Kashú

Problem: Invisibility of unbanked population. 


As you know, over 1.8 billion adults are still unbanked or poorly served by existing financial products and services. We know that invisibility excludes, and financial inclusion is traduced into opportunities and social inclusion so we need to do something about it.
On the other hand, there is also a lack of financial education, and people is usually busy. So the process of creating a credit history and increasing financial literacy must be as easiest as possible: leveraging the most used mobile messenger app: Whatsapp.

Kashú bot is a Whatsapp chatbot that helps the unbanked population create credit history by tracking their income and expenses just by sending a Whatsapp message, information historically invisible to the financial system. We leverage Whatsapp because:

• WhatsApp has 2 billion active users worldwide.
• WhatsApp is ranked as the most used mobile messenger app in the world.
• More than 100 billion messages are sent each day on WhatsApp.

We also include financial education content and allow financial institutions to know more about the profile of the unbanked, so they can create tailor-made offers to new targeted populations + helps them improve their financial health.

You can see a demo in our video pitch.

We serve the unbanked population, who historically have been excluded from the financial system.

Even though they are excluded, the unbanked population still has access to financial services through informal channels that operate outside of regulatory frameworks, such as usury and threats. These practices can have terrible consequences that range from intimidation to physical violence if a payment is missed.

With our solution, we help them access financial literacy and formal credit, which would improve their lives and enable real progress.

• Gabriela (COO) has a story about credit consequences with her family. She suffered its consequences herself and is now a financial engineer working at a development bank.
• Paula (CEO) is a financial inclusion consultant, has a master's in social innovation, and is developing her thesis on actuarial science about a predictive credit risk model for microcredits using alternative data, so microcredit institutions can make credit accessible for unbanked and underserved populations. She is working alongside "Nuestras Huellas", an NGO microcredit institution that serves people living in vulnerable conditions in Buenos Aires suburbs, Argentina.

• We already have tested with final users, simulating being a bot but transcribing the information manually.
• Since that test went well, we decided to look for a technical co-founder.
• Lucas, our CTO, has built the Whatsapp bot.
• We have a running MVP 
• You can see a quick demo in our pitch video.

We tested with 24 test users.

Of course, funding is important and needed, but what would excite us the most if we win is:

• Partnerships
• Help/advisory on landing in different countries
• Help to measure impact
• Facilities such as software licenses 
• Help to reach microfinance institutions and traditional financial institutions
• Visibility and validation
• Networking with incredible founders, mentors, etc. Leaders sharing the vision of financial inclusion and looking for making the world better.

We are the only budgeting solution that is not only targeted to unbanked population, but also leverage in Whatsapp because:

• WhatsApp has 2 billion active users worldwide.

• WhatsApp is ranked as the most used mobile messenger app in the world.

• More than 100 billion messages are sent each day on WhatsApp.

We also include financial education content created by experts, reaching people probably served by abusive informal credit providers until now that because of our solution, could access to formal financial services.

Last but not least, allowing financial institutions to know more about the profile of the unbanked, information historically inaccessible that now will be visible, allows financial institutions to create tailor-made offers to newly targeted populations + help them improve their financial health.

For the next 5 years, our goal is to be available in at least 5 countries, offering not only our bot but also more solutions created regarding the needs of all parties: population, microcredit institutions, and traditional formal financial institutions

To do so... for the next 12 months, our goal is that Kashú bot can be available in at least 15 vulnerable Argentinian populations. And to do so, we need to establish relationships with more microcredit institutions and formal financial institutions interested in serving the unbanked/underserved population.

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We measured with surveys, testimonials, and NPS (NPS=8). We need help to measure impact in a more formal way. We'll be working on that!

In Kashú,

• Whatsapp
• Python Flask Backend
• Webhooks
• APIs
• AI (soon)

In our founder's team, we are 2 women (from Bolivia and Argentina), and one argentinian man, our CTO. We want to include more technical profiles, especially technical female collaborators since women in technology are historically minority.

We also aim to hire people from communities we help in the future.

SEGMENTS
Our end-users (beneficiary) are initially borrowers from microfinance institutions. The ones who pay for the solution are traditional banks interested in accessing this new segment and wholesale microfinance banks or microfinance wholesale lenders, they are both, beneficiary and customer.

TYPE OF INTERVENTION
Service of Whatsapp chatbot delivering financial education, personal finance control for the end-users and information to emphatize with the person.

VALUE PROPOSITION

• Whatsapp chatbot that helps individuals improve their present and future finances, while also helping banks increase their customer/prospective customer knowledge, and most importantly, have a positive impact on people's financial health.

• APIs to enable two-way communication with banks and microfinance institutions

• Measure: surveys/tests for the final beneficiaries to measure our impact in their lives. Stablishing metrics with the customers regarding they desired impact outcome. 

CHANNELS

• WhatsApp, and later on, a platform for end-users to also view and access all their financial data. The owners of the data are the users.

• Email notifications, if configured as such.

• APIs, to establish communication with customers.

CUSTOMER RELATIONSHIP:

• Self-management by end-users. For example, they can check their monthly expenses just by sending a message, broken down by expense categories.

• Input and output of information between banks and Kashú via APIs.

REVENUE STREAMS:

• Monthly fee charged to banks for chatbot service.

• Fee for complete user information authorized by users to access better conditions (e.g. loan offers with better rates as banks can access more information about the user and qualify them better)

KEY RESOURCES:

• Technical team

• Training team: we aim to hire junior female personnel as our CTO has a lot of experience and enjoys teaching people who are new to programming.

• Key relationships: thanks to our work and relationships with various actors, we have networks of contacts that provide us with both knowledge and resources to make the project a reality.

• Contact with communities targeted

KEY ACTIVITIES:

• Programming

• Networking/relationship building with key actors

• Maintaining IT security standards

• Communication with target users

• Creating spaces to listen and understand the needs of both banks and end-users as the project progresses.

STRATEGIC PARTNERSHIPS:

• Banks ( traditional and wholesale microfinance banks), microfinance institutions.

• Entrepreneurial support institutions such as incuBAte, UCEMA, UBA, etc. with whom we already have a relationship.

• Founder of a medtech startup that aims for the same goals as us but in healthcare.

• Other founders

• Google Startup for Female Founders Academy (alumni)

• Shaping Horizons (alumni)

• Cambridge University (mentor)

COST STRUCTURE:

• Hosting and storage

• Costs associated with databases

• Salaries, especially for programmers

• WhatsApp API and intermediaries costs (such as Twilio, with whom we developed the MVP and who have already guaranteed us discounts on fees if we exceed certain monthly thresholds).

We apply for grants, but we know that in order to create real financial inclusion we need our solution to be self-sustainable. We started testing with $0 so our goal is to keep costs as low as possible and create a profitable product that allows us to reinvest revenue in improving more and more the solution.

Initially, we'll be selling the chatbot service to banks, wholesale microfinance banks, development banks, and any interested institution. With this income, we'll iterate the solution and hope to create new ones, that also lead to more revenue. Ideally, we'll try to not raise capital from sources such as traditional VC since we prefer to keep control of our course of action in order to deliver a real impactful solution. 

Our solution is not already in the market, so we don't have revenue.
Since we don't have revenue yet, we can only demonstrate coherence by telling you how we worked to maintain costs as low as possible: an MVP done with USD 13 invested in hosting + domain, leveraging in sandboxes, free tiers for testing, contacts, and our capacity and creativity as founders to make this happen. Thank you for the opportunity!