Arifu

Arifu is an edtech company founded in Nairobi, Kenya, in 2013 by Craig Heintzman and later joined by Marisa Conway. The company was established to make educational content and skill development resources accessible to individuals in emerging markets, particularly those without internet access or smartphones. Heintzman's journey began after his studies at Queen's University and a period at the World Wide Web Foundation, where he worked with Tim Berners-Lee. A pivotal experience helping a pastor with a distribution venture in Zimbabwe, which ended due to government expropriation, solidified his entrepreneurial drive and provided deep insights into the challenges of rural life, leading him to launch Arifu in Nairobi.

The core of Arifu's offering is a digital learning platform delivered through an interactive chatbot. This bot functions over basic SMS and smartphone chat applications like WhatsApp, making it universally accessible. Arifu's business model is B2B, partnering with organizations such as financial service providers, mobile network operators, agribusinesses, and NGOs. These partners pay Arifu to create and disseminate customized training and informational content to their target audiences, which include hard-to-reach customers, farmers, retailers, and employees. This model allows partners to engage, train, and collect data from underserved populations at a fraction of the cost of traditional methods. For the end-user, or 'learner', the service is often free, subsidized by the partners.

The platform delivers personalized, bite-sized content on topics like financial literacy, agricultural best practices, entrepreneurship, and health. It leverages behavioral science and AI to tailor content and improve knowledge retention. Arifu has demonstrated significant impact, with studies showing that its training leads to increased savings, better loan repayment rates, and improved agricultural yields for farmers. The company has reached over 1.5 million learners and works with major partners, including Mastercard Foundation, Unilever, and Equity Bank, to scale its impact across Africa.

Keywords: edtech, mobile learning, chatbot, SMS training, financial inclusion, digital literacy, agricultural training, emerging markets, Africa, corporate training, last-mile distribution, skill development, B2B edtech, content marketplace, data analytics, behavioral science, social enterprise, Nairobi, impact investing, scalable education