Asilimia

Asilimia, founded in 2017 by Kenyan entrepreneur Tekwane Mwendwa and French entrepreneur Morgane Kablan, is a fintech company headquartered in Nairobi, Kenya, targeting the significant credit gap affecting Africa's 150 million micro, small, and medium enterprises (MSMEs). The founders established the company to build the primary financial infrastructure for the continent's informal economy, which, despite contributing an estimated 38% to Sub-Saharan Africa's GDP, remains largely underserved by traditional financial institutions.

The company's core offering is the "Leja" mobile application, a digital ledger that empowers business owners to digitize and manage their financial transactions in real-time. Through Leja, users can record sales and expenses, track outstanding payments, and gain financial insights via a simple dashboard, replacing traditional pen-and-paper methods. A key feature of the platform is its integration with mobile money services, which allows businesses to send and receive payments with transaction fees reduced by up to 90%. This formalization of financial data creates a verifiable track record for the MSMEs.

Asilimia's business model hinges on leveraging this consolidated data to de-risk entrepreneurs and facilitate their access to formal financial services. The data collected through the Leja app serves as a basis for building a credit score, which in turn enables users to access services like loans, insurance, and savings products. The company generates revenue by providing these financial services, with an initial focus on extending credit to help businesses scale. Asilimia has successfully raised capital to support this model, including a $2 million funding round comprised of $1 million in pre-seed equity and $1 million in debt to finance its loan book. The company has received backing from notable investors such as Norrsken Impact Accelerator, Bpifrance, GreenTec Capital Partners, and Google for Startups.

Keywords: financial inclusion, MSME financing, digital ledger, mobile payments, fintech Africa, credit gap, informal economy, bookkeeping app, transaction data, small business loans