the countries we operate in or that we plan to operate in. Banks are essential as they provide our users with loans and other financial services.