The BIG5D Podcast

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In this episode of the BIG5D Podcast, host Charles Laughlin sits down with Jill Kerr, co-founder of Misfit Ventures, and Laura Thomas, founder of The Aligned Woman, to talk about the struggles female founders face in Africa. Recorded live at the 2026 BigFive Summit in Cape Town, this conversation tackles the stark reality that female-led startups in Africa receive just 2% of venture capital funding, despite often outperforming their male peers. Jill shares how her debt fund backs high-performing, real-economy female-led SMEs, while Laura discusses her expert-led educational platform and plans for an AI-driven women's ecosystem. The two explore navigating unconscious bias, pitching to male-dominated investors, and the gritty realities of entrepreneurship. This episode of the BIG5D Podcast is supported by Telkom. At Telkom, possible begins here. Learn more at Telkom.co.za.

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A to the enduring dominance of fintech to the power of stablecoins to reduce cost and friction in remittances.The BIG5D Podcast is a production of BigFive Digital. If you would like to book a guest or sponsor an episode, contact us via big5dtv@gmail.com.

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Welcome to the BIG5D Podcast, where we bring you meaningful conversations on the Business of African Tech. We recorded this interview with Rahul Jain, the CEO and co-founder of Peach Payments, on stage in March 2026 at the BigFive Summit in Cape Town.This episode is sponsored by Telkom, also the lead sponsor of the recent BigFive Summit in Cape Town. At Telkom, “Possible Begins Here”.Learn more at Telkom.co.zaPeach Payments was launched in South Africa more than a decade ago and now facilitates digital commerce across nine African countries. Rahul Jain isn't just looking at where payments are now; he’s looking at where they’re going.In this conversation, Rahul offers us a masterclass on scaling a fintech on the African continent.The BIG5D Podcast is a production of BigFive Digital. If you would like to book a guest or sponsor an episode, please contact us via big5dtv@gmail.com.

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Episode 57 of the Big5D Podcast again turns to the May 2025 BigFive Summit in Cape Town for a great conversation about tech and business in Africa. This conversation, recorded at Innovation City Cape Town on 6 May 2025, features a primer on how to choose a digital marketing agency partner led by Summit Co-host Amanda Louw-Bester (Pragmattica Consulting) and featuring Bianca Waterberg, the founder and CEO of the Cape Town digital agency Nspyre, which specializes in paid media and SEO. Really, it all comes down to clear and effective communication. As Bianca puts it during this conversation, "You want your agency to explain things to you clearly."The conversation also gets real about spotting red flags in a potential agency partner. And overpromising, for example, by guaranteeing immediate results that are nearly impossible to deliver, is high on the list of red flags to watch for. Our SponsorThis episode of the BIG5D Podcast is sponsored by Dialog (localdialog.com).“Answering your 'local' questions with unique data & insights”

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In Episode 56 of the BIG5D Podcast, we talk about venture building with Keshni Morar, the MD-South Africa, Founder Institute. The conversation jumps off from a LinkedIn post Keshni wrote about #Statuptruth in which she laments how too many startup founders fail to appreciate the need to carefully manage the funds they raise from investors. “$1M in funding doesn't make you rich,” Keshni wrote. “It makes you responsible.”Keshni’s post goes on to recount the story of one founder who spent VC money on a “founder wellness” trip to a tropical island. The substance of Keshni’s post is that venture funding is runway, not revenue. We hope you enjoy this episode, sponsored by NSPYRE (nspyre.co.za)

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Episode 55 of the Big5D Podcast once again turns to the May 2025 BigFive Summit in Cape Town for a great conversation about tech and business in Africa. This conversation, recorded at Innovation City Cape Town on 6 May 2025, features a panel on Go to Market Strategies for SMEs led by Summit Co-host Amanda Louw-Bester (Pragmattica Consulting). The panel features three entrepreneurs who have seen it all and can at the very least steer small business founders away from obvious mistakes in the early stages of their business journey. The panelists offer a wide array of insights for founders on everything from tactics to avoid to tactics not to overlook, especially in a business's early stages. The panelists joining Amanda are Bernadene Appalsamy, Ledger Leap; Tim Shoko, Umlilo Energy; and Remi du Preez, Polygon.This episode of the Big5D Podcast is supported by the 2025 BigFive Summit sponsors.Absa Group (absa.africa)Dialog (localdialog.com)Nspyre (nspyre.co.za)Networds (networds.co.za)AfriGIS (afrigis.co.za)Pragmattica Consulting (pragmattica.co.za)

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Episode 54 of the BIG5D Podcast again turns to the recent BigFive Summit in Cape Town for source material. This episode features a panel discussion of the kinds of support, in addition to capital, that African startups need to be successful -- things like best practice sharing and mentorship, among others. Sharing their views are Lucie Fink, CEO of Thinkroom Consulting; Egla Ntumba of MsFit Ventures, and Thapelo Ntite, Co-founder of Botlhale AI.This discussion originally took place on stage on 8 May at Innovation City Cape Town.

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Episode 53 of the Big5D Podcast comes from the recording of an on-stage interview with Loop Co-founder Jamie Wyngaard at the 2025 BigFive Summit in Cape Town.Loop is a South African fintech startup that has digitized payments for African minibus taxi drivers using WhatsApp. Loop's broader ambition is to become a payment solution for emerging markets.Episode 53 of the BIG5D Podcast is supported by The 2025 BigFive Summit Sponsors.The Summit's sponsors were led by Premium Sponsor Absa Group and also included Dialog, NSPYRE, Networds, AfriGIS, and Pragmattica Digital Consulting.

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Episode 52 of the Big5D Podcast comes from the recording of a Fireside Chat (sans fire) that we recorded with Zachariah George at the 2025 BigFive Summit in Cape Town. Zach is the Managing Partner of Launch Africa Ventures, the Cape Town venture firm that has invested in African startups including Happy Pay, Peach Payments, Kuda Bank, Moove, Gozem, and many others.Zach has a very clear perspective on Africa Tech. He believes there needs to be more funding for tech startups that comes from within Africa, in particular South Africa. And he also thinks fouders in Africa need to take a different view on venture capital. Do not chase it before you are ready. Be ready to boostrap until you have a product with a clear path to market and impriving unit economics. And for the love of everthing that is good, do some basic research on a fund before approaching it for an investment.

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This episode of the BIG5D Podcast is presented by Local Knowledge.Episode 51 of the BIG5D Podcast, features a conversation about using the subscription model to help South Africans gain access to automobiles in a non-traditional manner with Tinashe Ruzane, the co-founder and CEO of FlexClub.FlexClub helps South Africans access vehicles when they need them on a pay-as-you-go basis (they partner with major car rental platforms in South Africa).Ruzane, a former Uber executive, explains why car subscriptions make more sense in a market like South Africa where the need for vehicles is high but accessibility is very limited.

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This podcast usually talks to guests with a foot on the ground in Africa or the Middle East. For this episode, we make an exception.Neal Polachek is an old colleague who has co-founded Dialog, a business doing groundbreaking research around small business use of AI. Dialog is learning not just how many SMEs are using AI but why and what the outcome is of this usage.The bottom line is no surprise. Time is the SME's most precious resource and AI gives them back an abundance of time.Dialog is currently US-based but will be expanding globally.

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This episode of the BIG5D Podcast is presented by Fraktional.dev

Fraktional connects developers and organizations for short to medium-term projects.

Contact Fraktional.dev to learn more.

Welcome to Episode 49 of the BIG5D Podcast, a production of BigFive Digital and the Africa B2B Tech Report.

In this episode, I talk about AI and blockchain with the candid and opinionated Steven Boykey Sidley. Steven is a professor at the Johannesburg Business School (part of the University of Johannesburg).

Steven is the author of multiple books, including non-fiction works on technology as well as novels and plays. His latest book is It’s Mine: How the Crypto Industry is Redefining Ownership. He is also an investor and advisor.

Steven is a regular contributor to The Daily Maverick, where he opines on trends in technology. This latter pursuit brings Steven regularly to my attention and led me to think he would be a great podcast guest. And I was right.

This candid and engaging conversation spans AI safety, the AI opportunity for startups, and AI's geopolitical implications.

A few highlights

In this clip, Steven agrees that AI tools make it at least conceivable for a startup to scale to unicorn status without taking on employees.

I have been obsessed with the AI-enabled one-person unicorn ever since I watched Sam Altman (Open AI) and Alexis Ohanian (Reddit) discuss this in a YouTube video. I also believe this represents a unique opportunity for African founders who struggle to raise seed capital. AI may be making seed capital obsolete.

Here Steven talks about how many AI startups are building on top of existing AI models. We got into whether this approach is truly innovative and sustainable.

And finally, we talked about the long-term implications of AI. Steven is not optimistic that humans will be able to prevent the worst outcomes.

You can also catch this episode on your favorite podcast apps.

If you prefer to watch the full interview with Steven on our YouTube channel, here it is.

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The Craft of Conferencing is an events consultancy and content agency offering turnkey conference management, public speaking coaching, podcast production, and content creation. Journalist, podcaster, and event producer Charles Laughlinleads The Craft of Conferencing.

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Steven Boykey Sidely is a professor, author, and investor with strongly held views on the threats and opportunities presented by AI.This candid and engaging conversation spans AI safety, the AI opportunity for startups, and AI's geopolitical implications. It is a fascinating conversation that you will not want to miss.

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This week's guest on the BIG5D Podcast is Houssam Kayal, the chief revenue officer at FOO, a Dubai-based B2B SaaS company that offers banking-as-a-service and other solutions that help corporations offer financial services. The conversation covers trends in fintech that are making financial services more widely accessible. The BIG5D Podcast is brought to you by BigFive Digital.Questions about the show? Write to us at info@bigfivedigital.org.This episode is supported by Fraktional.dev."Where innovation meets code, and the possibilities of technology unfold at your fingertips"

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Nic Rawhani is a native South African software engineer and McKinsey alum who has co-founded Vula, a company that aims to use AI to solve Africa's SME funding gap, which Rawhani says surpasses $330 billion. The conversation digs into the bad experiences most SMEs face in Africa as they seek the funding any business needs to operate. Rawhani shares how Vula uses AI to make the financing application process easier for both SMEs and the banks who stand to gain from closing the continent's SME funding gap. The BIG5D Podcast is brought to you by BigFive Digital.Questions about the show? Write to us at info@bigfivedigital.org.This episode is supported by Realm Digital. "Empowering industry leaders through innovative business solutions"

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Imtiyaz Mohamed is the principal consultant at South Africa technology consulting firm Realm Digital. One of Realm's and Imtiyaz's focus areas is augmented reality/virtual reality (AR/VR).The conversation focused on clarifying what AR/VR is (and isn't) and how businesses use it today to save money, improve safety, and more.The BIG5D Podcast is brought to you by BigFive Digital. To ask questions, recommend a guest, or inquire about sponsorship, write to us at info@bigfivedigital.orgFind @RealDigital on X.The episode is sponsored by Fraktional.dev

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This episode of the Big5D Podcast is presented by Realm Digital

Realm empowers industry leaders through innovative business solutions. Please visit them at realmdigital.com.

Contact Realm Digital to learn more.

Welcome to Episode 45 of the BIG5D Podcast. In this episode, we interview another compelling young South African startup founder. Medical doctor and health-tech entrepreneur Zane Stenningis the co-founder of Mia Health Technologies, a health-tech startup seeking to improve healthcare in Africa by providing access to dental care via mobile clinics.

Mia’s core solution is manufacturing clear aligners using 3D printing. Zane believes this is perhaps the only cost-effective way to solve the continent’s massive malocclusion (skewed teeth) problem. And this isn’t just about improving smiles. Dental issues are closely correlated to a range of broader health concerns from heart disease to diabetes.

Building a health tech has enormous potential for impact. It is also incredibly complex, as Zane explains here.

The company has also built an app to help dentists operate their clinics more effectively. Mia also helps dentists access affordable financing to get clinics off the ground. Zane jokes on the podcast that Mia seems like it is “three startups in one.”

Zane was a guest on a panel on the “fourth industrial revolution” hosted by Savant Venture Fund (a Mia investor) at the recent BigFive Summit in Cape Town. The common thread to 4IR is connected technology. Zane says this is a critical element to achieving his company’s mission.

“It's fundamental to almost every element of this business,” Zane explains in the episode. “Whether you're looking to optimize patient outcomes, whether you're looking to catch disease early, or whether you're looking just to improve communication with your patients.”

Zane also believes strongly that “artificial intelligence is going to revolutionize the healthcare industry.”

He explains further in this clip.

Interview Excerpts

The following are edited excerpts from our interview with Mia Health Technologies Co-founder Zane Stenning.

You started early as an entrepreneur. Tell us about your first company.

My first business at around the age of 16, was the import-exports of bicycle parts. I remember growing up not having a lot of cash, but always wanting the latest stuff. And then locally, there was a such high margins on it. So I just started selling it to friends, family, etc.

So Mia started as a way to scale clear aligners to solve Africa’s malocclusion (skewed teeth) problem. How did you arrive at 3D printing as the solution?

Align Technology is the company that owns Invisalign. When we came across it, we said, this is an incredible product, how has it not penetrated our market? It was for multiple reasons, including a weaker currency, requiring multiple middlemen to get it, and so on. All of it just pushed the price through the roof. When I looked into what it would take for us to manufacture this, we concluded that a 3D printer setup was what we needed.

Can additive manufacturing solve a massive healthcare burden on our continent?

For those of you who don't know, Africa has the highest rates of malocclusion, which has skew teeth in the world at a whopping 89%. And people with poor oral health tend to have a 50% increased risk of cardiovascular disease and metabolic diseases.

Why the mobile clinics?

Distribution was one of the hardest things we ran into in our previous businesses. So it was something I was ready and waiting to try and solve. But we had bootstrapped all of this, so we didn't have massive capital to spend on marketing, marketing teams, and so on. So we needed to keep distribution in-house at the beginning, just to do our product development and all this sort of stuff. So we said if we can't do fixed practices everywhere, let's go mobile. In other words let's do an orthodontic clinic that can go to schools, or wherever it needs to go, and treat all these patients and run our aligners through this clinic.

You launched an app to stitch all of this together, talk about that.

We started having to patch together lots of different software just to run one business. And then eventually we just said, This is crazy. We just need to build our own thing, even if it's just to scale our own business, let alone sell it to other dentists or dental groups. So that's when we started putting together our app and now it's a specialized ERP for the dental industry.

TheBIG5D Podcast features in-depth conversations with the leaders who are building, investing in, or taking to market the digital products and services designed to make micro, small, and medium-sized businesses more successful in Africa and the Middle East.

The BIG5D Podcast is available here on Substack and on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, or wherever you listen to podcasts. Please follow, comment, rate, and review the BIG5D Podcast. Your engagement helps others discover us so they can learn more from the amazing builders and thought leaders we feature on the show.

To recommend a guest for the podcast or discuss sponsoring an upcoming episode, please write to us at info@bigfivedigital.org.

Also, please stay tuned for information on future BigFive Digital liveand virtual events.

Thank you Realm Digital for sponsoring this episode of the BIG5D Podcast.

This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit ctlaughlin.substack.com/subscribe

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Zane Stenning is the Co-founder of Mia Health Technologies, a Cape Town startup that addresses profound needs in Africa by providing greater access to dental care. Zane and his team do this via mobile clinics. But Mia also leans into new technologies from 3D printing to connected technology to AI to scale its services.Zane was a speaker at the 2024 BigFive Summit in Cape Town.Realm Digital sponsored this episode of the BIG5D Podcast. Realm empowers industry leaders through innovative business solutions. Contact them at realmdigital.com.

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The BigFive Summit Speaker Podcast Series continues with a conversation with John Kitenge, a young South African entrepreneur who founded Fraktional.dev, a marketplace that matches IT talent with startups and cpr[pporates.The interview covers how startups can use alternative workplace models to access higher quality talent, along with a lively discussion on how AI is changing the business of coding. This episode is sponsored by the 2024 BigFive Summit, "Africa's leading small business technology event" which is coming to Cape Town 19-20 March 2024. Learn more at qkt.io/laNIFj

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The BigFive Summit Speaker Podcast Series continues with a conversation with Thaheer Mullins. He is the general partner of Savant Venture Fund, which is a deep tech-focused venture firm and startup accelerator. The interview talks about how the fourth industrial revolution is breeding some very interesting companies that are addressing real needs in Africa. This episode is sponsored by the 2024 BigFive Summit, "Africa's leading small business technology event" which is coming to Cape Town 19-20 March 2024. Learn more at qkt.io/laNIFj

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The BigFive Summit Speaker Podcast Series continues with a conversation with Kimberley Taylor. She is the founder and CEO of Loop, a South African logistics tech company that helps delivery companies with route optimization. The interview talks about how her company progressed from idea to execution as well as the perspective of a young founder on what it takes to run a tech startup and the hard lessons learned int he process of doing so. This episode is sponsored by the 2024 BigFive Summit, "Africa's leading small business technology event" which is coming to Cape Town 19-20 March 2024. Learn more at qkt.io/laNIFj

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The BigFive Summit Speaker Podcast Series continues with a conversation with Fiona Tabraham, CEO of Capaciti, a South African organization that provides digital skills training for African youth so that they can compete for tech-related jobs in the private sector. This episode is sponsored by the 2024 BigFive Summit, "Africa's leading small business technology event" coming to Cape Town 19-20 March 2024. Learn more at https://qkt.io/laNIFj

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Episode 2 of the 2024 BigFive Summit Speaker Series featured a chat about economic inclusion with Ashmita Singh, the Co-founder of SwapVend Afrika and the Co-Managing Director for South Africa of AMLANDA Social Entreprises.The conversation is focused on addressing informal SMEs with technology, which has been Singh's life's work.This episode is sponsored by the 2024 BigFive Summit, 19-20 March in Capoe Town. https://qkt.io/laNIFj

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The BigFive Summit Speaker Series features conversations about Africa’s tech scene, empowering SMEs with technology, entrepreneurship, leadership, startup life, and much more featuring the incredible thought leaders who will speak at the 2024 BigFive Summit, 19-20 March in Cape Town.The series’ first guest is Aisha Pandor, the CEO of SweepSouth, a two-sided marketplace startup celebrating its 10th anniversary this year. This podcast series is sponsored by The 2024 BigFive Summit

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The BIG5D Podcast is back and this episode features an engaging and informative conversation with Zach Marks, the Co-founder and CEO of blockchain-based fintech Jia. The company, formed in 2022, provides access to capital for small businesses in emerging markets. Jia currently operates in Kenya and the Philippines.

Jia, which was formed in 2022, recently raised a $4.3 million seed round. But this significant funding event isn't even discussed in the episode. Zach and I did discuss it briefly before we began recording. I told Zach that the amount of money a company has raised "is usually the least interesting thing about it." And he agreed.

Our objective on this podcast is to learn about the problems a company is trying to solve and how it plans to go about doing so. We do not particularly care how much money a company has raised, or from whom.

Ultimately what we do care about is the small business owner who needs capital, technology, or know-how, to take their business to the next level. And I got the sense that Zach cares about this above all as well. We understand this requires funding. We just don’t obsess over it.

As Zach notes early in our conversation, Jia’s aim is to solve what he calls the “$5 trillion credit gap” for small businesses in emerging markets by providing access to capital. And Jia rewards borrowers who repay successfully with digital tokens. Of course, the tokens must build value for this all to work.

What Jia is trying to do goes straight to the heart of what we cover here. And that is using emerging technologies — from AI to blockchain and more — to empower small businesses in Africa and the Middle East.

Please enjoy this episode. And please stay tuned for more great conversations.

Watch Episode 38 on YouTube

Interview Excerpts

The following are just a few edited excerpts from our conversation with Zach Marks. Please listen to the podcast or watch the video to experience the full interview.

How does Jia work?

What Jia does is provide blockchain-based financing for small businesses in emerging markets. And our mission is really to unlock financial freedom and put entrepreneurs in control of their financial destinies around the world.

We provide inventory financing and invoice financing, mostly as working capital for small businesses in emerging markets. Today our two markets are Kenya and the Philippines. And we basically source that capital on chain on the blockchain, which lets anyone provide liquidity, which we then take to use to finance small businesses.

And when they repay they earn token rewards, which gives them an ownership stake in this business.

Why did you select Kenya as Jia’s first market in Africa?

I've worked in Kenya for the past 10 years, and it helps to work in a country that you know. But the macro fundamentals are the reason so many FinTech companies get started in Kenya, of course, because there is broader digital financial services and mobile financial services adoption there than anywhere in the world. {He cites M-Pesa as laying the groundwork for fintechs like Jia.]

Why blockchain?

I think the benefits that blockchain can bring for any business that's serving multiple geographies can be pretty profound in terms of reducing the cost of moving money across borders, not just for us as a lending company, but even for small business borrowers.

What is your most important KPI?

Obviously, the repayment rate is helpful. But even more helpful than that, I think, is repeat retention. So you don't just want to see the borrower repay, you want to see that they came and took another loan from you.

What are your ambitions for elsewhere in Africa?

I'm very excited to explore markets beyond Kenya. The natural thing that I think a lot of foreign venture-backed companies do is they look at like Kenya in the east and Nigeria in the west, and you know, maybe South Africa's too advanced for them, and then it’s like, ‘Prove something in those places, and then see where they can go from here.’ I think that's sometimes just basic Western VC math.

I would be really excited to be in Nigeria, but it's also a very competitive and complicated, expensive market. And sometimes it might be easier to enter somewhere else. We actually have an invoice financing program going on right now with a company in Ghana {Oze}, which is really exciting.

The BIG5D Podcast is also available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, or wherever you listen to podcasts. Please follow, comment, rate, and review the BIG5D Podcast. Your engagement helps others discover us so they can learn more from the amazing builders and thought leaders we feature on the show.

To recommend a guest for the podcast or to discuss sponsoring an upcoming episode, please contact us at info@bigfivedigital.org.

Also, please stay tuned for announcements regarding dates and locations for future BigFive Digital liveevents in Africa-Middle East.

This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit ctlaughlin.substack.com/subscribe

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Episode 38 of the BIG5D Podcast features an interview with Zach Marks. He is the Co-founder and CEO of Jia, a blockchain-based small business lender that is focused on emerging markets, where Marks says there is a $5 trillion small business credit gap.

Jia's current operational scope includes Kenya, with ambitions to expand elsewhere within Africa.

This episode is sponsored by the no-code website builder Duda. Please visit them at Duda.co to learn more about how they help digital agencies deliver website solutions to their customers.

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Episode 37 of the BIG5D Podcast features a conversation with Michelle Geere, CEO of Adbot, a Cape Town startup that automates Google and Bing ads for SMEs. The conversation included a discussion of how AI will change everything from digital marketing to employment to how we create the moves we love. This episode is sponsored by the no-code website builder Duda.co. Please visit them at Duda.co to learn more about how they help digital agencies deliver website solutions to their customers.

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Episode 36 of the BIG5D Podcast features a conversation with Caitlin Craig, head of private capital markets at Untapped Global, an asset based financing firm focused on emerging marketing, in particular Africa. This episode is sponsored by the no code website builder Duda.co.

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Episode 35 of the Big5D Podcast features an interview with Lavina Ramkissoon, a South African expert on artificial intelligence, who has adopted the personal brand "the aiMom". She is an advisor to the Africa Union and a co-founder of the Fintech Association of South Africa. The discussion is focused on the real opportunity for AI in Africa, particularly for businesses in Africa. The interview includes Brenton's take on recent developments in the cryptocurrency industry. The bulk of the conversation deals with how blockchain-based startups are uniquely well-positioned to solve real-world problems in Africa. This episode is sponsored by Dudawww.duda.co/

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Episode 34 of the Big5D Podcast features an interview with Brenton Naicker, Director of Capital Formation and Growth at CV VC, a blockchain-focused Swiss venture firm that is actively investing in Africa. The interview includes Brenton's take on recent developments in the cryptocurrency industry. The bulk of the conversation deals with how blockchain-based startups are uniquely well-positioned to solve real-world problems in Africa. This episode is sponsored by Dudawww.duda.co/

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South African Andrew Katzwinkel, our latest guest on the BIG5D Podcast, is trying to shake up buy now, pay later with a relatively new alternative payments model called “save now, buy later” or SNBL for those fond of acronyms.

For those few of you not yet in the know, BNPL lets consumers take immediate possession of goods they will pay for later through installments. SNBL is BNPL’s stern, responsible cousin. SNBL still facilitates buying cool things like furniture and jewelry. But you have to make your last payment before you can take possession of the chair or the necklace.

Vega graduate Katzwinkel got his entrepreneurial start with FOMO, an online travel agency that facilitated installment payments for travel adventures, allowing everyone in a friend group to make that destination wedding after all, as an example. Then came COVID.

FOMO’s payments technology ended up providing the backbone for LayUp Technologies, Katzwinkel’s current company trying to flip BNPL on its head via SNBL.

On the podcast, Andrew argued that SNBL is better suited to the South African economy, where the financial system is sophisticated yet many consumers live on cash. Also, Andrew noted that a large percentage of South African consumers are not fully included in the financial system and are not considered credit-worthy.

“We have taken a bit of longer-term view and identified a much larger market whereby we can serve them through a save now buy later model,” Andrew says on the podcast.

Andrew and others in the SNBL space (for example, U.S.-based Accrue Savings) like to point out that SNBL is savings, not credit. This is an important distinction from BNPL, as Andrew drives home in this episode.

We hope you enjoy the interview. You can view a video version of this episode on our YouTube Channel.

Interview Excerpts

The following are a few excerpts from our conversation with Andrew. Please listen to the podcast or watch the video to fully experience the interview.

Why is Save Now, Buy Later (SNBL) better suited to the South African market than Buy Now, Pay Later (BNPL)?

If we look at the total addressable market [in South Africa], there's actually a majority of our population that actually sits in the non-credit worthy consumer base, and therefore really, when you look at our active credit users, which is really a lot of players all kind of going after the same consumer base, it's very crowded. And it's and it's a diminishing number.

We have taken a longer-term view and identified a much larger market whereby we can serve them through a save now buy later model. This is a low-risk, interest-free savings vehicle where people are deferring the collection of the item but have the flexibility to pay the way that they want and to amend, cancel, or extend those payment plans.

What are some key differences between SNBL and BNPL?

If you're doing a like-for-like correlation between BNPL and SNBL, is that a lot of our customers are saving towards much higher value purchases, where BNPL wouldn't really be in that category of you know, a much more immediate gratification type item.

So when you look at things like engagement rings, to even things like funeral plots here in South Africa, these are very high-value purchases, for which consumers can now set up an interest-free solution whereby they can pay over a much longer term. This also taps into your foreigner market, your Gen Z market that hasn't yet actually got a credit rating…and then your non-creditworthy customers, which is a large number of people in South Africa.

And so it's really focusing on trying to shift the behavior of consumers to say, look, there, there is an alternative to credit. And this is a solution that will allow you to pay really over a period of time in the way that you want to.

As a young African tech founder, what advice do you have for others who are considering entrepreneurship?

First, if you're not willing to get off your chair to try, you're never going to know. If you just talk about your idea and you get this positive feedback, but you have no kind of real willingness to actually make it happen, then it's never going to happen. So how strong is the idea? How strong is the why? If that why is strong enough, then you need to get off your chair to make it happen.

I think the second part would be to realize the importance of creating a strong founding team from the beginning. And everyone has got different skill sets within running a company and you need to identify what are your strong skill sets And then what are the complementary skill sets that you need around you in order to actually put together a strong founding team?

And then the third one would be like, it's a hell of a roller coaster. So enjoy the ride. You're going to go through massive ups and massive downs. And the ups make it worth it. The downs can be some very dark days.

Reach the BigFive Digital Community

Would you like to promote your organization on the BIG5D Podcast? We offer fairly priced podcast, newsletter, and live event sponsorships. We are also happy to explore bespoke content opportunities. For example, white papers, podcasts, webinars, and more. We also offer job postings to help you find the right individual for a role. Reach an audience of nearly 3,000 educated, influential, and engaged tech leaders in Africa and the Middle East, plus Europe and North America, through BigFive Digital. To start a conversation about partnering with us, email us at info@bigfivedigital.org.

Andrew Kastzwinkel will also be a speaker at the upcoming BigFive Summit, 15-16 March, at the Radisson Blu Waterfront Hotel in Cape Town.

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This episode features an interview with Andrew Katzwinkel, CEO of LayUp Technologies, a South African fintech that offers save now, buy later payments solutions to merchants large and small.This episode includes a discussion of LayUp''s efforts to establish SNBL as a responsible alternative to the popular but controversial buy now, pay later payments method.This episode is sponsored by Dudawww.duda.co/

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We are excited to return this week with the BIG5D Podcast. We apologize for the unplanned hiatus we have taken over the past few months with the podcast and newsletter. The pause was due to a health challenge on our team that required taking extensive time off to recover. We are now back to creating unique content about B2B tech in Africa and the Middle East.

We are also well into planning our 2023BigFive Summit, which returns to Cape Town on 15-16 March at the Radisson Blu Waterfront Hotel. Please add “Africa’s leading small business technology event” to your diary.

Write to us at info@bigfivedigital.org to discuss participating in the Summit.

This week’s guest, Tyler Karahalios, who leads financial services at the B2B marketplace startup MarketForce, will also be a speaker at the BigFive Summit. In fact, this podcast series will lean heavily over the coming months toward featuring some of the most engaging 2023 Summit speakers. Karahalios, a California native and Stanford University graduate who fell in love with Kenya and Africa’s entrepreneurial environment, is among them.

Karahalios’s formal title is Global Head of Special Projects and Merchant Banking at MarketForce. The East African retail distribution platform was founded in Kenya in 2018 by CEO Tesh Mbaabu and CTO Mesongo Sibuti.

MarketForce enables African informal retailers to order inventory — mostly fast-moving consumer goods (FMCG) —- via their smartphones. And take delivery within 24 hours.

This category has become a game changer for informal merchants, who often have to go to warehouses at dawn in search of stock. Or often they are forced to close up shop midday to hunt for fresh inventory. Both are suboptimal processes, for both the health and bottom lines of the retailers.

MsarketForce’s position as a distribution resource for retailers makes it natural to layer on fintech solutions like payments, inventory finance, and more.

Enter Karahalios, who is the fintech person at MarketForce. Here is how she describes her role. “I lead financial services at Market Force, which is all of our inventory finance, digital wallet, payments, any sort of financial service you can think of, we're thinking about extending to our merchant network. So that's my work across all of our operating countries.”

She says MarketForce is building “a super app for retailers to help them operate and grow their businesses.”

Karahalios talks about two key differentiators at MarketForce. One is having an asset-light model (from the Uber playbook) — no warehouses, no trucks, etc.

The second is focusing on finding growth in second-tier cities. MarketForce operates in 20 cities in Kenya for example.

“We typically enter into a capital city where there's a lot of a lot of activity, but then we very quickly branch outside of that,” Karahalios said. “We actually find that the unit economics in the secondary cities can be more profitable than in the primary cities.”

Since its founding, MarketForce has raised $42.9 million (per Crunchbase). The bulk of the funding — $40 million — came in a Series A back in February this year.

MarketForce, based in Nairobi, now operates in five markets — Kenya, Nigeria, Rwanda, Uganda, and Tanzania.

MarketForce has also dealt with challenges common to tech companies in today’s cost-conscious environment. In August, we learned the company reduced its workforce by 9% as part of a restructuring effort.

The company currently has roughly 400 employees across all of its operating markets, according to Karahalios.

MarketForce also faces competition from a wide variety of companies across its operating markets, includingTradeDepot, Wasoko, Sabi, and others.

We hope you enjoy the interview. You can also view a video version of this episode on our YouTube Channel.

Interview Excerpts

The following are a few excerpts from our conversation with Tyler. Please listen to the podcast or watch the video to experience the full interview.

Why Africa?

I was very fortunate. I went to Stanford University [located in Palo Alto, California, deep in Silicon Valley] for my undergraduate degree. And that's where I got immersed in the kind of entrepreneurship and startup ecosystem. The energy in Silicon Valley is palpable. And it was impossible not to kind of get drawn into that. And then I, throughout the course of my studies had done some work in South Africa, up into Tanzania. And that's where I first got some exposure to the opportunity across the African continent. So in 2016, I moved to Kenya, I received advice to follow the money and South Africa, Kenya, and Nigeria, basically, are the VC centers so so made moves out here and really fell in love with the startup and venture ecosystems [in Africa]. People are creating incredibly innovative products and solutions that move the needle in people's lives. And it was impossible not to want to be a part of it. So that's what's kept me here.

What is MarketForce today?

We partner with manufacturers and suppliers and make their products available on our platform. And then merchants can order those goods via our app and have reliable next-day delivery. And so we're really solving that core need of reliable convenient delivery of goods. There's a large pain point around merchants waking up at four in the morning to go to a wholesaler that may or may not have what they need. And so this just eases their operations quite a bit. And then on top of that we've layered on access to value added in financial services, to have a digital wallet and digital payments, Bill Pay services where they can sell airtime or electricity to the end consumer and earn extra income, and then inventory financing as well to support their cash flows and help them order more and sell more.

MarketForce aims to be a super app for retailers to help them operate and grow their businesses. What that looks like being a super app is first, meeting their core need of reliably ordering goods. Second has been adding on value-added services, like bill pay, and then financial services. And inventory financing. We're also seeing a ton of startups pop up around business operation tools. So things like bookkeeping, or inventory management, and consumer credit tracking. These are solutions that I can see us building to have it really be a one-stop shop for them to access whatever they need to operate and scale their small businesses.

Does MarketForce help informal retailers formalize their businesses?

We serve formal and informal retailers. And I think that varies pretty significantly by market. So in Rwanda, almost if not all of our customers are formally registered. Part of that has to do with the regulatory environment and the incentives around formalization. That varies largely by market. I can see us getting to the point where we support merchants in their journey to formalize. But right now, yeah, we're all-inclusive, we serve everyone.

What’s on the near-term horizon for MarketForce?

We're really looking at scaling up our inventory financing solution for merchants, which is very exciting to me. We'll also have a digital wallet and Bill Pay services live in all our markets relatively soon. It's active in Kenya, Nigeria, and Uganda at the moment. But there's a 2018 World Bank IFC figure that there's a $330 billion financing gap for formal SMEs across the continent…there's an incredible opportunity to provide MSMEs with financing solutions that meet their needs. And I think one thing that's really unique about market forces, traditional financial institutions tend not to serve this customer segment because they're too costly and too risky.

But that's not true for us. And because of our existing business model, we also have really unique data that no one has access to…their entire transaction history… It really de-risks lending when you're financing inventory, and have a whole new layer of history and data to make those decisions off of. So we're really, really excited to scale that up.

Join Us in Cape Town

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This episode features an interview with Tyler Karahalios, Global Head of Special Projects and Merchant Banking for MarketForce, an East African retail distribution platform that was founded in Kenya in 2018.

This episode includes a discussion of MarketForce's effort to build a super app for Africa's informal retailers.

This episode is sponsored by Duda www.duda.co/

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This episode features an interview with Firas Ahmad, Group CEO, AzamPay, an East African mobile money platform.

Topics range from the future of mobile money to the state of venture investing in Africa.

To access podcast bonus features, please subscribe at ctlaughlin.substack.com/

This episode is sponsored by Duda https://www.duda.co/

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This episode features an interview with Zachariah George, MP of Launch Africa Ventures, an early-stage VC investing in African B2B startups.

To access podcast bonus features, subscribe at https://ctlaughlin.substack.com/

Here is a link to the article on the demise of Kune Food.https://ctlaughlin.substack.com/i/60532660/the-sad-demise-of-kune-food

This episode is sponsored by Matchcraft https://www.matchcraft.com/

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This episode of the BIG5D Podcast is brought to you by Matchcraft

Jason Sive is lumped in with the buy now, pay later space via his company, Mobicred. But he resists this grouping, noting that what his company really offers is a virtual credit facility. And this bears more similarity to traditional revolving credit than the no interest, no fees “pay in four” structure that most of us associate with buy now, pay later.

Mobicred, which was recently acquired by RCS, offers a virtual credit facility and partners with retailers to offer at the point of sale. The service has been available only online, but Sive noted in the interview that an in-store option is coming. Mobicred has relationships with more than 4,000 retailers.

For all the time we’ve been in touch with Jason, he’s been a pretty sharp BNPL critic. He says the pay-in-four model and its variations are unprofitable, even at scale.

And he says too many players rushing into the space has created a race to the bottom. BNPL platforms are in some instances paying retailers millions to renew deals, Sive said. And even discounting their main revenue stream, which is the lead fees that retailers pay for each BNPL transaction.

BNPL platforms also assume all of the risk. They pay retailers in full for purchases that consumers then pay off over time. So any defaults are borne by the platforms. However, most platforms mitigate the risk by taking one payment upfront, which traditional credit cards don’t do.

It was Jason’s candor about BNPL that led us to invite him to speak on BNPL at the recent BigFive Summit in Cape Town.

We sat down for a 20-minute on-stage interview that offers about as sober a take as you’ll get on the BNPL phenomenon.

You can listen to the interview above, or view the video here.

Here are some highlights from our conversation with Jason.

On the level of competition in BNPL

You can go to pretty much any country right now. And you'll see one or two that got out of the starting gates first, and then five, or six copycats that are trying to play catch up and inevitably will just be consolidated.

On why the ‘pay-in-four’ BNPL model isn’t sustainable

If you look at the products and the way they're designed, they're obviously able to churn their cash really quickly, which is a great benefit. You don't need a ton of money if you're going to grow very quickly because your money comes back quickly.

But the bigger problem is that I think they've created this expectation amongst the retailers that these products are likely here to stay. But they've also created an expectation amongst retailers that they can be served at a rate that's not sustainable. So in the U.S., I know, some of the big guys are actually paying the retailers, like tens and tens of millions of dollars, just to extend the contracts. That's not sustainable.

On why BNPL platforms are in such trouble now

We’ve had a number of these very large BNPL players launch and scale at breakneck speed. And they've also been able to raise a ton of money on the assumption that when they get to real scale, and they've got 10s of millions of customers, it'll be a great model with good returns and shareholder value. And they listed a lot of these businesses.

Twelve months ago, some of these businesses were worth billions of dollars on various stock exchanges. Today, many of them are worth perhaps 10% of what they were.

I think what's happened is that analysts and investors have run out of patience. They're saying, ‘You guys are at scale, and you're still losing money. And two, we kind of don't believe you anymore, because you've been saying this for a long time’. And now, three, interest rates are rising and tech stocks have been hammered. So they have been in a bit of a perfect storm.

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Episode 29: Jason Sive, the CEO of South African virtual credit platform Mobicred talks about the problems facing the buy now, pay later space. This interview was recorded at the BigFive Summit, 12-13 May 2022 in Cape Town.

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Vinny Lingham is currently CEO of the video conferencing startup Waitroom. But he is best known for his side gig as a Shark on South Africa’s version of the reality show Shark Tank. For the uninitiated, Shark Tank is the show where entrepreneurs try to convince a panel of hard-nosed investors like Vinny to put money into their businesses.

Shark Tank pitches tend to spring from the personal needs or passions of the entrepreneurs. Hence they’re heavy on products involving kids, pets, weight loss, etc.

But once in a while, something different happens on Shark Tank. For example, back in 2016, during Shark Tank’s first season in South Africa, Vinny offered to invest in the developers of the augmented reality game Augmentors. But there was an interesting catch.

This is what Vinny told the Augmentors founders: “The problem you’re trying to solve around creating rarity … can better be solved by using the Bitcoin blockchain. So, my offer will be 500,000 ZAR, or roughly 59 Bitcoins, for 20% of your business.”

By the way, today 59 Bitcoins are worth more than US$2.3 million (or about 35 million ZAR).

Crypto and blockchain have long been passions of Vinny’s, so much so that he helped launch the blockchain-based digital identity companyCivic Technologies back in 2015, which Vinny now admits was ahead of its time. Vinny recently stepped aside as Civic’s CEO to focus on his new startup, but he remains Civic’s chairperson.

Vinny’s entrepreneurial journey also includes launching the freemium website builder Yola in 2007 (he exited in 2011). And the digital gift card business Gyft, which he launched in 2012 and sold to First Data Corp. in 2015.

While a native South African who appears on Shark Tank South Africa, Vinny spends most of his time in California, where both Civic and Waitroon are located.

In addition to his work with Shark Tank, Vinny stays connected to his home country via Newtown Partners, a Cape Town-based seed investment fund that focuses on early-stage technology startups in South Africa. Vinny is one of the fund’s co-founders and its general partner.

Vinny joined us last week on the BIG5D Podcast. We talked about his new company Waitroom, why he thinks governmental incompetence stands in the way of South Africa’s technological potential, the true promise of blockchain, and what it takes to be a successful entrepreneur.

Here are some highlights from our conversation with Vinny.

On why he launched Waitroom

Video conferencing and scheduling a video conference are very inefficient. You meet with a whole bunch of people every single day, you have these calls scattered all throughout your calendar, and you don't have enough time to go do what you need to do.

As a Shark on Shark Tank, South Africa, how do I make myself available for pitches if I don't want to listen to pitches for an hour? I'm happy just to do 10 minutes. So how do I get six people to line up and give me 10 pitches in an hour? And I pick the best one and have a follow-up conversation then.

On why he’s pessimistic about South Africa

I think the biggest challenge in South Africa is infrastructure. If you look at the energy grid, the load shedding is just ridiculous.

I mean, I left South Africa because of load-shedding 14 years ago. And it's getting worse. The government is just totally incompetent. I mean, nobody can make a decision, no one can get stuff done. It's just overly politicized.

On why crypto matters

I'm a frontier technologist. So I look at things like web3 and the metaverse. And there are a few people in South Africa building this sort of stuff. And I try to find them and invest in them. I like to be ahead of the next big thing, like Bitcoin and crypto. I've been there for years. And I've been preaching about it in South Africa for nearly a decade as well. I'm trying to get people onto that train.

I have an overarching thesis that the world is going through a massive expansion of wealth and capital right now. U.S. quantitative easing has actually helped expose how much money's in the world and how much value is in the world. I do think that if the monetary expansion happens too fast, we're gonna have major issues. But crypto will probably be the biggest beneficiary because, with crypto, you have a fixed supply. So even if things get crazy, you can't print more Bitcoins, it just doesn't work that way.

On why blockchain-based digital ID is a powerful idea

When you verify someone's identity, you check it against a source, right? And the source is going to be say Home Affairs, or some ID verification company, etc. And they tell you who that person is, and you believe them and you do your thing.

In the decentralized identity world, I give you my credentials, you check the signatures are valid, you don't tell the other guy, you just trust that the signatures they gave are valid, and you can check it using cryptography. And that's private. So instead of three people knowing I did a transaction, now only two know — me and the person receiving the information. That's way more secure and way more private. And it's the future of identity.

And on why it may take years to come to fruition

It’s definitely an idea ahead of its time. We started the company in 2015. And we were the first blockchain-based identity company out there. Where we are right now, I guess, is trying to figure out how to use decentralized identity and things like NFTs.

It's really hard to use fundamentally new technology to disrupt the existing marketplace. Banks want to use what other banks are using. They don't really care about whether it's good or bad. They just don't get into trouble. A banker’s number one job is to make sure he doesn't get fired. Because it’s a cushy job. Why would you want to get fired? So don't make any bold moves.

On what makes a great entrepreneur

I would say, the ability to withstand incredible amounts of pain. Not physical pain, but the emotional pain and trauma and just living in a world of uncertainty for long periods of time.

I'd say the second thing would be being absolutely relentless, and never giving up. So you can withstand the pain, and you just refuse to give up and never say die.

You can watch the full interview with Vinny on YouTube here

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This episode features South Africa Shark Vinny Lingham talking about his new company Waitroom, why South Africa will never be a tech innovation leader, the true promise of blockchain, and what it takes to be a successful entrepreneur.

This episode is sponsored by Matchcraft

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Episode 27 features Gideon Greaves, MD, Africa for CV VC, a Zurich-based blockchain-focused VC firm.

Greaves was brought on last year to build the VC firm's Africa practice. As he explains in the podcast, there is plenty of activity among startups built on blockchain technology, many of which address small business pain points. What's missing, Greaves argues, is a stronger supporting ecosystem and more capital.

Greaves will also speak at our upcoming BigFive Summit, 11-13 May 2022 in Cape Town.

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This episode of the BIG5D Podcast is brought to you by Matchcraft

Guy Futi is a born entrepreneur. The Congolese founder of food tech SaaS platform Orda was born in Gabon and raised in Canada, and educated at some of the world’s finest schools. He later honed his management chops at Jumia, one of Africa’s tech unicorns.

One of Guy’s many childhood business ventures involved burning CDs off Napster downloads and selling them for walking around money. Fast forward a few years, he and his wife created and produced a reality show focused on dating life in Africa, which they later sold.

In 2020, he left Jumia, where he ran Jumia Food in Nigeria, to launch Orda, a Lagos-based software company that aspires to be the operating system for small (and also large) restaurants across Africa.

Its core offering is a cloud-based POS system. The company recently raised a $1.1 million pre-seed round. The company also just became the first African company named to the Techstars Boulder, Colorado, program. In fact, our conversation with Guy took place while he was in Colorado.

The company offers a platform for omnichannel ordering (e.g., from multiple channels like WhatsApp, Jumia Food, and so on), plus a customizable microsite for its restaurant customers. Orda also gives restaurants their own branded mobile app.

Orda was founded as StarKitchens and later rebranded as Orda. The name change from StarKitchens reflects an early intention to launch a cloud kitchen business.

Futi and his team quickly realized there was a much bigger opportunity. Africa’s very small restaurants need help making the transition from managing their sales and financial operations with pen and paper. And the volume of offline trade still far exceeds the volume coming in via delivery apps.

Futi says Orda’s best customer is a small restaurant that hasn’t yet jumped on the SaaS train.

“We like clients who operate on cash or use pen and paper to run their business,” Futi said. “Because then we can make a difference quickly.”

Restaurants needed tools to help them operate efficiently, collect data and then process it so they know if they made money on any given day. And even better, gather insights to improve operations and profitability, giving restaurants a better foundation to grow from.

So the company changed gears and changed its name. Now Futi and his team are racing to keep building and improving its product, expanding into new markets, and no doubt soon raising more money. As Futi well knows, a million dollars doesn’t last very long when you are chasing a massive opportunity.

Futi met with us recently to talk about his company and its ambitions. He also shared his “brutal” experience fundraising and what he thinks are the keys to building great software for small businesses. Simplicity is a big part of the answer. As Futi puts it, “if you can play Candy Crush, you can use Orda.”

This Episode is sponsored by…

This issue of the Africa SMME Tech Report is supported by Matchcraft, a global martech company powering local search, social, and display campaigns. Matchcraft has introduced “Powered By”, a solution that productizes its suite of APIs, giving third-party platforms access to the technology behind its flagship AdVantage platform. Visit Matchcraft.comfor more.

Would you like to sponsor an issue of The Africa SMME Tech Report? Write to us at info@bigfivedigital.org for details.

Join us in Cape Town!

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In 2020, Guy Futi left Jumia, where he ran Jumia Food in Nigeria, to launch Orda, a Lagos-based software company that aspires to be the operating system for small (and also large) restaurants across Africa.

Great conversation about launching a business and raising money with a born entrepreneur.

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Episode 25 of the BIG5D Podcast features a conversation with Mike Smits, CFO and a co-founder of Ukheshe, a South African fintech that provides API-first fintech-as-a-service solutions to banks, telecoms, and other fintech companies.

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This episode features an interview with Ezana Raswork, CEO of Africa 118 and Taskmoby. The latter company is an Ethiopean home services platform that was a 2021recipient of Google's Black Founders Award, an equity-free investment from the search giant.

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Episode 23 of the BIG5D Podcast features Tariq Sheikh, founder and CEO of Postpay, A Dubai-based buy now, pay later platform. This is a branch of eCommerce and fintech that allows consumers to pay for purchases in installments, often interest-free. The model is popular worldwide, in particular among younger consumers.

Postpay was formed in 2019 by Sheikh, a former management consultant, and his co-founder Dani Molina, who was previously co-founder and CTO of Spanish BNPL Aplazme.

Sheikh and Molina launched their product in 2020. Around the same time, several other companies did the same thing in the Gulf region. These include Shahry, Spotti, Tabby, and Tamara.

“It happened very quickly. And we were all in the know, I guess. I knew that there would be at least two other players coming relatively soon,” Tariq said.

BNPL is now a highly competitive market in MENA. It reflects the global buy now pay later market, which is also hyper-competitive and lately has been attracting big-dollar M&A. The most notable deal to date was Square's acquisition of Australian-American BNPL Afterpay for $29 billion. We also just saw PayPal acquire Paidy in Japan, for about $3 billion.

In June, Afterpay and its investment arm, AP Ventures invested $10 million in Postpay.

And we've also seen many smaller regional acquisitions, Australia’s ZipCo recently acquired the remaining shares in Payflex, a South African buy now pay later, following a minority investment back in April. Zip has already acquired Spotti, the UAE buy now pay later platform, which continues to operate independently.

So there's a lot going on in this space. And we wanted to get somebody on the podcast to tell us all about it.

Tariq was kind enough to come on and answer all our questions about how the business works, some of the big challenges it is facing, the competitive environment, and more.

Here is the full interview with Tariq on YouTube.

Episode 23 of the BIG5D Podcast is supported by Matchcraft, a global martech company powering local search, social, and display campaigns. Matchcraft has introduced “Powered By”, a solution that productizes its suite of APIs, giving third-party platforms access to the technology behind its flagship AdVantage platform. Visit Matchcraft.comfor more.

Here are some key passages from Episode 23.

What is Postpay’s geographic range?

“Today we are 100% live and operational in the UAE. Saudi Arabia is next, followed by Kuwait, Qatar, and Bahrain. The zone that we consider Postpay territory is anywhere from Turkey to South Africa, and from Morocco to Malaysia and Indonesia. We have a Sharia compliant product, it resonates strongly in the the part of the world.”

Why did so many BNPL platforms emerge in MENA in 2019-20?

“I guess it's driven by the market, right? It's clear that it was a big, big success in the US and in Australia and in Europe. And the Middle East often emulates what happens in the West, and improves it and applies it locally. So this is essentially what happened…We needed it here. There was a strong demand.”

Why has BNPL become so popular?

“When we talk about Gen Z and millennials, this is a population that grew up through financial crisis, in 2007-2008 when there was a lot of uncertainty…in the job market. There was a lot of uncertainty in the banking industry and in the financial service sector. There was a generational shift away from banking, finance and the financial sector. ….

“And so this generation tends to steer away from using credit cards and other traditional financial products. They prefer to use cash. With buy now pay later, when it's very clear — this is what I'm doing and this is how much it's going to cost — there's a lot of transparency. But also important is the instant gratification. This generation wants a couple of things. One, they want things now. And two, they want things that are free.”

How do you respond to BNPL critics who raise concerns that BNPL users may get overextended?

“When we talk about buy now pay later, we're talking about $200, $250, you know, at a cap, maybe $300. If you really go far up, maybe $500. But the limits are a lot a lot lower than what we talk about when you talk about credit limits. So even if we go and dig into a credit bureau and the debt burden ratio, $200, $300 is not going to make a huge difference for the vast majority of the population.

“So when we look at it from a consumer perspective, first of all, we're working with our customers. We're not a debt collection agency. Customers are not able to check out with multiple installment plans ongoing, if if they haven't paid installments off. So they can never get into a situation where they become a revolver. There's nothing like that in buy now pay later.”

What are some of the dangers posed by this incredibly competitive environment?

“There are two major [forms of differntiation]. The first one is constructive differentiation. And the second is destructive differentiation…Destructive differentiation typically comes in two forms and tends to not bode well for any player in the market. First it is lowball pricing, which is unfortunate. It always happens. And it's typically in the unit costs. So it's variable fees, fixed fees that we charge as gateways to the retailers.

“And then the other comes in many different forms, but it could be termed as marketing investments…to boost sales in other ways. I'm not a big believer in those in those two because I believe in sustainability.”

What metrics signal success or failure in the BNPL business?

“You have two major ones. Conversion rates and AOVs [average order values]. Conversion rate come from our market. So our customer base, our returning customer base using the retailer. And also the fact that the same customer that would not have checked out because the price was too high, is now able to check out.

“And the AOV impact, obviously, is that the hypothetical checkout amount is a lot higher, they're able to put a lot more in their basket. And, you know, and check out with more. So those are the two main metrics.

‘In addition to that, we look at items per order. So this is another metric that we look at, which is similar to average order value, but it also looks at, are they just buying more things? Or are they buying more expensive things? So it's a nice way to dive down a little bit more, we also look at return rates. And that's important in a region where logistic costs are enormous.”

This transcript was lightly edited for length and clarity.

Upcoming Events

The BigFive Summit

16-18 May 2022
Workshop 17
Cape Town, South Africa

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Postpay is a player in the Middle East buy now, pay later space. And it hopes soon in the wider Africa, Middle East, and Asian markets.

A former consultant, Sheikh launched Postpay in 2019, around the same time as several other regional competitors. The podcast covers the BNPL business model, competitive environment, future direction, and more.

Episode sponsored by Matchcraft.com

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Deepankar Rustagi founded Omnibiz in 2020 to help small FMCG retailers run their businesses more efficiently. He explains his business and his outlook on Africa's tech scene in this 30-minute interview.

The company recently raised $3 million to build out its product and pursue international expansion.

Episode sponsored by Matchcraft (matchcraft.com)

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Episode 21 of the BIG5D Podcast features an interview with Kune Food Managing Director Kennedy Kamau.

Kune Food is an interesting company in many ways. The Kenyan food tech startup’s model sits at the intersection of cloud kitchens, delivery apps, virtual restaurants, home meal kits, and more.

Following a pilot in Nairobi earlier this year, Kune is now gearing up to fully roll out a concept where it prepares either hot, on-demand meals or packaged ready-to-heat-and-eat meals in its own cloud kitchen, which it calls a “factory”.

The company currently is in the process of building a new factory that can produce up to 80,000 meals/day. The full Nairobi rollout is slated for October-November. Initially Kune will deliver only to area hotels.

No Deals with Aggregators

A key Kune selling point is value for money. So the company doesn’t plan to work with aggregators like Glovo or Uber Eats, which add cost for delivery, commission, and so on. This will create added pressure on Kune to spend money on marketing to build the brand and drive order traffic.

The company will also rely heavily on as influencer marketing. To this end, Kune is teaming up with Nelson Aseka’s AIfluence influencer marketing agency.

The on-demand meals will be delivered via Kune’s owned and operated, exclusively female delivery operation. These drivers which Kune calls “captains” will deliver meals (“30 minutes on average”) using a fleet of 60 electric bikes.

The heat-and-eat meals will be sold through supermarket partnerships.

Kune Baby, Kune Pets

Kune is looking at new food concepts that fit with their Kenyan-inspired, wholesome and healthy positioning. Kune Green is likely next. Basically salads. And Kennedy said baby and pet food concepts are also on the roadmap.

Kune also plans to expand internationally. likely beginning next year in Nigeria. In the interview, we expressed some surprise that the company was committing to geographic expansion before it really knows how well the concept will do in Kenya.

Kennedy said the Kune team is confident in how it will perform in Kenya. He also said the company is following in its investors’ footprints by targeting Nigeria and South Africa.

Reflecting on the Controversy

Kune raised an impressive $1 million pre-seed round in June. That event, normally a celebration, turned into a public relations crisis for the company over comments made by its founder, Robin Reecht, a French national.

Reecht’s remarks, published inTechCrunch, landed on many ears as at best tone-deaf and at worst a reflection of the “white savior complex.”

Reecht claimed in the interview that there was no way to get good cheap food delivered in Nairobi. This plus his suggestion that Nairobi street food wasn’t safe seemed particularly triggering for many Kenyans on Twitter. Reecht later apologized for his remarks.

The bigger picture of this controversy was that Kune, just as it was getting on its feet, walked straight into the emotional debate over widely perceived VC favoritism for white, ex-pat founders.

We covered the backlash against Kune in our SMME Tech Report newsletter back in June.

We asked Kennedy about the controversy, mainly to understand if it is having any lingering consequences for Kune as it prepares to launch the business.

In a bit of understatement, he described the incident as “unfortunate.” He also argued that Kune was a convenient target for pent-up anger over larger issues involving equity and inclusion in startup funding.

He also believes the size of the round — $1 million is a pretty big pre-seed round in Kenya — added tinder to the fire.

The controversy mainly played out on social media. And as we monitor the discussion on Twitter, it appears those who were upset back in June have moved on. For now at least.

The discussion of the controversy starts at around the 24.20 mark of the podcast.

Here is the full interview on YouTube.

Episode 21 of the BIG5D Podcast is supported by Matchcraft, a global martech company powering local search, social, and display campaigns. Matchcraft has introduced “Powered By”, a solution that productizes its suite of APIs, giving third-party platforms access to the technology behind its flagship AdVantage platform. Visit Matchcraft.comfor more.

Here are some key passages from Episode 21.

Why is it so important for Kune to do everything in-house, from food prep to delivery?

“Because of what we wanted to offer our clients. For us to be able to give them meals that are affordable, we need to own the whole value chain, and try to cut as much costs as possible. One key area that you have mentioned was about the bikes. We are getting 60 electric bikes, which will be ridden by lady drivers. So we've trained 60 lady riders, or captains, as we call them, to do the delivery.

“Customers never get to see the people who are making the food. They only get to see the riders who are doing the delivery. So our app has to be top notch. And our riders needs to feel that they are part of the company. So we are taking them on as full time employees. Because they are the face of the company.”

Are you planning to prove out your model before committing to an international rollout?

“Our eyes are on Nigeria and South Africa. Two reasons. We are very confident that Kenya will be a success. We also want to ride on our VCs’ reach and areas of operation because Launch Africa is in Nigeria, and [unclear] is in South Africa. And they have other existing businesses there that we feel we can partner with to scale. And our investors have been confident in us and they are going to help us do that.”

What has been the fallout from the June controversy over remarks by your founder that some Kenyans found objectionable?

“That incident was very unfortunate. And it comes on the premise of something that had happened before. There was a huge discussion on African startups being not fully African owned. And that has been the discussion that has been going on and we cannot hide our face about that. So we took fire that was not aimed at us directly, but it was part of a bigger discussion.”

This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit ctlaughlin.substack.com/subscribe

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The episode features an interview with Kennedy Kamau, a startup veteran who is now managing director of Kune Food, a food-tech startup in Nairobi that has a unique business model, using its own cloud kitchen and a fully owned and operated distribution network.

The company raised a $1M pre-seed round this year. This event sparked a brief controversy over supposed preferential treatment for ex-pat startup founders in Africa. Kune's founder is a French national.

This episode is sponsored by MatchCraft, a global martech firm with partners on six continents. Please visit them at matchcraft.com.

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This episode features Martin Majlund, co-founder and CEO of Sky.Garden, an eCommerce that offers a Shopify-like solution to small businesses in East Africa. The company recently raised $4 million to grow and expand internationally.

This episode is sponsored by Matchcraft.

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In its latest episode, the Big5D Podcast features Simon Ellis, the Co-founder and CEO of SmartWage. We asked Simon detailed questions about his company, which fits broadly into the financial inclusion space.

SmartWage was founded in 2019 as an earned wage access platform for South African employers and workers. Essentially it allows workers to tap into wages they have already earned for a small fee, which is either paid by them or their employer.

Why is this important? Far too many South African workers run out of money before their next payday. This is most acute for those on a 30-day pay cycle.

This state of affairs impacts employers by contributing to absenteeism. Money for transport is a leading reason workers need early access to wages.

And this harms workers for many obvious reasons, not least of which is they are often forced to resort to usurious payday lending to get by, absent a more benign alternative like EWA.

“We estimate we're saving employees about 300 Rand per month that they would have alternatively spent on payday lenders,” Simon told us.

One of many challenges Ellis faces is convincing employers to pay for the service, rather than allowing employees to bear the full cost, which, while much lower than payday lending, is a cost all the same.

Probably the biggest competitive threats SmartWage and other earned wage access players face is from the big third-party payroll providers like Sage, ADP, and others.

Ellis acknowledged this but is confident that it does not fit into their business model. He believes that if a payroll player were to enter the space, it would likely be through acquiring a company like SmartWage, or a competitor like Floatpays.

Ellis said SmartWage needs more capital to scale and is in the process of raising a debt fund so it can handle a growing volume of wage advances as it grows.

The company’s future involves penetrating deeper into the market and expanding its set of solutions by adding on features like insurance, savings products, and the like. International expansion is likely farther down the road.

Watch the full episode on YouTube

Here are some key passages from this episode.

Why is this such an important service in South Africa?

“Financial Inclusion is something governments talk about. It's something a lot of fintechs are trying to solve. There is a booming payday lending industry [in South Africa] and we've all heard the horror stories about what people get charged. And the reason why that industry exists is because the 30 day pay cycle hasn't been challenged for 100 years.

“There's a large part of the market which is underserved. So halfway through the month, they need money. Most people go to payday lenders or loan sharks and it puts them in a cycle that is very difficult to escape.”

Who pays for the earned wage access service?

“It's either the employer or the employee. If it's an employee that pays typically, and it's across the board, all of the wage access providers are about five to 10 times cheaper than a regulated, payday loan alternative. And a whole lot cheaper than unregulated alternatives. And typically, the progressive innovative employers who understand the benefits that this gives an employee end up paying for the solution themselves.

“We offer two models. A subscription model is 30 Rand per registered employee per month, with unlimited transactions and a minimum amount of 100 Rand. And we cap the amount that you can access at 25% of what you've actually earned. So if you work for five days, you've only earned five days of earnings. And the other model is a 3% transaction fee.”

What are the benefits to the employer?

“Stressed employees, financially or otherwise, are not productive. So if we can reduce that stress, obviously, there's a benefit for the employer…But the big one in South Africa for the target market we're going after [hospitality, retail, mining] is absenteeism. The number one cause of absenteeism in South Africa is no money for transport. And this solves that problem. And so we've started to see a significant increase in the reduction in absenteeism at the employers we’re working with.”

Why don’t the big payroll platforms take this on?

“I think it's a fundamental pivot to their business model. They typically have these consultants who go and find business and work with businesses too. And now they've got to go a whole further layer deeper to get to the employee. It's a completely different model that would require either that they acquire someone and plug it in, or build their own system.

“And it is nuanced. There are a lot of small things, especially in a South African context that I think the big players are too slow to move to. If you look at someone in the States, like Gusto. This is probably the best example of a payroll provider that has now moved into the space. But they are one of the most innovative companies in America. And it's taken them a couple of years to get to this point. Whereas it's been around for eight or nine years. So I don't foresee the biggest payroll providers making a big change to this.”

What are the biggest challenges facing startups in South Africa today?

“Having lived in London for for a couple of years, the difference in access to capital is significant. For most entrepreneurs finding the right investors is probably the biggest hurdle. Investors want to take a big chunk early on at very low valuations, which then disincentivizes the founders. So that’s the first one.

The second one is talent. With the advent of with with COVID, a lot of talent is now being poached by international companies, especially in the development teams. They can pay double what we can, so we lose out on a lot of significant talent.”

This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit ctlaughlin.substack.com/subscribe

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This episode features a conversation about earned wage access with SmartWave CEO Simon Ellis. EWA is an increasingly common tool that gives employees access to wages before payday, usually for a small fee. EWA platforms are popping up all across Africa, where the need is acute. By some measures, nearly 80% of lower-wage workers in South Africa run out of money before payday, leaving them vulnerable to payday lenders. Simon walks us through the business model, detailing both its challenges and opportunities.

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This week the BIG5D Podcast welcomes grubtech Co-founder and CEO Mohamed Al Fayed. Grubtech is emerging as a key infrastructure player in the UAE’s exploding ghost kitchen scene.

Dubai-based grubtech (founded in 2019) doesn’t operate virtual restaurants. The company has built an operating system to address the friction points arising from running a high-volume food delivery business. Its software provides the efficiency needed to serve multiple delivery-only brands from a single location.

“Our key takeaway from studying the space was that there was no out of the box or native built technology to power these operations,” Mohamed said.

While MENA-based, grubtech has global ambitions. Mohamed tells us the company currently has active customers in more than seven counties. Outside of MENA, grubtech has customers in Singapore and Pakistan, with plans to add Malaysia and the Philippines soon. He says the company is in talks to expand into Europe and North America as well.

In March, grubtech announced a $3.4 million pre-Series A funding round to fuel its product development and expansion. This followed a $2 million seed round in mid-2020.

Our conversation goes pretty deep into the mechanics of ghost kitchens. And we learned about some interesting new trends along the way. One is micro-cloud kitchens. That’s when a local restaurant uses its excess capacity to fulfill delivery orders for another dining brand. So the space operates along both distributed and concentrated models.

We also learned that many originally virtual dining brands are now branching out and launching brick and mortar locations. What’s old is new again.

And we spoke at length with Mohamed about the tehnological future of ghost kitchens. Things like AI-driven personalization and integrtations with wearables. Not to mention ultiizaiton optimization aided by machine learning. All of these and more are on the horizon.

You can watch the full interview on YouTube.

Here are some key passages from this episode.

Why are cloud kitchens/virtual restaurants so popular in MENA?

“When it comes down to online food, we have some of the world's highest order per capita rates. Take a country like Kuwait, I think the order per capita there is almost five per person. So that's five orders a day per human living in Kuwait. So we've always been on the forefront of online food, primarily because of convenience. And obviously, optionality. And we drive a lot of technological innovation from that perspective in that sector.

“So cloud kitchens have almost been seeded here, or at least fortified here, in this part of the world. And they continue to grow very rapidly. So that's contributed to…the proliferation of cloud kitchens in our part of the world.”

Why do cloud kitchens need unique software?

“Our key takeaway from studying the space was that there was no out of the box or native built technology to power these operations. Single brand, single location works fine. Single brand, multiple locations works fine. But when you jam in one location, multiple brands, the existing technology providers really have a hard time with that.

“So a lot of these cloud kitchens built their own technology or kind of customize what was already out there. But to be quite honest with you, it was rickety. It was not very efficient. And it was largely built on a lot of legacy technology. So we saw that as an opportunity, as whitespace.

“We started the company in 2019. so the pandemic was obviously not with us. And we had made a big bet that cloud kitchens are going to be a driving force for how we consume food. And as these operators continue to expand geographically and their business models, they would need a tech enabler.”

What does it take to succeed in the virtual restaurant space?

“The ones we saw succeed were the ones who stuck to the DNA of what good food is. So quality for money, speed of delivery, and consistency. Those are the ones who have managed to survive the shakeout of the virtual brands.

“Another key success factor that we saw with virtual brands that those who went in with a view that they'll just put them into one or two stores that just serves like 10 or 15 kilometers, didn't do so well. Those who had big physical fleets like 50-plus stores, and were able to deploy that virtual brand over a wider area of coverage were able to justify the effort and the investment that went into creating a virtual brand.”

What will happen to ghost kitchens post-Covid?

“This quesiton was debated effusively by our investors. And my response was always the same. Look at online food penetration as a sector. And if you take a global outlook on it, it's still single digits, and some would put it as low as four to five, some will put it as high as seven to eight. But it's still single digits.

“Now, look at how we consume everything else in our life, right? Whether it's media through Netflix, or Apple TV, even down to our groceries or our office needs. You have Amazon. So you've got high double-digit penetrations, in the 30s and 40s, on how we consume our clothes, our commodities, etc. But something as reoccurring as food is still at single digits. What do you think is going to happen? It's going to catch up, right? I mean, we live in our phones and when we press a button, things just appear. So that is not going anywhere. And that consumer behavior obviously was catalyzed by the pandemic, and it will just continue to move forward.

“And as the cost structure of online food becomes cheaper and cheaper, you're already starting to see the impact. New apartment buildings are being built with much smaller kitchens. Because cooking is now a hobby, not a necessity. I can consume food at a cheaper price than having to go to the grocery store, buy all its components, spend an hour or two putting it together. I'll get the same output and a cheaper price, right? So that's here to stay. We've got a lot of headroom to go. The pandemic just helped us accelerate, but it definitely is not going to flatten out or plateau.”

What innovations are you working on at grubtech?

“I think there was a study that said most restaurants run at around 34% capacity. So how do we marry brands that want expansion without capex with this dormant capacity? And do so with science, rather than just arbitrarily…We're spending a lot of time on breaking that problem down. And we're quite confident that we've found a solution.”

This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit ctlaughlin.substack.com/subscribe

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Mohamed Al Fayed is co-founder and CEO of grubtech company that is emerging as a key infrastructure player in the UAE’s exploding ghost kitchen scene.Grubtech has built an operating system to address the friction points arising from running a high-volume food delivery business.

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Tori Samples is co-founder and CTO of Leaf Global Fintech, a company based in East Africa that offers a blockchain-based digital wallet for refugees and migrant workers.

The podcast focuses on whether a mission-driven business can also be a scalable fintech. And why blockchain can transform the African small business fintech space.

Note: The interview with Tori begins at the 6:45 mark.

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This episode features Firas Ahmad, /CEO of AxamPay, an East African fintech that is a division of Azam Group, the East African conglomerate.

Firas is a thought leader on African fintech in addition to running a payments platform. His view that mobile money is not sufficiently innovative forms the nucleus of our conversation.

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Katharine Budd and her business partner Ian Dillon spotted a huge underserved community in the Gulf Region. The millions of lower-wage migrant workers are largely unbanked and send billions of dollars back to their families in their countries of origin. NOW Money has created a digital banking solution, including remittances. for this population. The TAM is huge, but so are the challenges facing this business model.

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We engage Zapper CEO Brett White on the stage of small business in South Africa one year into the pandemic. We also discuss innovation, fintechs vs banks, and the technologies that will drive the payments space in the years to come.

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Lauren Kagori works with Pezesha, a financial inclusion platform in East Africa that is trying to solve to problem of poor access to capital for small businesses through crowdfunding.

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Flutterwave's head of global partnerships chats with the BIG5D Podcast about her company's meteoric rise to become of just a few tech unicorns in Africa. Among the topics covered include Flutterwave's $170 million Series C round, its new deal with PayPal, and the complexities of simplifying payments in Africa.

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Dana Buys is a longtime software entrepreneur who had a vision for creating a technology that allows restaurant owners to manage their businesses through a mobile device.

Cloudone's TallOrder point of sale solution is designed for a mobile-first present and self-service future in the retail, dining, and hospitality industries.

His company's newest product VerPay, adds a needed trust layer to take payments over a voice call.

This episode also features a discussion of the battered state of South Africa's hospitality industry in the wake of the pandemic and how the industry will change permanently in the future.

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This is the first in the BIG5D Podcast's Fintech Founders Series, This episode features OZÉ CEO Meghan McCormick.

Meghan explains her journey from American Peace Corp veteran and management consultant to founding a small-business fintech based in Ghana that helps SMMEs get organized with SaaS tools and get access to capital on fair terms.

Meghan comes to everything with a core mission of creating jobs by helping small businesses thrive.

This episode is sponsored by Mono Solutions. (https://www.monosolutions.com/)

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The pandemic has created challenges for the region’s logistics players — ride-hailing services, food delivery apps, and others. But there is also a tremendous emerging opportunity to offer an ever-widening array of services. We will explore this landscape with Uber’s Kartik Taneja.

Episode sponsored by MatchCraft (www.matchcraft.com)

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This episode of BIG5D.TV features an interview with Samantha Naidu, CEO of Volt Africa. We discuss the optimal digital solution set for African SMEs, particularly in times of crisis.

This episode was sponsored by Duda: https://www.duda.co/

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Today’s guest is Colin Timmis, the South Africa country manager for Xero -- the global cloud accounting platform.

We had a great conversation about what it takes to get SMMEs to overcome their anxiety about technology and use it to their advantage.

This episode is sponsored by Duda

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Cape Town entrepreneur Grant Greeff shares his experience of trying to save one company, EHire, while launching another, OpenRoute, in the midst of a global pandemic.

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This is the podcast version of the BIG5D.TV video series. This episode features a conversation about sales during the COVID-19 pandemic with Wayne Bischoff, CEO of Mediamark, a media sales house in South Africa, and George Lieth, EVP Sales at Vendasta, a Canadian martech company. The original interview was conducted in July 2020.

The BIG5D Podcast: Recent Episodes