50NOTES

Lack of financial management software and skills, startup capital and business visibility are detrimental to many small-scale and startup businesses in Uganda.

Development of mobile application that will facilitate: financial management and training, peer to peer lending, member savings for 50 weeks in a year (hence the name 50NOTES) and Community group advertisement of members’ businesses and startups.

Since majority of our members own an Android phone, the proposed application will be used to improve the members financial management skills, boost peer to peer lending and enable mobile money savings. 

Financial Management to track income and expenses for a business. Out of the 35 members in our group, none has a financial management system and none has such skills.

Peer to Peer startup capital fundraising and marketing strategy. We intend to fundraise funds to boost community startups using the proposed mobile application. The same application will be used for peer to peer marketing and advertisement.

1. The mobile application is used for financial management. Members use this as a financial management information system where they record all transactions done on a given day. This is both income and expenditure of the business.

2. The mobile application is used for weekly savings. On a weekly basis, every member saves a small amount of the profit realised during the week as it will be shown by the financial management system.

3. The mobile application is used for peer to peer lending. Just in case a member needs to boost his/her business, the member requests for a loan through the mobile application and his/her peers who have savings will have to recommend him/her. The total number of recommenders depends of the loan requested by the member.

4. The mobile application is used for peer to peer marketing. Through the same members on the mobile platform, a peer to peer marketing of the member business is spread through the mobile application to members until the entire locality of the business.

We are a group of small-scale business owners. Most startups are managed by the youth. Over 60% of the small-scale business owners are women. We own business ranging from bank and mobile agent shops, mechanics garages, construction materials manufacturing, furniture workshops etc. 

We are a community where youths, business persons are empowered to improve our own livelihood through appropriate and affordable technologies and alternatives.

Through the member savings, our patterns – the small-scale business persons and the youth, have managed to acquire small loans to boost their businesses at a low interest rate. This interest that is acquired is shared among the members.

There are several challenges here such as: lack of budgetary control, Lack of accountability misuse of cash after selling products or services without trace, poor financial records keeping and management.

Lack of capital for the startups also calls for capital mobilisation from our own peers to support businesses that are struggling.

Poor visibility to the customers. The mobile tool will shout out for us to potential clients and this will boost our businesses.

We are a group of 35 members in Kyaliwajjala, Kira Municipality, Wakiso District, Uganda. We call the group 50NOTES group.

We are piloting part of the solution as a web based solution and also manually (which is cumbersome) and we lacked funding to have the solution fully developed. We are online at https://ww.50notes.com

The peer to peer lending and marketing is going to change the way startup funding and marketing is done.

Currently we are serving 35 members.

In 1 year, after securing the funding, we wish to reach 350 members.

Membership numbers, number of members using the financial management system, loan portfolio amounts and the growth of the customers to member businesses.

Full time staff = 4

Part time staff = 3

Membership number = 35

We have a diverse team with qualifications in information technology, computer science, business administration and entrepreneurs.

1. Financial advice and support to the youth and small-scale business persons with focus on business startups and financial literacy.

2. Vocational skills training and Life skills for small-scale startups business persons.
3. Member savings for 50 weeks in a year (hence the name 50NOTES) and business loans facility to the members to boost their small-scale businesses & startups.
4. Community based training to the organisation members especially concerning usage of technology for better financial management.

To hire more technical people to contribute to the completion of the mobile application.

To acquire more server space to host our solutions.

We require technical support, financial support and algorithmic support especially in the development of the peer to peer credit facilitation and the peer to peer marketing.

Organisations dealing especially in research in machine learning and data science such as MIT. 

We would expand our solution to Refugee camps especially in Uganda. Uganda is the largest Refugee hosting country in Africa.

Our solution will utilise machine learning algorithms in the peer to peer lending and peer to peer marketing.

At a later date, we intend to incorporate blockchain technology in our solution being a financial system.